Possessive DDB!

Hello, I'm Rowena.
Looking for abit of advice after a bad couple of days with the dogs, so will get on and explain!
Poppy is a speyed collie x lurcher who is 5 1/2, she can be quite nervous with new people and other dogs.
Boss is a 13 month intact Dogue de bordeaux.
Too the story... Boss and Poppy get on very well 95% of the time, they both share the same living areas and are walked together and play together. The problem lies with possessions, Boss will have moments where if poppy touches the water, toys, people he will start a fight. Both dogs are seperated and Boss will go out to the run for an hour untill he's calmed down, we then remove whatever has caused it and bring him back in. He then acts as if nothing has happened and everything goes back to normal. He does not do this often, maybe once every month or two but he did it yesterday when new toys were placed on the floor (they have loads of toys which are shared perfectly daily) he latched his jaws around Poppy's back (did not break the skin) but poppy was clearly hurt by it and is still a little sore to touch.
Now this is obviously not acceptable as is going to cause some real damage to poppy if this carries on! Myself and my partner have been strong with his training since he came home, he has done training classes and we are due to start the next in january.
Any advice?
Hope I've covered everything!
Thanks Rowena

Check out this video about food/resource guarding:



With regards to toys, I would never leave them hanging around for my dog - they were always put away and he got them after he earned them (not on demand) this was to let him know the toys belong to me, and he was only allowed to play with them if he was a good boy.

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry, may not have explained the best, Neither dog has possession issues with myself, my partner or my son with toys or food. He accepts that we are in charge (for the most part!) It's every so often he will show alot of agression towards poppy for using these things. For weeks on end they will play and share toys and water and then all of a sudden he will turn on her, we would seperate, remove whatever has caused it and then they would go back to normal. But the bigger he gets the more damage he is going to do when he has these episodes so really need to find a way to sort this issue

Forgot to say. Boss does chew my stairs if toys are not left with him during the night or if I am out! So if i took the toys away I'd be left with a chewing dog... Stuck there too!

First. never leave them together if you are not there, that means over night as well, you could find a dead dog.

No toys down, they are a trigger

Several bowls of water in different rooms so Poppy can have a drink.

At the moment you have a stroppy, teenage hooligan and need a trainer/behaviourist and train, train, train and exercise his brain playing mind games and several short training sessions a day.

I can only echo what others say my two don't have any such problems but we never leave them alone together Betty is always crated, no toys left down they have them when I am here to supervise, we have 4 bowls of water so they can drink where they want (slight fear of Betty being drowned rather than any fighting LOL).

Excellent video AZZ. Be the 'provider' not the 'taker away'.

I've never understood dog owners who go to great lengths to get their dog to allow them to keep taking their dinner away from them.

We have done that sort of we train them to allow us to put our hands in their bowl while they are eating and that we can take things away from them in an emergency. They always get something better back and it doesn't take them long to work that out.

We started when we had a food guarding rescue she didn't want to eat the food but wouldn't let anyone near it making meal times a real problem as the others saw a bowl of food and wanted it so we had to teach her gently that we could take it away from her, once she realised we were OK and she got it back she would then eat it. Odd girl but lovely !

When I first got my Greyhound he would threaten to take my face off, because of his size that was easy to do, if I had tried to put my hand in his food bowl he would have had me. I solved in in 24 hours by just putting a small amount of food in his bowl, when he had finished I walked past and dropped more in, I kept this up until he had eaten his full meal. 2 meals later he couldn't wait for me to get to his bowl, I never had any more problems with his food bowl but there was still guarding issues of other things to sort out which I soon did.

We start with a full bowl and just get closer and closer over the weeks until we have our hand in the bowl with adult rescues, with puppies we just start with our hand in the bowl from day one. Works for us but probably took longer than your method.