April 19, 2011
My 2 1/2 year old Golden is aggressive around his food. We have a baby and are concerned. We have been to 4 different dog trainers and their recommendations are not working.
Full Question:
Thank you for taking the time to read my question. Here is a little background.My name is Dannie and I live with my husband and our 1 and a half year old son. We have a golden retriever named Dawson that is 2 and a half. We have been trying to train him out of a food aggression problem since he was 6 months old. We have seen 4 different dog trainers and have tried a number of different techniques. I have read your web site and can tell you a few things that we are doing right and a few things that we're probably doing wrong. He is not allowed on beds or furniture. He never gets people food. He doesn't get any toys in the house because he started getting aggressive over his rawhide bones as well. He does become pretty pushy when he wants attention when we're busy. I think he uses hyperness to try and get away with dominant behavior.
The training we are doing right now (which doesn't seem to be working all that well) is that we have isolated him to a bedroom upstairs and the upstairs hallway. The trainer said we needed to establish boundaries so we have done this. He is obeying the boundaries without any gates but he gets pretty hyper when we come upstairs and still seems to be trying to get away jumping, mouthing, etc. The food training we have been doing is putting a leash on him and calling him away from his food. We usually need to give the leash a little tug and he will come. We praise him when he comes away happily wagging his tail which he usually does. However, if I step towards him and touch him when he is eating he will freeze and will sometimes snarl at me. At this point he is brought back to his room and put into his crate. We have been doing this for about a month now (3 days a week so he's not starving as a result of being taken away from his food) and I am not seeing any change in his behavior. I did read the section on your web site that said this is a problem that you would not necessarily try to correct. However I do feel that we are being somewhat negligent in allowing a dog to remain in the house with a young child without correcting it. Right now we only feed the dog after our son is in bed. But I would rather fix the problem than accept this as a solution. Do you have any other suggestions for things that we could be doing to try and work with this dog. Thanks again for your time.
Dannie
Ed's Answer:
Emails like this point out how little most people who call themselves dog trainers or behaviorists really know. You have seen 4 people and none seem qualified to be called professional trainers.
Your problem is a serious problem. What you have been told to do is foolish but then you have already found that out because it does not work. Think about what you have been told to do - a dog is aggressive around his food because it is concerned that the food will be taken away from it. You have been taking the food away by calling the dog away from his food. This only confirms his concern that he is going to lose his food.
Food aggression is something that needs to be dealt with when people have kids. Many people think that "DEALING WITH IT" means doing something that will no longer make the dog aggressive around food. That's not always possible. In fact, it is often beyond the scope of most dog owners. It can be trained out of almost all dogs but to do so requires more force and handling skill than the average pet owner can handle. So with that said the issue becomes "controlling the environment" that the dog lives in.
The first thing you need to do is to get a dog crate. If you are not willing to do this - you may as well find a new home for this dog before he bites you or your child.
From this point on the dog is never fed outside of the crate. Not ever. This includes allowing the dog to have anything to chew on (i.e. rawhides).
As your child grows it also needs training. The baby needs to be trained not to crawl on the dog. If you cannot do this then keep the dog in the crate at all times unless you have your eyes on the dog. Read the article I wrote on preventing dog bites in children. You can read about this on my web site in the list of training articles.
Your dog is not obedience trained. If it were you would be able to call it away from the food bowl. You cannot do this without a leash - therefore it is not fully trained. You need to train dogs like this with a prong collar. Get my Basic Dog Obedience Training video and learn how to train your dog under distraction.
You also need to read the article I wrote on dealing with a dominant dog and incorporate the day to day methods of living with a dominant dog. Not that your dog is that dominant - but when a dog pushes you for petting it's a form of dominance. My dogs are scolded for doing this. They only get petted when I WANT TO PET THEM FOR DOING SOMETHING I ASK THEM TO DO (i.e. sit). A dog that comes to you and noses you for a pet needs to get its nose slapped and told to go lay down.
Your problem is a serious problem. What you have been told to do is foolish but then you have already found that out because it does not work. Think about what you have been told to do - a dog is aggressive around his food because it is concerned that the food will be taken away from it. You have been taking the food away by calling the dog away from his food. This only confirms his concern that he is going to lose his food.
Food aggression is something that needs to be dealt with when people have kids. Many people think that "DEALING WITH IT" means doing something that will no longer make the dog aggressive around food. That's not always possible. In fact, it is often beyond the scope of most dog owners. It can be trained out of almost all dogs but to do so requires more force and handling skill than the average pet owner can handle. So with that said the issue becomes "controlling the environment" that the dog lives in.
The first thing you need to do is to get a dog crate. If you are not willing to do this - you may as well find a new home for this dog before he bites you or your child.
From this point on the dog is never fed outside of the crate. Not ever. This includes allowing the dog to have anything to chew on (i.e. rawhides).
As your child grows it also needs training. The baby needs to be trained not to crawl on the dog. If you cannot do this then keep the dog in the crate at all times unless you have your eyes on the dog. Read the article I wrote on preventing dog bites in children. You can read about this on my web site in the list of training articles.
Your dog is not obedience trained. If it were you would be able to call it away from the food bowl. You cannot do this without a leash - therefore it is not fully trained. You need to train dogs like this with a prong collar. Get my Basic Dog Obedience Training video and learn how to train your dog under distraction.
You also need to read the article I wrote on dealing with a dominant dog and incorporate the day to day methods of living with a dominant dog. Not that your dog is that dominant - but when a dog pushes you for petting it's a form of dominance. My dogs are scolded for doing this. They only get petted when I WANT TO PET THEM FOR DOING SOMETHING I ASK THEM TO DO (i.e. sit). A dog that comes to you and noses you for a pet needs to get its nose slapped and told to go lay down.
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