Resource Guarding  

In behaviour therapy practice, there is nothing quite like seeing a pet dog who guards resources to teach any therapist a very important lesson: that a dog is an animal, a specialised wolf living in the human den, and not a furry little person - matter how we view him. Simply because he lives in our home and because we view him as part of our family makes most owners think we should be able to take a bone or any other item from our dog at will. We become easily affronted if our dog decides to become possessively aggressive about his toys - even more so than if our kids become angry if we try to take their toys away! But when our dogs become aggressive about keeping hold of their bones or toys or bed, the first thing we must do is not to see the issue as one of our dog engaging in 'point scoring' with ulterior motives of longer term control of his human pack, but rather as one of safety for ourselves. If we become drawn into physical combat with our dogs over possessions, as we will see later, we are more likely to cause ourselves a great deal of problems with our dogs in our day-to-day lives together than we are to teach them not to guard their toys or bones.

Dogs, being predators, come programmed to guard resources that are crucial to their survival as part of their behavioural inheritance from their ancestor, the wolf. Some of those resources may be in short supply at certain times of year or in certain environments, and are therefore valuable. It is beneficial for wolves and dogs to have the propensity to look after their food and bits and pieces against other animals including, sometimes, members of your own group. For example, this is usually not true for grazing animals in terms of food - after all, what's the point of arousing yourself to look after your supply of grass when grass is everywhere?

It's very much a mistake simply to label a dog with a resource guarding problem as 'dominant', which is a very outdated term in canine behaviour therapy. This is largely because it is just too simplistic to think that everything a dog might do which his owners disapprove of is some kind of a bid for power, especially if it involves threat behaviour. This label can also encourage owners to look for opportunities to score points back on their dog when their time would be much better spent looking for opportunities to teach him not to guard his possessions and to reward him for doing other things.

Breed tendencies
There are breed and type tendencies to certain areas of resource guarding although, in any breed, the majority of individuals are usually not terribly bothered about guarding any types of resource - if they were, they wouldn't be so popular! A Golden Retriever is likely to be interested in retrieving a tea towel from the kitchen of his own volition and then carrying it around, or inviting his canine and human family to play. If challenged or chastised for this normal behaviour for his breed, he is likely to come to care a great deal about who has the tea towel and who wants to get it back. But a Pekingese that happens one day to pick up the tea towel for a game probably won't care so much about who wants it or who takes it from him. Similarly, as underground fighting dogs, Jack Russell Terriers tend to like to hold on to small territorial strongholds, such as the space behind the settee. A Shetland Sheepdog probably won't care even half as much about this resource if he is asked to come out from exploring it! But let's look at a specific case of a dog presenting this type of problem - Maggie, an English Springer Spaniel bitch.

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