Do you really know how you’d react if your dog started displaying behaviors that concerned or even frightened you? If the fuzzy little guy you brought home to be your friend started leaping off the couch to hover and growl over a Benebone that had been lying on the floor for hours just because you stood up, would you know what to do? You might think keeping a spray bottle on hand to deter their behavior and safely take an item away seems like a reasonable idea. Depending on your own learning history, you might think pinning a dog to the ground could teach them a lesson they need to learn.* 

What if I told you this hypothetical situation and subsequent human reactions comes from my actual household? 

Even if it doesn’t look as extreme as the example above, resource guarding has a way of taking you by surprise. A growl over the food bowl. A snap while reaching for a toy you *thought* you were playing with together. Running off with some underoos that didn’t quite make it into the hamper. And our own reactions don’t always come tempered with experience, let alone any kind of plan. A holler to knock it off. A reactionary “HEY!?” A quick session of pry-the-jaws-open. 

Something my dear husband has to remind me of occasionally is that MOST PEOPLE have lived with dogs their whole lives and have never done a lick of what we at Pet Harmony like to call Capital-T training. The kind of training that might require a treat bag, a clicker, and a plan. Most people I know in my regular life have never worked with a dog trainer, let alone a behavior consultant or veterinary behaviorist. Before I got into the field of training and behavior…how was I supposed to be prepared for a dog to lunge and snap at me because I was cleaning up his mess inside of a tent while he was lying several feet away?

All beings in a household are learning from their shared environment and each other all the time, of course. I only had to see Big Man pick onions out of his food a few times before I asked him about his aversion to them. Turns out he thinks the texture is gross, but is fine with the flavor. He didn’t stand in the kitchen and feed me Reese’s Pieces to train me, but I cook pretty often, and after 22 years together, cutting onions into very tiny pieces when I cook them is a behavior that I might need Capital-T training to change. 

Not only is resource guarding a tricky thing for a human to encounter, it can also manifest in many ways. On top of that, [physical/mental/emotional] health issues can exacerbate problematic behaviors, including those related to resource guarding. So how is anyone supposed to know the right thing to do when their dog exhibits behavior that concerns them around resources? And with so much variation in methodologies, is there even a right thing?

We cannot know our pets’ internal experiences. We can’t really even know that with other humans. We often lack the vocabulary, knowledge, or frame of reference to describe every internal experience. When Petey the Wondermutt jumped up off the couch to growl and put his body on top of a Benebone after Big Man stood up, the best label I had for that behavior is resource guarding. And I know that Big Man felt startled and unable to move past Petey in case his next move was to bite. We didn’t know the best way to deal with this behavior. And this wasn’t the only behavior we were concerned about. 

Here are some blogs that outline how behavior pros work through behaviors where there are safety concerns: 

• Grumble and Growl Zones
• Hot Topic: Preventing Dog Bites
• Recognizing Your Limits: How Pet Parents and Pros Know It’s Time to Refer Out

* No Peteys were pinned (or squirted) in this home. But learning history exists, and conversations were had.