13/08/2024
DON’T TOUCH MY STUFF!
Resource guarding – also called possessive aggression
We all guard our resources, it’s a natural reaction to a threat of something we value being taken away.
It’s essential for survival and dogs or other animals would not survive in the wild if they didn’t guard their resources.
We also don’t get to decide what’s valuable and what’s not – different things have different value to different dogs and at different times.
Food is usually the most common, but toys, furniture, different items, places, or even a certain person are all things that may be seen as a valuable resource.
A dog turning their head away, freezing, a hard stare, whale eye, moving away, growling or snapping may quickly escalate into a serious bite in an attempt to protect that valuable possession.
Punishing or forcing a dog to give something up is probably one of the worst things to do.
Resource guarding is rooted in the emotion of fear – the fear of that resource being taken away.
Punishment and force further increase that fear, which only increases and reinforces the need to protect that resource.
When a dog is guarding food or an object, we can change the negative emotion of that fear into a positive one by swopping or trading something that has a similar or higher value than what the dog has.
This is one of the most effective ways to address resource guarding of objects as it works at the root cause of the behaviour by changing the emotional response.
A dog resource guarding a person is more complicated to address. A full history of the individual dog, family dynamics, attachment styles, situation and environment all have to be assessed before planning and working on a solution.
Resource guarding can usually be prevented, managed and addressed and by starting early, understanding why dogs feel the need to resort to this behaviour and doing what we can to prevent it from happening in the first place.
