5 Tips for Living with a Resource Guarder

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Last week I talked about normal vs. abnormal guarding, and that resource guarding in general is a pretty normal behavior. Humans are masters at it! Just because something is considered normal, though, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take steps to avoid it or treat it accordingly. So for this week I thought the logical next step would be talking about tips for living with a guarder. Check them out below. 

  1. Learn their body language. For those of you who’ve followed this blog for a while, I probably sound like a broken record when it comes to the first step. When it comes to resource guarding, there are signs before the growl, air snap, or bite. Learning these signs allows you to intervene before there’s a problem and before your pet has to use those warning signals to keep someone at bay. 
  2. Make a list of all the things they guard and share it with everyone in their life. If your pet only guards, say, raw bones, you probably don’t need to write this down. You can simply let anyone who would give your pet that item know that it’s a guarded item. However, if you have a pet who guards a lot of things from various individuals, a written list can be incredibly helpful for people like dog walkers, pet sitters, and longer-term visitors. 
  3. Create a management plan and share it with everyone in your pet’s life. Now that you know what they guard, we can look at those situations and determine how we can prevent guarding. This could be something like simply not giving your pet items they guard or picking up all the toys when the neighbor dog comes over to play. Food and item guarding is usually quite easy to manage. Space and people guarding is more challenging, and often requires a professional because it’s not as easy to manage.
  4. Don’t test your pet. There are so many things that I don’t know if Oso guards because I’ve never bothered him when he has them. If it’s a high enough value I assume it will be guarded and I leave him alone and manage as I would if I knew it were true. There’s really no reason to test instead of manage. This also goes for feeding your pets together. There’s really no need to test this when you can simply feed them in separate rooms. Management is easier and cheaper than a bite.
  5. Don’t take things from your pet. It’s fairly easy to create a resource guarder. How do you create one? Take things from them. Teach them that someone is routinely going to take their valued possessions away from them or bother them while they’re eating. More info on that here. If your pet has an item they shouldn’t have and it’s not dangerous or valuable, ignore them. Let them have it. If it is dangerous or valuable, trade them for it with treats. 

 

Now what?

  • If you’re living with a resource guarder (and we all likely are, to some extent!), go through the list and determine what your first action should be. Do you need to learn more about what body language signals to look for? Or talk with the rest of the household about your management strategy? 
  • Start in on your first action item! When that feels comfortable and sustainable, choose another action item.
  • If you’re feeling overwhelmed with where to start or how much it feels like there is to do, check out our Beginning Behavior Modification: Learn the Skills You Need to Successfully Address Your Pet’s Aggression, Anxiety, Reactivity, or Fear. It walks you through learning your pet’s body language, setting up a management plan, and more. Check it out here
  • Check out our free Resource Guarding Workshop to learn more about resource guarding specifically and some of the RG-specific foundation skills. 

 

Happy training!

Allie

2 thoughts on “5 Tips for Living with a Resource Guarder

  1. I have a 6 month old pit bul that I adopted from the shelter that I work at. He has started to show resource guarding with our family. Which include myself ,husband and 3 kids , 6,13,16. He shows this behavior when we are sitting down at a park or in the car and if someone or another dog approaches. He gives out a low growl but once were walking he will not bark or even mind other dogs or people. It is only when we are sitting down or stationary in one spot.

    1. It’s great that you’re recognizing and catching the guarding behavior now! The more proactive we are about addressing issues early on, the easier it can be to reach our training goals. I recommend starting off with the free workshop we’re offering next week, and then if you’d like to keep working with us you can register for the full course which starts on April 11th. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us through our website!

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