Advise on food agressive Labrador?

[Nightfall1983]

Looking for some advice. This is about my parents dog, but they have had him since before I left home I consider him my dog too iykwim.

So he is an 8 yr old pure lab (black), we have had him since he was 8 weeks old (straight from breeder). He is generally healthy with almost no health issues except for a large fatty lump (non cancerous) that was removed last year and fairly often gets ticks (from long grass walks). He is a very healthy weight and gets plenty of exercise (used to get 3 walks a day but seems happy with 2 now he's a bit older).

He is a beautiful dog, well behaved and obedient (puppy training, perseverence and also good luck) EXCEPT over food. In some ways he is brilliant - we taught him to "wait" before eating his dinner/treat. I can offer him the most special treat, say wait, put it on the floor in front of him (keep saying wait to remind him), walk away, even turn my back and he won't take it until told he can (and is always praised for waiting etc). However problems occur once he has whatever the food is. Even with just his normal dinner he is very aggressive if you go near him when he is eating - even if you aren't actually looking at him/just passing near or whatever. He will growl deeply, and if you don't go away will bare his teeth (an awesome sight) and if you continue (my sister is particularly bad for this) will "snap" at you - he has never actually bitten, I think it is just a warning but I worry that he would bite if it came to it. We deal with this now by just ignoring him when he is eating and praising good behaviour. If we have guests round we tend to shut him in a different room until he is finished his dinner just incase. But I now have an infact son and while I will never leave the two of them unatttended I would like to know if I can do anything to address this behaviour?

Thanks for reading, sorry that was so long but I wanted to explain properly and wanted to show both us and him in a good light (which I hope I have achieved).

Infant son, not infact - doh!

Aggression is always an issue that you need to get professional help with so I would recommend you speak to a reputable behaviourist.

For what it's worth my thoughts are:

• make 100% certain that the dog and toddler are kept separate when the dog is eating. Is the dog used to a crate? They can come in very handy for this kind of situation.

• don't let the dog eat from one bowl, but take his food (if it's dry food!) and throw it all over the floor. This will prevent him from guarding any one part of it.

• give him his food then offer to swap for a higher value treat using the 'wait' command that he already knows.

You definitely achieved it Nightfall . I second what Booboostoo said.

Don't ever try to remove food from a dog which guards food.

• Do drop extra food near his bowl
• aim to get to the stage where you can add food to his bowl

he will learn that people approaching his food is to add to it and not take it away and then there is no need to guard.

Do not do this if you are unsure of the dogs reaction but contact a local ADPT trainer who will be able to read your dogs body language to see at what you step you should start with this.

Probably to be honest do not take notice of most of the threads but go straight to the APDT to get professional advice immediately that is suited to your dog.

They will deal with this (not major) issue daily and know the correct treatment for YOUR dog.

link here

I can't help but wonder if its the "wait" that is at the bottom of this issue. You say your sister is particularly bad at "continuing" - does she think its funny? or feel the need to prove a point? This is definately making the behaviour worse and she risks getting bitten or causing someone else to be bitten.

We had a rescue rotweiller with serious food aggression issues THAT was scary! He would snarl and bare teeth if you even went in the kitchen!

If the dog is growling at you - then leave him alone, he is not comfortable and this is his way of telling you. We tried the scatter feeding technique - dog just got really stressed darting around trying to get his food. We tried the swapping technique and putting food into the bowl while he was eating - doing this with an angry ten stone rotweiller is not funny i can tell you. In the end we just did nothing - and it sort of solved itself. I seem to remember doing lots of hand feeding, i just knew it was resolved one day when i was loading the washing machine with my head inches from the dogs bowl as he was eating his dinner - i suddenly thought OMG if i had done that six months ago i would be dead now!

Im not liking the "wait" thing, i know its a commonly used technique but i can only imagine that it would be stressful - would you do that to a toddler, every time it went to get its dinner say "wait"? That isn't meant to sound critical, we did it with our first rottie but definately not with our second becaue we were wanting to take the stress out of meal times.

Thank you all for your replies. I will definately look into the APDT thing but also appreciate the more immediate tips - scattering food and adding food both seem like great suggestions. It's difficult because my instinct is to defend him and he is a great dog but I know that this is a serious issue and deserves to be treated as such :)

Hi Lucy, thank you for your thoughts. Just to clarify we don't make him "wait" for his dinner or treats everytime, I was just pointing out that is has been trained to and can wait on command.

I fear my sister does it effectively to prove a point, it upsets her when he growls at her and she continues to approach him to (in her mind) not let him win I think. I've spoken to her about it but she is an adult and quite bloody minded (she doesn't do it every day or even every week mind). I fear (and I've told her) that one day she will push him too far, he will bite her and even though she wouldn't want to our dad would probably insist we got rid of him :(

But we can't see the dogs body language and throwing food may just up the excitement and make the dog guard the whole room.
Adding food may be too big a first step and the dog may bite

Do not act on specific advice. Contact APDT and let them see in real life your dogs body language and the appropriate stage at which to start changing the dogs behaviour

yep - idirdog is right contact an APDT trainer, or even the dogs trust who if i remember rightly will give advice (i think they probably charge if its a not non DT dog but their behaviourists are very good)

i must say that i have taught my lab a very strong 'wait' for food. although she's only six months, i have not seen an ounce of aggression from her over food or anything else for that matter.

the reason i put this in is that i have children who do idiotic things like leaving their food bowls on the floor near the sofa or on table just at her perfect height. Now, to ask for it she lies down in front of it and looks up adn down in a hopeful manner.

this has save her from eating all sorts of things that would have given her trips to the vets that would hurt her physically and me financially.

i regret many things i've done with her but this one is crucial to the health of my dog. i don't think of dogs as having different responses to very slightly things - i.e. food in your bowl needs to be treated differently to food on the floor in a dish in a different place. As she's raw fed food can come in many shapes, sizes and looks so i can't even make a differentiation like that.

this is a fab dog forum where i don't have to justify how i can't reliably train my children to never do this and be 100% sure they've listened!

Hi Always, I really hope that this works for your pup and she continues to have no aggression but perhaps I should have mentioned that this aggression has only come on in the last couple of years (whereas he was taught wait at a couple of months). I'm not aware that anything has changed in how we treat him, he just slowly became more aggressive over food in the last couple of years.

(I'm looking into a trainer now - seems like there is one who lives quite close to my parents)

Speak to your vet as well, it is quite odd for an adult dog that was previously fine to gradually start guarding food with no particular incident to explain the change Perhaps there is a physical reason for his behaviour.

No, totally agree nightfall - that's why i included her age as i agree that six months doesn't indicate a life time. Still saved my bacon several times though!

reading it over again, when you have the trainer in, make it a family affair especially with your sister as often people don't like listening to things second hand. it's probably easier to get her on board if she hears it directly as it doesn't sound sensible for her to push the issue when he's telling her very clearly to back off.