I'm hoping for some advice for my girl. She is a lab/pyrenees mix (or so I was told) and recently turned 10 months old. In the last month or so has begun to aggressively guard items from me. She has always been a calm and loving pup and I've always been able to touch her or take whatever I needed to from her. However, lately when she has an object she wants (a toy or paper she's ripped up, a bone or treat, a stick) she will growl at me when I get near her. I have tried telling her no but that just elicits more growling. She is even worse with other dogs and will growl, bark, snap at, or chase them away from the object, usually sticks. The instances with me are very random as she doesn't always guard the same things from me. What can I do to help her change this behavior?
Hi and welcome . If you look at the sticky articles just above your post, you will see one entitled Behavioural Problems , have a look on there as there is a link to Resource Guarding which might be of some help . Am also wondering if, given her age, she might be coming into season ? This could account for her change in behaviour too .
This is a good article which gives a detailed training plan: https://www.labradortraininghq.com/labrador-behavior/how-to-stop-resource-guarding/ At the moment I would not let her have toys or sticks while other dogs are around. At home if it’s something you need to take because it’s dangerous or valuable, try swapping for a high value treat. If it’s something ok for her to have, swap for food and then give her the object back. I’d suggest you spend some time training this in deliberate set-ups, rather than just reacting when you need to take something from her. The above article really is a very good training plan.
Hi @Pepper10 it sounds as uf you have a resource guarding dog that is escalating it's response if she is upto snapping at other dogs to keep them away. Your sutuation us made more difficult in that the items veing guarded are random which means that behaviour modufication is more difficult as you don't have a definite article to focus on. Sating 'No' to a dog has no affect in preventing the behaviour but can kead to it worsening as they respond to your voice tone/body language. Best advice is to call in a behaviour consultant to work with you and your dog. If you really want to try and resolve this yourself, which I would strongly advicebuy the book 'Mine' by Jean Donaldson, which is probably the best book available.
My brother’s jack Russell used to do this. He’d choose a stone then guard it! It was hard to know what stone he’d chosen!
