I know we have discussed this before on the forum. And I have also posted about Harley possibly being more attached to DH than to me - mainly because he is more fun DH has been working on a big project that has required to work last night and tonight. For the last few months he has a board games evening every two weeks for late into Saturday night. On these nights I have noticed that Harley is less possessive over spaces on the bed and toys etc. Over the last two nights I have seen her make significant progress with her bond with her feline brothers. When DH is here, there seems to be a little bit of a competition for his attention with Harley definitely 'resource guarding' him - gently but still. She will put herself between him and the cats for instance. Has anyone else experienced this? Here is a cute photo from tonight, just because: They both look so content.
All my male dogs like to be close to me and will push away any other dog who gets too close. Moo usually sneaks by them to get her cuddle though. Its not a harsh vicious jealousy it's more like a gentle vying for attention and there's no nastiness. I spend more time with my dogs than anyone their little games are so funny. Its keeps them interested in a strange way it's seems healthy
Stanley gets really jealous if me and OH have a kiss or a cuddle. He's straight there, in the middle, wanting to be involved making sure we only love him! They're such spoilt puppers
Lovely photo! I completely understand where you are coming from. Bramble very clearly will resource guard...not so much items, unless super high value such as the remote trainer. Mostly people and other dogs she is having a really good game with. She is a really focused dog, and sometimes she can go just a wee step too far. So the scenarios with her when she is getting active attention, from people, dogs or very high value items. I have not found much info on how to deal with this, most of what I have read has been about resource guarding, food bowls, toys and bones. She doesn't have a problem there at all, this I think because we have been very careful how/where we feed all our dogs to avoid this. I don't use mealtimes as training, or ever interrupt them. They are all feed separately but have their own feeding stations. So what we have done is applied the same sort of principles of food/toy resource guarding to human resource guarding. First thing we do is not allow Bramble to rehearse this behaviour. The first hint we get of this, usually a quick glance towards one of the other dogs...even a cat.. we get up and move. The second thing we do is get up to the treat box and give each dog a chew/biscuit on their day beds in the front room, and ask them all to settle for a bit, usually they have their treat chew and switch off. Dozing on the sofa beside us fine usually because she is actually switched off and relaxing and not focused on getting attention. Even so we make sure that she isn't in the same place, all the time. But usually in an evening the dogs are moving around us...sofa, bed, kitchen and back
