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How to deal with this- food guarding in puppy

3 replies

TheFantasticMrsFox · 06/10/2014 17:53

DPup is about 6 months now and of uncertain background. In every sense she is great, eager to please, affectionate reasonably obedient off lead etc.
We can stroke her while she eats and have always been able to add food to her bowl while she eats. She has a fairly consistent "off" command followed by a "take it" for biscuits etc. and is now 100 times better at not snatching- overall I am thrilled with her.

I have noticed though that high value treats, most specifically pigs ears, will cause her to growl if she is approached. Both of our other dogs are put away when they have these sort of treats and we don't have young children to harass her.

My normal reaction would be to ignore the growling (ie- not scold her for it) and work on eventually swapping for a higher value treat. However we seem to be at the high end of the treat scale and I can't see what I could swop the ear for.

Given that nothing else causes any problems would it be realistic to just learn to live with this behaviour, on the understanding that it doesn't progress? As I said above these treats are always fed separately anyway and only on on occasional (probably monthly) basis so not much opportunity for training. We still have a cage in the sitting room so it would be easy for me to shut her in there to be absolutely safe. OTOH I don't want to ignore a problem if it's something I really should be dealing with.

OP posts:
muttynutty · 06/10/2014 18:05

Its only a problem if you make it one. If you don't want her to guard high value treats either don't give them to her or leave her in peace until she has eaten them.

TheFantasticMrsFox · 06/10/2014 19:03

That's what I thought nutty That sort of treat is never left lying about unsupervised so the chances of her having anything like that without one of us being able to control the situation is negligible.
She growled at me because I walked past her (well stepped over her to be precise) rather than actually physically badgering her. In future I will just make sure she is in the cage :)

OP posts:
Twooter · 08/10/2014 13:46

All my dogs have done this with bones, but been fine with everything else. I would advise just not giving them to her.

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