Hi! I have a beautiful 6 month old chocolate girl, Evie. She is a friendly, loving, playful girl and always happy to see anyone. The last couple of weeks however whenever she’s lying down either at our feet of on her bed or even in the other room, and we approach her she is snarling, baring teeth and growling at us. On two occasions she’s even snapped at the air. As soon as we call her out of the ‘spot’ where this has happened she jumps up tail wagging and runs to greet us just as normal as though nothing has happened. We thought at first it was because she was tired and we were disturbing her (I’m the same!) but it’s actually happening even if she’s just sitting there. There’s no young children in the house, she gets on fantastically with our older Westie, loves our cats (they tolerate/ignore her) and she is adored by us. She lets us stroke her while eating or even take her food bowl off her mid meal so we really are stumped as to why this is happening suddenly and would appreciate any help or advice. Thanks!
You said that ‘she even lets you take her food bowl off her mid meal’.. is this a regular thing? Personally (and I’m not even close to an expert) I would suggest that maybe you need to go back to basics (assuming that she’s not in any pain etc here) and do lots of swap outs for high value rewards - it sounds like resource guarding and you need to teach her that actually you don’t take stuff away from her, that actually your presence makes BETTER stuff happen.
Hi @Jayne Yarwood, and welcome to the forum from myself and 2 year old Cassie. I'm no expert at all, just a regular dog owner and while the behavior you describe sounds a bit odd it is I think difficult to guess what the issue is for anyone , over the internet. Sometimes at this age these Labradors can indulge with rough and inappropriate play but if she's lying down then I'm not sure that this would be the case. I agree with the above poster that pain maybe an issue and it would be a good idea to get Evie (great name) checked by the vets to rule this out, and then consider consulting a behaviourist who can maybe witness the behavior. With the taking her food away, I'm never quite sure why people do that, what are your reasons?
Hi! Thank you so much for your reply. In regard to taking her food away - this happened purely by accident on one occasion due to my husband mixing up Evie’s food bowl and my other dogs food bowl up and giving them the wrong food. So he quickly swapped them around. We’ve never deliberately gone to take her food off her. I just wanted to point out that there wasn’t a growling issue when this did happen. I too don’t understand why people do this. She lets us take toys off her, when playing, to throw and she fetches them back and gives them back without a problem. She’s just your average boisterous bouncy happy pup apart from this one problem. She goes to the vets on monthly visits at the moment for worming/flea/weight check and they say she’s a great healthy little dog. It’s very unusual and baffling to us. Maybe I do need to get in touch with a behaviourist to see what’s going on. Thanks for the reply
The book ‘Mine’ by Jean Donaldson is really helpful. It shows you detailed steps to follow to overcome problems of resource guarding and the methods are completely non-aversive. In the meantime I’d suggest not approaching your dog but instead calling her to you, and to stop removing her food - leave her in peace to eat.
