A dog growls over food

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Can a Resource Guarder Live with Children?

Dear WOOF:

We adopted a dog last week who growled at us when we gave him a bone. He seemed fine when we got rid of it. Otherwise he seems like a great dog and seems very tolerant to my kids ages 2, 4, and 5. Should we give him back now? Might he actually bite our kids? Or could he be fine with some training. Maybe he was just a little stressed at being in a new home with three little boys bouncing around. According to the dog's foster mom, he was raised with an infant, and had also never shown any aggression with her kids or any
other kids before. Please help, we really don't want to give back the dog, yet we don't want to risk out kids getting bitten either.

Hi:

Your dog is exhibiting is resource guarding. Resource guarding is a natural behavior in dogs, because if they didn't guard their resources (ie- food, bones, etc.) they would die of starvation. Every other animal that would come into contact with a dog that didn't guard their food, would get a free meal, and that non-guarding dog would die of starvation. Efforts to "breed out" this tendency in the domestic dog has had some success, but it often rears still rears its ugly head due to a variety of reasons.

That said, it understandably is something that is not acceptable. But we need to keep in mind that while we expect our dogs to live in a human world (where growling over food is not acceptable) we also need to take steps to teach the dog that having us around their things isn't a threat.

So, the short story is, this can be fixed with the right training. The total package will involved training for this particular issue, coupled with management. The success rate for dealing with this type of issue is very high, as long as the correct steps are taken.

Some important points:

Aggression is a learned behavior. So, until you start working with your dog, prevent him from feeling threatened. That means, while the kids are around, he shouldn't have the objects he guards (in this
case a bone). From his perspective, if someone approaches, and he feels threatened, he growls, and they back away. So it worked really well for him and the behavior will grow.
With that said, it is important not to reprimand the dog for growling. From the dog's perspective, the growl is a warning (from our perspective it is a threat - on major communication breakdown). If we punish the dog for growling (even using a verbal reprimand) the dog may learn that it is "dangerous" to growl, but he doesn't learn it is "wrong" to be aggressive. So, the next time the dog feels threatened, he will pick another way of showing his discomfort (such as biting without warning). You may be able to punish away the growl, but not the discomfort. That is why a solid behavioral program is so important ... so we can treat the cause, not just the symptom.

Theses points help explain why prevention is so important.

You are in a good place because he has only exhibited this behavior once. But because there are kids in the home, I think it would be best to work with a counselor one-on-one, to insure that the dog is working at a level he is comfortable with.

As a mother of two young children and a dog trainer, I would strongly recommend starting an positive reinforcement-based obedience class. Class will help build a relationship of trust, and will also help you
gain greater control of your dog. This is especially important when chaos erupts! If I feel like my dogs are getting too wrapped up in the craziness of the household, I can calmly cue them to come in a different room and lay down - the house becomes more peaceful immediately (and it helps that at least someone will listen to me! LOL!).

If you would like to find out more about our classes, you are always welcome to observe a class. Please call 248-616-6500 for more info on our In Home Training or Classes.

Thanks for writing!

Devene Godau, CPDT, CBC

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