In my opinion this is the ONLY correct answer to Fi's question. And it's very rare to find someone that thinks enough about what they're doing to express uncertainty.

If a puppy came to me resource guarding, i would hand feed it, all its food would be fed by me by hand. I would stroke the dog all over when doing so.I would then drop one kibbble at a time on the floor, & mover onto one kibble into a bowl, etc.
All of this would be with the other dogs milling around, they would be allowed to tell off the pup if required.

My dogs also learn to sit & share as i pass the biscuits around, They learn by watching the others.

i do alot of Play anyway so my pups (dogs) have free run of the toys, but quickly learn the MOST fun is to play WITH me, & therefore have no reason to guard!

We have 5 dogs, all eat together & have a huge toy box.

Lily will collect & try to guard the bones, from the other dogs, I will always do a swop with her if i want to get a bone from her to give back to another dog

Utube link to building drive, through play!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzqs54qMgQA

Im afraid i havnt any trainers i favour, just 40 yrs experience with dogs, ive adored all my dogs and trained them myself, using common sense, ive never hurt them, but at times have had to be really strict, ive had one failure, a rescue dog from the rspca, ben was a lab/retreiver cross, he came from a family who shouldnt have kept dogs, irresponsible owners who left him to his own devices and then disposed of him when he became a nuisance, i was looking for a replacement for my beloved phantom, a gsd, died of a stroke at 14, ben was a handful, but i made allowances for him due to his history,when he nipped the paperboy i decided that was it he had to go, we had had him for 2 yrs, the lads father came to me and pleaded for the dog to be spared, said he had teased him, i took ben down to the rspca, i was in tears and told them i couldnt risk my 2 kids being bitten , they asked me to go into the back and hold him whilst they gave him the injection that would end his life, i looked at him and said i couldnt do it, they refused to risk their staff being bitten, so i took him home, the following week ...ben ripped my 12 yr old daughters face in half as she bent down to give him a kiss........she required 130 stitches , and has had plastic surgery!!! if id had the knowledge then maybe i could have averted the attack, or been strong enough to have gone through with the lethal injection, i dont know?? what i do know, is i feel guilty because i put my feelings for a dog before my love of my children, and that will haunt me forever!! the good thing is it didnt give my daughter lyndsey, who is now 33, a fear of dogs she forgave ben, and we had oscar a jack russell/whippet for 15 yrs, and she now has willow a gsd bitch in her family, with her 2 daughters and her hubby, so i thank god it didnt affect her too badly.

Just bumping this up for Scarter, as I am curious.

Wys
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Just going back through the thread ClaireandDaisy and noticed this - I'd be interested in what you found helpful from BS? I am sure there are bits.

It's just that she was one of the authors i tend to keep away from when recommending books for owners, as I found much of what she wrote was very much tailored to BCs. Would be interested to know what helped?

Wys
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Sorry, I missed your question first time around.

I think she'd probably have done EXACTLY what she did when she first observed the problem when he was several months old. She firmly and confidently took the item off him ignoring his protests.

To my complete surprise this had a profound effect. We'd tell him leave an he'd wag his tail and drop the item. Very occasionally he'd whine a little (as if to say "Please don't take it away") but we'd give him a really nice swap and he'd wag his tail quite happily. We continued work on his leave command and on rewarding him for giving things up to us. This stuff didn't really work until AFTER she was firm with him.

In the case of our little dog I think we'd have avoided a lot of little problems if we'd just reacted the right way the very first time it happened. I was completely taken aback because our girl would NEVER growl or show any aggression to any human. I instinctively pulled away, then thought better of it and tried to get the item off him. I failed and then used a treat to bribe it away from him. That I think is the moment when my normal, well balanced little 7 week old pup learned that growling was a good tool for his toolbox!!!

We had other related problems throughout his first year but he's fine now. Firmness and making it clear that we were in charge seemed to settle him down.

The book I read is `Understanding and Handling Dog Aggression`.
What I liked was the `Zero tolerance` and the very patient way she built up.
Zero tolerance (my words) in this case being - know what you want the dog to do. That is your goal. Not an approximation of it or close, but that.
For instance- the dog needed to first walk on lead without lunging. So she took the dog out. The first time it lunged, it was returned to the kennel. Calmly, with no comment.
I found this worked with Daisy. We took a week to get to the end of the road, but we got there without her aggressing. She was learning a different way of behaving, - a calmer way to walk. She never got the chance to regress into the previous bad behaviour, because the outing stopped at that point.
Very small advances, but building up to big changes. And every walk was a training session.
And her `diary` so you could look at patterns of behaviour.
And the ongoing evaluation that was necessarily brutally frank about the handlers` mistakes!
Accepting the limits of the dog. Not pushing the dog.
She has a Back to Basics approach. She recommends you work on basic control first - as the handler becomes more confident and the dog learns to defer to the handler, the `behaviour` is already being addresed. You are tackling the root of the problem. She is particularly scathing about people trying to scruff or physically `sort out` an aggressive dog.
There are some things I wouldn`t subscribe to of course - she used the word dominant a lot where I think she should have used a different one - but that word has taken on so many more connotations since the book was written, I`m sure.
Definitely worth a read if you have an aggressive dog, IMO.
It helped me a lot.

Thanks for that and sorry for not replying earlier; I didn't forget but just didn't have the time, sorry!

I like the tackling problems at the root etc. that is how it should be done

Wys
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