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Resource Guarding against other animals

Posted June 9th, 2009 by Canine SOS
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Hello Aidan,

What would you do in a case where a dog becomes extremely aggressive towards any dogs or cats (not humans) that go anywhere near his toys, food, leashes, bed or area where it is laying down. This 2 yr. min. poodle formerly lived with 8 other rescue dogs, including an aggressive neop. mastiff before being adopted by its present owner, who has had him since September 2008. The poodle currently shares his home with a 9 yr. old greyhound and 4 cats. The poodle has attacked the greyhound and a visiting puppy in the last month and will growl at the cats if it approaches anything the poodle values. If the poodle is placed in its crate it will growl at any animal that approaches its crate.
Thanks for your help.

Yamei

Comments

re: Resource Guarding against other animals

Aidan's picture
On June 10th, 2009 Aidan says:

Hi Yamei, I would do the same things I do for any other resource guarding issue. The difficulty is in making the controlled set-ups and keeping everyone safe.

For this reason I would start with the crate issue. Why? Because the set-up is REALLY easy and the safety equipment is already built-in!

You need to start in a large enough room to be able to work "sub-threshold" most of the time. I would simply have the poodle in the crate, then approach with another dog on-leash. You will quickly figure out a threshold where the reaction begins. Stop before this point and retreat. You can toss a treat into the crate (or have someone else do it), but this really isn't necessary just yet. The retreat itself is reinforcing - NOT REACTING "worked" and the other animal retreated.

Do this over and over, being careful to stay sub-threshold.

When you start to get really close, I think the treat tossed in the crate is a nice touch because it adds another element of Classical Conditioning - "good things happen when the other dog comes close to my crate"

Work in short sessions, 2-3 minutes with a break in between each session. You should be able to get in about 10 trials per session. The break is for BOTH dogs, although you are keeping everything sub-threshold and positive, it is still mildly stressful for both dogs and both dogs have to work.

When you get really close, start building up duration.

When you can do this with a few different dogs, leash-train a cat and repeat the exercise. If you don't want to leash train, you can carry the cat, possibly in a cat crate to begin with. Try not to stress the cat out or they become very difficult to work with!

You can repeat this exercise for the other things using a tether for safety.

Outside of training, do whatever you can to avoid rehearsal of these guarding behaviours. Use crates, doors, baby gates, whatever you have to do. Keep toys packed away, feed the dogs separately, keep the leash in a drawer or cupboard.

If there is a stand-off over anything, remove the item being guarded. NO-ONE gets it - YOU control the resources. One of my dogs was famous for this, she would leave a piece of toast on the floor and pretend not to notice my other dog drooling shoe-laces of slobber all over the floor. As soon as I cottoned on to this I started removing the toast and putting it in the bin.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com

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