How can I get my dog to stop snapping when she thinks her treasures are being taken by another dog?
August 25, 2011 9:34 AM Subscribe
Does anyone have tips for dealing with dog-dog resource guarding?
Our three year old shar pei/heeler (?) mix is very intelligent and is a pretty good girl most of the time. She never resource guards with us and we can trade prized toys between our two dogs with no issues. Besides wanting to play chase when she has something good and is off leash, we have never had problems with resource guarding from the dog-person perspective. The trouble comes in when we are at the dog park. She snaps at other dogs who come too close to whatever awesome thing she's claimed (stick, piece of garbage, broken toy). She has never actually bitten another dog and she does give them warning signals before she snaps at their muzzles. It just sounds freaky and we would like her to not do it. She also gets pretty guard-y if we have training treats and another dog comes around. She almost never exhibits any guarding behavior with dogs who are her "friends" like our other dog and a couple of friends' dogs she knows well.
I have looked for training information online but everything I have found is geared toward dog-people resource guarding and doesn't seem to be translatable to this situation. We also don't want to put our dog or other dogs in risky or stressful situations by doing something that escalates the situation. So, got any advice*? Dealt with a similar situation?
*We like positive training and I am not really interested in any solutions that involve "dominating" the dog. She is smart and responds well to the training methods we have employed.
Our three year old shar pei/heeler (?) mix is very intelligent and is a pretty good girl most of the time. She never resource guards with us and we can trade prized toys between our two dogs with no issues. Besides wanting to play chase when she has something good and is off leash, we have never had problems with resource guarding from the dog-person perspective. The trouble comes in when we are at the dog park. She snaps at other dogs who come too close to whatever awesome thing she's claimed (stick, piece of garbage, broken toy). She has never actually bitten another dog and she does give them warning signals before she snaps at their muzzles. It just sounds freaky and we would like her to not do it. She also gets pretty guard-y if we have training treats and another dog comes around. She almost never exhibits any guarding behavior with dogs who are her "friends" like our other dog and a couple of friends' dogs she knows well.
I have looked for training information online but everything I have found is geared toward dog-people resource guarding and doesn't seem to be translatable to this situation. We also don't want to put our dog or other dogs in risky or stressful situations by doing something that escalates the situation. So, got any advice*? Dealt with a similar situation?
*We like positive training and I am not really interested in any solutions that involve "dominating" the dog. She is smart and responds well to the training methods we have employed.
You may want to consider less time at the dog park, and more time with dogs that she knows. Here is a great article called Dog Parks: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (pdf link) for reference. Sometimes, when I dog reaches maturity they begin to react negatively to the dog park for many reasons outlined in the article.
posted by catrae at 9:57 AM on August 25, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by catrae at 9:57 AM on August 25, 2011 [3 favorites]
Just don't go to the dog park. Dogs are pack animals; this whole "meet and greet" concept is really a human thing and doesn't come easily to many dogs. You can see this playing out with your own dog--she only has trouble when she's thrown in with a bunch of strange dogs, but doesn't do it with your other dog or friends' dogs she knows well.
posted by HotToddy at 10:37 AM on August 25, 2011
posted by HotToddy at 10:37 AM on August 25, 2011
I have never and would never take any of my dogs to a dog park. People always (mistakenly) believe that just because they're the same species, all dogs will magically get along. WRONG. That article does a great job of explaining why a dog park is not a good place to take a dog. I have owned a sizeable (>4 dogs most of the time; 5 now) pack of dogs for the better part of 10 years. Even when dogs know each other very well, bedlam and chaos occurs at random moments and in the blink of an eye. The causes of resource-guarding are many and complicated, and sometimes, just plain arbitrary. I have one dog who 99% of the time is a great member of my pack. But there's that 1% of the time that she becomes a murderous Cujo out of the blue. There is a slight pattern, but not always. I agree with other posters--keep objects out of the mix when bringing your dog around other dogs, and stay away from the damn dog park! If you go to a dog park to exercise your dog, take her on long walks or find an empty school playground or empty park to let her run around instead. Sometimes leash laws prevent the free-running in some playgrounds and parks, but if you look hard enough, you'll find a big open area where she can run without all the added hullaballoo of strange dogs around her. If you're taking her to a dog park strictly to socialize her, consider taking her to a doggy day-care facility 1-2 days a week. The environment is much more controlled, there are fewer animals around at any given time than at a dog park, the dogs who attend are usually pre-screened for behavior problems, and these facilities are run and staffed (usually) by trained professionals who know how to mitigate and deal with behavior issues. Other added benefits of doggy day-cares are that many of these facilities offer training while your dog attends, plus your dog gets lots more one-on-one attention and it's a safe and controlled environment for socializing your dog and exposing them--safely--to new dogs and humans.
posted by angiewriter at 10:46 AM on August 25, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by angiewriter at 10:46 AM on August 25, 2011 [4 favorites]
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Especially in the situation you describe, I doubt it's resource guarding and more "I don't know you and you're not part of my pack so stop trying to steal from me."
So, instead of focusing on the action, focus on the cause.. if it's the same dogs at the dog park, possibly work on more interaction between the dogs without an object before putting an object into the mix.
posted by rich at 9:45 AM on August 25, 2011