Possessive aggression is preventable early on
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COLUMN: Pawsability by Anna Patfield
Many times, it seems that we think we can have a conversation with a dog: “I’ve told you before – don’t take my slipper!”
If we stand back a bit, we can see that, truly, there’s no way that we could expect them to understand that sentence. They perhaps recognise the word “slipper”; they may think, “Yeah, I know I’ve got your slipper”. They may think, “Geesh! What you so angry about? I don’t like that, I’ll run possessive aggression – It’s MINE!”
Dogs and puppies sometimes have difficulty communicating with us. That’s truly what training is about. It’s not about “obedience”, rather, it’s about helping our furry ones learn how to speak human, and about helping us to learn to speak dog.
“Away… I’ll growl at you too…”
Perhaps all a little too anthropomorphic, but hopefully you get the point.
Communicating with our dogs needs us to be just that little bit more clever than they are: by swapping the slipper for a toy or treat, gradually they learn what’s needed.
Starting right from puppy’s early days we can prevent possessive aggression arising simply through play and teaching: we play a wee game with some toys and introduce treat swaps. All of this creates a happy fun relationship where the dog is more likely to fetch your slippers for you when you get home, rather than run away and hide with them.
Food bowl aggression is another common problem. Traditional training has said that we should put our hands in the puppy’s bowl, take it away, give it back, teach the puppy that it’s not theirs to own. Again though, if we think about this a little, we may consider a different action. How would you feel, for instance, if someone kept taking your plate away from you?
So, don’t do that – instead simply add more nice treats into their bowl. It will change their perception of you being a potential threat to being a producer of nice things. Instead of thinking “Stay away”, they’ll be thinking “Oh, please do come here and give me more of that nice tasty chicken morsel”.
Quite simple really?
For more help with this or other dog or puppy behaviour problems please have a look at Pawsability.co.uk or email anna@pawsability.co.uk. This is, of course, just a wee introduction and guideline to help avoid creating a possessive aggressive puppy, and prevention is certainly easier than curing this common problem.
Anna Patfield, Ardgay, is a dog trainer and behaviourist.
