From the July 2014 edition onwards we're having a page of your questions in the magazine. If you have an interesting dog-related question you'd like answered please send an email to thinktank@dogstodaymagazine.co.uk
May issue
May issue
Friday 23 September 2011
So how should it really be done?
Having watched the Jack Russell on the One Show guarding his food bowl I now know how not to train a dog, but how should you do it properly?
What should you do if a dog growls when you attempt to take up its food bowl?
Holly Dixon, by email
This is the method that has always worked for me. Firstly, stop taking the food bowl up. If you need to take it up either wait until the dog has moved away from the bowl or distract the dog so that it leaves the room. When it is the dog's feeding time, put the empty bowl on the floor and let the dog investigate. Have the dogs food in another bowl in your hand. Drop one small priece of food at a time in the dogs bowl. You don't have to go near the bowl and don't worry if the food doesn't always go in the bowl. Use verbal praise when the dog eats the morsel of food as long as there is no aggression. If there is aggression, remoive the food bowl completely by following the methid above and drop the food onto the floor, away from you. As the dog begins to relax, move gradually nearer to the bowl so that you are almost next to it. Be patient as this can take up to a week in some dogs. Then start dropping one bit of food in the bowl and hand feeding something of high value, like cheese, hot dog or chicken (very small prieces of these, all the while praising the dog in a calm gentle voice. As you hand feed the dog, move your hand gradually nearer to the bowl and it won't take long before you can actually have your hand in the bowl. The dog will associate your hand near the bowl as a very tasty food reward. At a different point during the day, spend a bit of time with the dog, when it is a little hungry, but not overly so. Ask the dog to sit and reward with a small piece of very tasty food, saying something like "get it, then" as you do so, then lots of praise. Keep doing this every day, it only has to be for a few minutes. Then start incorporating this into feeding time once you are feeding the dog with your hand in the bowl. Put a small amount of food in the dogs bowl and have he tasty food in you hand. Ask the dog to sit and show the very tasty food as you put the bowl on the floor, put the tasty food in the bowl so the dog can see what you are doing and say "get it, then" at exactly the same time. Gradually increase the food in the dog's bowl until they are having their normal amount, keep asking them to sit and saying "get it, then as you put in the tasty food. Then start leaving say half a second between you putting in the tasty food and saying "get it, then". You have now taught your dog that good things happen around food and that something even better happens if they sit and wait for it. Don't leave them waiting too long for it though, as that is not fair, a few seconds is plenty. And still never, ever take the bowl away from your dog while they are eating. If you ever have to take something away from your dog, always distract them first - you can use the cheese, hot dog or chicken for this and then remove whatever you need to take away. Always reward your dog with something of higher value than whatever you are taking away from them. It is always useful to teach them "leave it" or "drop it" for those times they may find something dangerous to eat in the street or if you have a dog that steals and always reward them for leaving or dropping the item. Hope this helps, I do find it a lot easier to show people than write it all down.
As a trainer myself i would get a vet check done before any behaviour case to rule out any underlying medical conditions that could be there fuelling the problem.If given a clean bill of health i would start by either hand feeding or gaining the dogs trust by dropping tasty food or high value treats into the bowl every time i/owner walked past.This could take weeks or even months!I would maybe even then go on to play swaps,where you exchange i bowl of food for another.Trust is the key issue here&that takes time to build.There is no quick fix!Also lots of praise!May i just add that resource guarding can often stem from the litter,when pups are fed from the same bowl,so i advise always to feed puppies separately!
Well said Karen great response and very important not to take bowl away from the dog as this will just cause the dog to escalate their behaviour in order to keep the bowl.
Why do all these people want to eat dogfood??????? I`d bite if you took MY dinner away. To teach a dog that people around food is a Good Thing is very simple. 1. Start with an empty bowl and an expectant dog. 2. Put a little food in bowl, let dog eat it. 3. When dog looks hopefully at you, repeat. Simples!
Most dogs will respond really well to classical conditioning to help them overcome guarding issues. By helping the dog understand through positive association that approach is good not bad we can reduce the dogs need to guard. Some will need minor adjustments to feeding or toys regimes and most need ongoing maintainence to prevent reoccurrence of what is a natural behaviour. Some dogs have a lower guarding threshold than others and some dont guard anything. If the guarding is causing a safety or stress issue then seeking qualified professional help is vital. All dogs and families are individuals and their cases should be treated as such to evaluate them in their own environment.
Hi, Each dog is an individual, each dog will have different levels of food guarding and each dog will have a unique history of why the behaviour started in the first place, in the case of rescue dogs background may be unknown. A vet check is the first step to rule out any health issues. Safety is of the utmost importance so each families personal circumstances need to be taken into consideration especially with young children who may not understand that they cannot drop food or walk past the dogs bowl whilst behavioural modification is in progress. It would be imposible here to write all the different things I would put in place because of individual circumstances but sufice to say that initially the household member who the dog is the least fearful with should start the desensitisation by having the dog happy to have someone close to an empty bowl by initially throwing treats of extremely high value into it from a distance that would be determined by the dogs threshold. It may be necessary to work outside of the house to start with. Once the dog is happy for that person to stand next to its bowl and put food in the behaviour needs to be proofed with different locations and then with different family members and lastly visitors. I would reward calm non fearful behaviout by using a clicker. The dog should be fed in isolation until the full behavioural modification has been fully proofed.
I don't work with aggressive dogs, but when I've boarded food possessive dogs I follow a similar method to the one Karen describes. Teaching the dog gently that a person near their food bowl is a good thing.
I generally let the dog eat half their portion from the bowl first though, so at least the edge is taken off their hunger.
Agree with Claire and Daisy. I often dish up half my dogs' food and just as they're nearing the end, interrupt them to add the other half to their bowls or better still to throw in some human leftovers like roast potatoes. I never have a problem going near them when they're eating -in my house, humans near the dog bowls = more food!
The dog has what is called resource guarding (where a dog will guard something they see as valuable. It can be food, treats, toys, people, couches etc) The causes are many but can be something as simple as being the runt of the litter and learning to have to fight for its food from a young age. The dog is also clearly stressed and anxious which comes from not having a leader to feel safe with, moreover the feeling of having to protect the owner. So there is problem one to fix. As for problem two, food possession is treated in lots of ways. 1) get rid of the food bowl for now that way the dog has nothing to guard. 2) feed by hand so the dog gets used to human hands as a source of food, not taking food away. 3) make the dog perform a simple exercise, sit, down, or submissive 'give paw' for each bit of food which changes the relationship the dog has around food and humans. 4) scatter food on floor so the dog gets to use its nose and brain whilst eating, (it makes the highlight of most dogs day's far more interesting). 5) If or when you reintroduce the bowl and the dog is eating from it, drop in nice bits of high value food (chicken, fish, turkey, beef etc) so it looks forward to the arrival of a human hand. 6) Teach a leave command (away from dinner time) so you can get the dog to leave whilst eating, then top up the bowl so he can see you dont take the food away if he stops eating but give him more. Please do not bully, intimidate or use force against a dog who is already overwhelmed with stress and anxiety, it will not help
I worked in the field of welfare, training and behaviour in the UK for many years. I'm retired now, but continue to live with and meet many dogs. I see many more dogs now that have food aggression problems than I did in the UK. Many dogs here (I live in a developing country) have to fight for their food. There are many different elements here than there are in the UK. Firstly there has been a natural selection towards dogs that are less aggressive to people (sadly this is changing with the advent of breeding for aggressive 'guard dogs'). The dogs here have been essentially 'village dogs' for a very long time. Secondly, there is a different attitude towards personal responsibility and what to expect from dogs. If a child bothers a dog that is eating here and gets bitten, it is seen as an educational experience for the child and not as the sign of a problem. Why? Because people have different expectations of dogs here and most think it is perfectly reasonable for a dog to protect its food bowl. All very interesting. Anyway, the three dogs that I have taken on here have all had differing levels of food bowl aggression. It's not something I like to live with, so I work on it. Most of the good advice given here covers it, but for me it is a bonding and trust issue. I spend a lot of time getting the dogs used to being touched, being hand fed from the bowl and delivering delicious titbits during meal times. I also don't take my dogs to social functions as it is common here to do so. It is also common for someone to throw down a chicken bone (dogs here are fed on cooked chicken bones) and have 6 dogs pile under the table to fight it out. Funnily enough no one gets hurt - not even the dogs. Colette
So glad you asked! This kind of aggression is the easiest kind of aggressive behaviour problem to fix. You just need to teach the dog that it's win-win to give up the food bowl. Unlike what you saw on the show, it's something anybody can do safely. Check out http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/resource-guarding for a description by Grisha Stewart (who will be speaking in the UK next July about her own positive technique for aggression, Behaviour Adjustment Training). The One Show should try to get her on the show!
You come to my one day workshop on resource guarding! Seriously, there's no quick fix or quick answer, just know that it is always there, it is never cured and the best way to avoid a bite is to build trust and avoid confrontation. Each case must be addressed individually.
One of my happiest childhood memories involves a rottweiller called Cassie. A more loving dog you could not hope to meet. I know in later years this breed have gotten themselves a bad name thanks to a few irresponsible owners, but seriously, they are as loving and amiable as e.g. a Labrador. All the same ... one warning sticks in my mind. We were not to invade her space when she was eating (a warning that could well apply to a Lab - the doggy king of food). Nobody should ever think that a few kicks in the gob will prevent guarding. Dogs are incredibly intelligent creatures - gestures are all that they have - nobody should forget that. Let your dog trust and respect you but don't think you can cure/kill part of their character. I'm not so sure that you can!
I have a 6 month old puppy who bowl guards. She came to me at 8 weeks old and I could see from day one that we were going to have a problem. She doesn't growl or bare her teeth when approaching her bowl. She will gladly accept me holding onto her bowl whilst she eats. She looks really tense and worried when eating. Basically the food is wolfed down in a couple of seconds. She is obsessed with food. One of the problems being she is raw fed, so hard to scatter the food around on the floor. I do scatter any dried food or hot dogs on the floor for her eat. But I can see a problem developing. I have been working on adding food to her bowl since day one. But I can't see any real improvement. She still looks worried. Today she stole a jumbo sausage from the kitchen worktop. Other Half left the gate open. The jumbo sausage was gone in a matter of seconds. I am not scared of her and she is an otherwise well adjusted dog. I think she was probably fed from a communal bowl as a puppy in the litter. I think I may try splitting her food up and try using several bowls, as she can't guard all of them at the same time.
Anonymous above, why don't you hand feed your dog for a bit, even though it is raw (you'll have to wash your hands afterwards!) It's best of all when they have to take it from your hands. You could then progress to re-introducing the bowl, and putting bits in it at a time, but by then she'd probably be fine. Julia Lewis
Could the problem of dogs becoming more aggressive be something to do with the popularity of Cesar Milan's programmes, and his dominance style of training.
I am seeing more people than even with dogs with choke chains on and even the awful pronged and electric shock collars. Have been looking at some responses to the Jordan Shelley debate on the Daily Mail Website, and so many people think that dominance in training dogs is fine, with no thought to the potential outcome of this type of training.
Could it be that the owners themselves made this problem with taking the dogs food bowl away regularly when it was eating, my thoughts are that probably they did.
I would certainly agree that putting down an empty bowl, and adding food to it from another bowl would be the first thing to try. Also to think about what is actually going into the bowl, with regards to the quality of the food, and the possibility that this could be contributing to any bad behaviour.
My thoughts on the raw food guarding dog, is perhaps to add food that is not such 'high quality' and see if the problem resolves this way, as something boring being added to the bowl, may not be worth guarding so much.
This is the method that has always worked for me. Firstly, stop taking the food bowl up. If you need to take it up either wait until the dog has moved away from the bowl or distract the dog so that it leaves the room. When it is the dog's feeding time, put the empty bowl on the floor and let the dog investigate. Have the dogs food in another bowl in your hand. Drop one small priece of food at a time in the dogs bowl. You don't have to go near the bowl and don't worry if the food doesn't always go in the bowl. Use verbal praise when the dog eats the morsel of food as long as there is no aggression. If there is aggression, remoive the food bowl completely by following the methid above and drop the food onto the floor, away from you. As the dog begins to relax, move gradually nearer to the bowl so that you are almost next to it. Be patient as this can take up to a week in some dogs. Then start dropping one bit of food in the bowl and hand feeding something of high value, like cheese, hot dog or chicken (very small prieces of these, all the while praising the dog in a calm gentle voice. As you hand feed the dog, move your hand gradually nearer to the bowl and it won't take long before you can actually have your hand in the bowl. The dog will associate your hand near the bowl as a very tasty food reward. At a different point during the day, spend a bit of time with the dog, when it is a little hungry, but not overly so. Ask the dog to sit and reward with a small piece of very tasty food, saying something like "get it, then" as you do so, then lots of praise. Keep doing this every day, it only has to be for a few minutes. Then start incorporating this into feeding time once you are feeding the dog with your hand in the bowl. Put a small amount of food in the dogs bowl and have he tasty food in you hand. Ask the dog to sit and show the very tasty food as you put the bowl on the floor, put the tasty food in the bowl so the dog can see what you are doing and say "get it, then" at exactly the same time. Gradually increase the food in the dog's bowl until they are having their normal amount, keep asking them to sit and saying "get it, then as you put in the tasty food. Then start leaving say half a second between you putting in the tasty food and saying "get it, then". You have now taught your dog that good things happen around food and that something even better happens if they sit and wait for it. Don't leave them waiting too long for it though, as that is not fair, a few seconds is plenty. And still never, ever take the bowl away from your dog while they are eating. If you ever have to take something away from your dog, always distract them first - you can use the cheese, hot dog or chicken for this and then remove whatever you need to take away. Always reward your dog with something of higher value than whatever you are taking away from them. It is always useful to teach them "leave it" or "drop it" for those times they may find something dangerous to eat in the street or if you have a dog that steals and always reward them for leaving or dropping the item. Hope this helps, I do find it a lot easier to show people than write it all down.
ReplyDeleteAs a trainer myself i would get a vet check done before any behaviour case to rule out any underlying medical conditions that could be there fuelling the problem.If given a clean bill of health i would start by either hand feeding or gaining the dogs trust by dropping tasty food or high value treats into the bowl every time i/owner walked past.This could take weeks or even months!I would maybe even then go on to play swaps,where you exchange i bowl of food for another.Trust is the key issue here&that takes time to build.There is no quick fix!Also lots of praise!May i just add that resource guarding can often stem from the litter,when pups are fed from the same bowl,so i advise always to feed puppies separately!
ReplyDeleteWell said Karen great response and very important not to take bowl away from the dog as this will just cause the dog to escalate their behaviour in order to keep the bowl.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best articles I have read on resource guarding written by a modern positive trainer can been found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/resource-guarding/
Why do all these people want to eat dogfood??????? I`d bite if you took MY dinner away.
ReplyDeleteTo teach a dog that people around food is a Good Thing is very simple.
1. Start with an empty bowl and an expectant dog.
2. Put a little food in bowl, let dog eat it.
3. When dog looks hopefully at you, repeat.
Simples!
Most dogs will respond really well to classical conditioning to help them overcome guarding issues. By helping the dog understand through positive association that approach is good not bad we can reduce the dogs need to guard. Some will need minor adjustments to feeding or toys regimes and most need ongoing maintainence to prevent reoccurrence of what is a natural behaviour. Some dogs have a lower guarding threshold than others and some dont guard anything. If the guarding is causing a safety or stress issue then seeking qualified professional help is vital. All dogs and families are individuals and their cases should be treated as such to evaluate them in their own environment.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteEach dog is an individual, each dog will have different levels of food guarding and each dog will have a unique history of why the behaviour started in the first place, in the case of rescue dogs background may be unknown. A vet check is the first step to rule out any health issues.
Safety is of the utmost importance so each families personal circumstances need to be taken into consideration especially with young children who may not understand that they cannot drop food or walk past the dogs bowl whilst behavioural modification is in progress. It would be imposible here to write all the different things I would put in place because of individual circumstances but sufice to say that initially the household member who the dog is the least fearful with should start the desensitisation by having the dog happy to have someone close to an empty bowl by initially throwing treats of extremely high value into it from a distance that would be determined by the dogs threshold. It may be necessary to work outside of the house to start with. Once the dog is happy for that person to stand next to its bowl and put food in the behaviour needs to be proofed with different locations and then with different family members and lastly visitors. I would reward calm non fearful behaviout by using a clicker. The dog should be fed in isolation until the full behavioural modification has been fully proofed.
I don't work with aggressive dogs, but when I've boarded food possessive dogs I follow a similar method to the one Karen describes. Teaching the dog gently that a person near their food bowl is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI generally let the dog eat half their portion from the bowl first though, so at least the edge is taken off their hunger.
Agree with Claire and Daisy. I often dish up half my dogs' food and just as they're nearing the end, interrupt them to add the other half to their bowls or better still to throw in some human leftovers like roast potatoes. I never have a problem going near them when they're eating -in my house, humans near the dog bowls = more food!
ReplyDeleteThe dog has what is called resource guarding (where a dog will guard something they see as valuable. It can be food, treats, toys, people, couches etc) The causes are many but can be something as simple as being the runt of the litter and learning to have to fight for its food from a young age. The dog is also clearly stressed and anxious which comes from not having a leader to feel safe with, moreover the feeling of having to protect the owner. So there is problem one to fix. As for problem two, food possession is treated in lots of ways. 1) get rid of the food bowl for now that way the dog has nothing to guard. 2) feed by hand so the dog gets used to human hands as a source of food, not taking food away. 3) make the dog perform a simple exercise, sit, down, or submissive 'give paw' for each bit of food which changes the relationship the dog has around food and humans. 4) scatter food on floor so the dog gets to use its nose and brain whilst eating, (it makes the highlight of most dogs day's far more interesting). 5) If or when you reintroduce the bowl and the dog is eating from it, drop in nice bits of high value food (chicken, fish, turkey, beef etc) so it looks forward to the arrival of a human hand. 6) Teach a leave command (away from dinner time) so you can get the dog to leave whilst eating, then top up the bowl so he can see you dont take the food away if he stops eating but give him more. Please do not bully, intimidate or use force against a dog who is already overwhelmed with stress and anxiety, it will not help
ReplyDeleteI worked in the field of welfare, training and behaviour in the UK for many years. I'm retired now, but continue to live with and meet many dogs. I see many more dogs now that have food aggression problems than I did in the UK. Many dogs here (I live in a developing country) have to fight for their food. There are many different elements here than there are in the UK. Firstly there has been a natural selection towards dogs that are less aggressive to people (sadly this is changing with the advent of breeding for aggressive 'guard dogs'). The dogs here have been essentially 'village dogs' for a very long time. Secondly, there is a different attitude towards personal responsibility and what to expect from dogs. If a child bothers a dog that is eating here and gets bitten, it is seen as an educational experience for the child and not as the sign of a problem. Why? Because people have different expectations of dogs here and most think it is perfectly reasonable for a dog to protect its food bowl. All very interesting. Anyway, the three dogs that I have taken on here have all had differing levels of food bowl aggression. It's not something I like to live with, so I work on it. Most of the good advice given here covers it, but for me it is a bonding and trust issue. I spend a lot of time getting the dogs used to being touched, being hand fed from the bowl and delivering delicious titbits during meal times. I also don't take my dogs to social functions as it is common here to do so. It is also common for someone to throw down a chicken bone (dogs here are fed on cooked chicken bones) and have 6 dogs pile under the table to fight it out. Funnily enough no one gets hurt - not even the dogs. Colette
ReplyDeleteSo glad you asked! This kind of aggression is the easiest kind of aggressive behaviour problem to fix. You just need to teach the dog that it's win-win to give up the food bowl. Unlike what you saw on the show, it's something anybody can do safely. Check out http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/resource-guarding for a description by Grisha Stewart (who will be speaking in the UK next July about her own positive technique for aggression, Behaviour Adjustment Training). The One Show should try to get her on the show!
ReplyDeleteYou come to my one day workshop on resource guarding! Seriously, there's no quick fix or quick answer, just know that it is always there, it is never cured and the best way to avoid a bite is to build trust and avoid confrontation. Each case must be addressed individually.
ReplyDeleteGet hold of a copy of 'Mine!' by Jean Donaldson for a detailed look at different aspects of resource guarding and how to approach resolving them.
ReplyDeleteOne of my happiest childhood memories involves a rottweiller called Cassie. A more loving dog you could not hope to meet. I know in later years this breed have gotten themselves a bad name thanks to a few irresponsible owners, but seriously, they are as loving and amiable as e.g. a Labrador. All the same ... one warning sticks in my mind. We were not to invade her space when she was eating (a warning that could well apply to a Lab - the doggy king of food). Nobody should ever think that a few kicks in the gob will prevent guarding. Dogs are incredibly intelligent creatures - gestures are all that they have - nobody should forget that. Let your dog trust and respect you but don't think you can cure/kill part of their character. I'm not so sure that you can!
ReplyDeleteI have a 6 month old puppy who bowl guards. She came to me at 8 weeks old and I could see from day one that we were going to have a problem.
ReplyDeleteShe doesn't growl or bare her teeth when approaching her bowl. She will gladly accept me holding onto her bowl whilst she eats.
She looks really tense and worried when eating. Basically the food is wolfed down in a couple of seconds. She is obsessed with food. One of the problems being she is raw fed, so hard to scatter the food around on the floor. I do scatter any dried food or hot dogs on the floor for her eat. But I can see a problem developing.
I have been working on adding food to her bowl since day one. But I can't see any real improvement. She still looks worried.
Today she stole a jumbo sausage from the kitchen worktop. Other Half left the gate open. The jumbo sausage was gone in a matter of seconds.
I am not scared of her and she is an otherwise well adjusted dog. I think she was probably fed from a communal bowl as a puppy in the litter.
I think I may try splitting her food up and try using several bowls, as she can't guard all of them at the same time.
Anonymous above, why don't you hand feed your dog for a bit, even though it is raw (you'll have to wash your hands afterwards!) It's best of all when they have to take it from your hands. You could then progress to re-introducing the bowl, and putting bits in it at a time, but by then she'd probably be fine.
ReplyDeleteJulia Lewis
Could the problem of dogs becoming more aggressive be something to do with the popularity of Cesar Milan's programmes, and his dominance style of training.
ReplyDeleteI am seeing more people than even with dogs with choke chains on and even the awful pronged and electric shock collars. Have been looking at some responses to the Jordan Shelley debate on the Daily Mail Website, and so many people think that dominance in training dogs is fine, with no thought to the potential outcome of this type of training.
Could it be that the owners themselves made this problem with taking the dogs food bowl away regularly when it was eating, my thoughts are that probably they did.
I would certainly agree that putting down an empty bowl, and adding food to it from another bowl would be the first thing to try. Also to think about what is actually going into the bowl, with regards to the quality of the food, and the possibility that this could be contributing to any bad behaviour.
My thoughts on the raw food guarding dog, is perhaps to add food that is not such 'high quality' and see if the problem resolves this way, as something boring being added to the bowl, may not be worth guarding so much.