When a dog shows aggression to protect his food, it can be a serious issue. Not only is there the danger of other dogs or humans in the house being bitten, but over time it can lead to the dog becoming possessive over everything.

What is Food Aggression?

Food aggression is a form of resource guarding in which a dog becomes very defensive when eating, using threats to force others away. It can be directed towards other animals, humans, or both. The behavior can also extend to treats.

There are three degrees of food aggression:

• Mild: the dog growls and may show its teeth.
• Moderate: the dog snaps or lunges when approached.
• Severe: the dog bites.

While it’s easy to assume that all cases of food aggression are a show of dominance, this isn’t necessarily the case. In a dog pack, the alpha dogs always eat first after a successful hunt, and then the other dogs get what’s left according to their pack position.

For an alpha dog, showing food aggression is a form of dominance, but for dogs with a lower pack position, it can be a sign of anxiety or fearfulness. Remember, in the wild, dogs never know where or when their next meal will be, so it’s very instinctual for them to gobble up whatever food there is whenever they have it — and to protect it from anything that approaches.

How to Recognize Food Aggression

When a dog is eating, his body will stiffen and he may keep his head down. He is using his body language to “hover” over the meal and protect it.

Other signs are that the whites of your dog’s eyes may be visible, their ears are held back, their tail is lowered, or their hackles may rise. A dog may show any or all of these signs. Finally, there are the above mentioned signs of the severity of the problem: growling, lunging, or biting.

What To Do About It

The first step is to assess your dog’s overall behavior. Is she only showing possessiveness over food, or does the behavior extend to other things, like favorite toys, resting spots, or even people in the pack?

If the behavior isn’t limited to food, then your dog is showing general resource guarding, so you’ll need to use the techniques listed below as appropriate in all cases where your dog is showing aggression using the target object instead of food.

Also assess your dog’s overall confidence and behavior. If he is naturally a dominant dog, then you will need to assert yourself as the Pack Leader in a calm and assertive way. On the other hand, if he is timid or fearful, you will need to build up his confidence and teach him that his food is safe with humans around.

Finally, determine whether your dog’s food aggression is mild, moderate, or severe. For severe cases, start off by consulting a professional until you can get the dog down to a moderate level.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re ready to start changing the behavior. Here are some of the techniques to use.

Be Consistent

If the source of your dog’s aggression is fear or anxiety over when the next meal is coming, then be sure that you are feeding your dog at the same times every single day.

Dogs have a very good internal clock, and with consistency, they quickly learn how to tell when it’s time to get up, time to go for a walk, or time for the people to come home. Mealtime should be no different. Be regular in feeding to take away the anxiety.

Must Work for Food

Before you even begin to prepare your dog’s food, make her sit or lie down and stay, preferably just outside of the room you feed her in. Train her to stay even after you’ve set the bowl down and, once the bowl is down, stand close to it as you release her from the stay and she begins eating, at which point you can then move away.

Always feed your dog after the walk, never before. This fulfills his instinct to hunt for food, so he’ll feel like he’s earned it when you come home. Also, exercising a dog after he eats can be dangerous, even leading to life-threatening conditions like bloat.

Pack Leaders Eat First

Remember, when a wild pack has a successful hunt, the alpha dogs eat first, before everyone else, and it should be no different in a human/dog pack.

Never feed your dog before or while the humans are eating. Humans eat first and then, when they’re finished, the dogs eat. This will reinforce your status as the Pack Leader.

“Win” the Bowl

Food aggression can actually be made worse if you back away from the bowl, because that’s what your dog wants. For every time that you do walk away when the dog is showing food aggression, the dog “wins.” The reward is the food and this just reinforces the aggression.

Of course, you don’t want to come in aggressively yourself, especially with moderate to severe food aggression, because that is a good way to get bitten. However, you can recondition the dog until she learns that she wins when she lets you come near her while eating.

Here are some of the techniques you can use:

• Hand feeding: Start your dog’s meal by giving him food by hand, and use your hands to put the food in the bowl, which will give it your scent. The goal is to get your dog used to eating while your hands are around his face, and to have no aggressive reaction if you stick your hands in or near the bowl while he’s eating.
• Treat tossing: Drop your dog’s favorite treats into the bowl while she’s eating so she’ll learn that people approaching the bowl is a good thing and not a threat. You can also put treats into the bowl when you walk near it and she’s not eating. This reinforces the connection in your dog’s mind that people near her bowl is good.
• “Trade-Up”: When your dog is eating their regular food, approach them with something better, like meat or a special treat. The goal here is to get your dog to stop eating their food to take the treat from you. This teaches your dog several things. One is that no one is going to steal his food if he looks away from it. The other is that removing his attention from his food when people come around leads to a reward.

What’s Going On?

In rehabilitating a food aggressive dog, two things are happening. One is that you’re desensitizing your dog so that she will no longer become protective when anybody approaches her while she’s eating. The other is that you’re counterconditioning your dog by teaching her to associate people approaching her bowl with good things.

There are many other techniques you can use to reduce food aggression or to prevent it from happening in the first place. The key, as always, is to be calm, assertive, and consistent.

The term “food aggression” can be misleading because people can easily interpret it as dominance, and it really is better to think of it as resource guarding. As humans, we need to establish our place as Pack Leader, and teach our dogs that there’s no reason to guard their food from us.

Have you established a feeding ritual for your dog?

The post Food Aggression And What To Do About It appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Cesar Millan’s answer:
Hi Douglas,

I wonder if Philly came from a large litter. Her eager appetite and anxious stance while she is eating suggests that she may have had to compete with her littermates for food. In any event she is showing classic guarding behavior by wolfing down her food before anyone else can get to it. This behavior can cause problems such as vomiting when she eats too fast, food aggression and gastric dilatation, or volvulus, which is also known as bloat. Bloat is a serious condition and can occur when a dog swallows too much air during a meal causing distension of the stomach and predisposing it to twist over on itself. Philly is still young so it shouldn’t be too hard to slow her down and to try to make her feel more at ease during meal times.

Feed more often
A good first step is to try feeding small amounts more often. Let’s suppose you currently give Philly two cups twice a day – in that case, try giving her one cup four times a day instead. This will decrease the amount of food she can wolf down at any particular time.

The next step is to actually slow down the process of eating by making her work a little harder for the food. You can put a soup can in the middle of the dish or arrange some large rocks in the bowl to slow her down, just make sure the rocks are clean and large enough so that she can’t fit them in her mouth.

Change her bowl
There is also a special food dish called the “Brake-fast” dog food bowl that has three plastic pegs in the bowl that the dog has to eat around.

Finally, I’m concerned that her anxious stance during eating may progress to food aggression and it is important to try and prevent that. If there are other animals in the household, consider feeding Philly separately so that she does not feel threatened.

Training
Try feeding some of her food by hand and every now and then put a treat in her bowl while she is eating, so she understands that someone walking up to her food bowl is not a bad thing and isn’t going to take it away from her. Hopefully, these tips will help slow her down and make meals a little more pleasant.

Stay calm and assertive!
-Cesar Millan

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This is such a common problem that there have been entire shows, such as Nat Geo Wild’s “My Dog Ate What!?!”, dedicated to sharing the stories of what dog owners have discovered that their pets swallowed.

While we strictly recommend an immediate trip to the vet upon finding out that your pup slurped down anything non-edible or deemed hazardous, we figured it would be fun to survey our readers and swap stories. Here are some of the most outrageous responses we received upon asking: “What’s the craziest thing your dog ate?”

“Cooper had a thing for Manola Blahnik and Prada shoes as a puppy. He didn’t go near any shoes under $400! Fortunately he never made it through an entire shoe, he just nibbled at the straps. I resolved the problem by providing him with chew toys. Thank goodness!” — David Eisenhauer, St. Louis, MO

“My old bulldog ate crayons. He picked up a few that my little sisters had left on the floor. I don’t think anyone saw her do it so no one knew until it was time to clean up the yard. Made for some pretty colorful turds in the lawn!” — Rich Thomas, Redondo Beach, CA

“My German shepherd, Lucky, ate an entire tube of toothpaste — squished out all the toothpaste and chewed the tube. Fortunately she was OK and passed it naturally.” — Susan Famousenuff, Scottsdale, AZ

“My best friend’s Chihuahua, Cashew, ate the squeaky part of a Lion chew toy. He spent 3 nights in the vet ER and he cost his mom thousands of dollars. My Lhasa apso, Shakespeare, once ate an entire Thanksgiving turkey. He ate more than his weight in turkey!” — Elyse Haren, Los Angeles, CA

“My neighbor’s dog (a Neapolitan Mastiff) ate two steps of their stairway to the 2nd floor — thru the carpet, thru the pad, thru the wood planks — you could see the basement below. He had to have surgery to remove an extension cord from his belly (a different meal) and the neighbors put this huge dog in t-shirts to keep him from chewing his stitches.” — Kate Cassidy, West Columbia, SC

“My friend’s Cocker Spaniel ate her mom’s wedding ring. By the way, the wedding ring was retrieved several hours later. Don’t worry it was cleaned and sanitized thoroughly before she put it back on her finger.” — Holly Wolfe, Troy, MI

“Once when I was at the vet, with my dog who ate coins and rocks, the vet had x-rays of a dog that ate a rubber ducky!” — Nina Kelly, Albuquerque, NM

“My dog, Lego, ate my glasses a year ago while I was in the shower. I was mad for like a second, then I tried like hell to put the lenses back together like a jigsaw puzzle. I just wanted to make sure he didn’t swallow any sharp pieces. Funny day, went from mad to panicked to very relieved in a 5 minute span!” — Andrew Durkin, Waterford, MI

“When Harley was a puppy, she swallowed a whole Victoria’s Secret thong from the laundry basket of clothes I was folding. We didn’t know she had done so until we had to help pull it out and noticed the pink tag (yuck)! Then, both Harley and Oliver consumed an entire one-pound bag of skittles and yes, they pooped the rainbow for a week! They have also pulled thawing meat off the counter top and ate that too.” — Melissa St. John, Sun Valley, California

“My dog ate both of my children’s umbilical cord stumps after they fell off. Blah!” — Sarah Sauer, Moorpark, CA

“A 1TB Hard Drive” — Benny Hana, Ventura, CA

“Ryker ate a whole check that I really needed and a tube of Neosporin. Thankfully the vet said he was OK. The check was able to be reissued. Phew!” — Jennifer Brody, Hollywood, CA

“Riley ate $180 in cash – all $20 bills. That was more than it cost to adopt her!” — Danielle Carlesimo, Rochester, MI

What is the craziest thing that your dog has ever eaten? Did you have to take him to the vet? Share your story in the comments section below!

The post Things My Dog Ate appeared first on Cesar's Way.

I have a 1-year-old pitbull named Raven. I have followed your methods since day one, and she is well-behaved dog and an awesome ambassador for her breed. But, there’s one problem we are unable to overcome: food obsession.

Raven is walked and or biked twice a day. She’s a low-medium energy dog. I can tucker her out very easily. As far as Discipline goes I use the “touch”, say no, and put the food back (if I can). When I leave the room, I command her to come as well.

Raven gets into trouble when no one is watching her. She’ll eat pretty much anything… you name it, she’s probably tried to get it in her mouth. She’ll try to eat other dogs’ food and there were two incidents that the dog whose food she stole attacked her… and she kept eating!

I don’t want to remove Raven from the “problem” areas because how will she ever overcome this problem if she doesn’t face it? But I can’t leave her alone, or I’m afraid she’ll eat herself to death. Literally! There was ONE incident where I’d left for only SECONDS with a not even half full bag of dog food, she dove into it and almost finished it off, that’s pounds of food. If I hadn’t come out she would have ate it all!

I’d like to get her registered as a Therapy dog but until this is taken care of we can’t pursue that.

-Ashley

Cesar Millan’s answer:
Dear Ashley,

Any powerful breed, especially fighting breeds, will be more likely to have problems with limitations. Just the same way they become so determined to hurt another dog, it will be easier for them to become obsessive. So in this case, your dog needs to practice more activities where patience is required; where food is in front of her and she practices being in front of the food with your supervision. This is a dog that is not ready to be without supervision.

When food is around, the leash should be on. Just put the leash all the way on the top of the neck and pull up gently and slowly block the brain from being excited. So you can help the brain to go back into a different state.

Another thing that might help is not to let her eat with the plate on the ground. If you place the plate a little higher, it causes the dog to slow down while she is eating. Also, you can practice holding the food and gently moving it; lifting the plate up to touch her chin until she relaxes and slows down. You’re using her own body’s mechanics to help her to accomplish a good thing. She will have to turn her head sideways to get the food, and even use her tongue. She will get less food with each bite, and so you are telling her to slow down, chew the food, really FEEL the food. Because when the brain is in a no-limits state of mind, the dog will just go wild and gobble the food down. By forcing her to slow down, youre just sending her brain into a different state.

Another thing you can do is recognize that there are three circles of personal space: the public, social, and intimate circles. It would be ideal if the dog sees the food in the intimate circle. Ask her to wait in your social or public circle, and then slowly bring her in. That is very challenging, and that creates limits by bringing patience into the mind of the dog. Take your time, don’t rush it. Don’t put two or three weeks on the calendar and expect it to get done. Just do it as long as it takes. This is how you are going to feed the body and the mind.

Stay calm and assertive,
Cesar Millan

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When people ask me for help with their dogs, I ask them to tell me what they think the problem is. Quite often, they immediately diagnose aggression. “My dog is aggressive on the walk.” “My dog is aggressive around food.” “My dog is aggressive all the time.”

In fact, in a recent Facebook survey of my fans, when we asked you to pick the single most serious problem you have with your dogs, aggression was the number one choice.

However, more often than not, the dog is not aggressive. It is curious and excited on the walk, it is not calm and submissive before being fed, or it’s just an excited dog in general. In reality, very few dogs are actually aggressive. But, because they have big sharp teeth, we tend to interpret any incident in which a dog approaches another dog or human quickly as aggression, especially if we don’t know the dog.

If a strange dog approaches us and our dog on the walk, we often become apprehensive ourselves. Our dog interprets this as weak energy and is forced to protect us, and their defensiveness can then lead to the other dog becoming aggressive in defense as well.

However, other behavior problems in dogs, if not resolved, can lead to aggressive behavior. Here are a few of the major ones.

Fear, Anxiety, and Insecurity

All animals have three natural responses to danger: fight, flight, or avoidance. They will either attack, run away, or try to hide from that danger. Fearful, anxious, or insecure dogs will not naturally fight. They will run or hide. However, if either of these things does not remove them from danger, then they can lash out aggressively.

A dog in a constant state of anxiety can eventually stop trying to run or hide first because its internal energy is very high and very scattered, so they can progress to reacting aggressively to everything.

These kinds of dogs require lots of exercise in order to burn up that excess energy and bring them back to a calm, submissive state. They also require calm, assertive Pack Leaders who will build up their self-confidence by providing protection and direction.

Frustration

When a dog’s needs are not fulfilled, the dog experiences frustration — particularly if what’s missing is exercise. An otherwise happy-go-lucky, high energy dog stuck alone in a small apartment for twelve hours a day can become so frustrated that aggression may result. The problem is made worse if the humans don’t also give that dog discipline by providing rules, boundaries and limitations.

If you can’t be home to walk your dog at least every four hours, then you need to take the dog on a long walk before you leave and after you return home.  In the meantime, make sure that there are plenty of things to mentally stimulate your dog while you’re gone, like toys with treats hidden in them, acceptable things to chew on, and so forth.

Lack of Socialization

A dog knows how to be a dog and how to relate to other dogs. It’s only when human behavior short circuits that process that a dog becomes antisocial. This is particularly common with smaller dogs, because humans have the irresistible need to pick them up at the first sign of danger.

You never see someone pick up their Rottweiler because another dog on the walk is barking at it. And yet, for breeds like Chihuahuas and Yorkies, this is the first thing that people do, and it completely confuses the dog.

They associate being picked up (affection) with another dog being aggressive toward it, so what do they do? They learn that this is what you want. When they meet another dog, it’s time to go crazy with barking and lunging so they can get their “reward.”

Even without picking the dog up, we can make it antisocial through our reactions. If we become tense or nervous and tighten up on the leash when we see another dog, then we’re teaching our dogs to see other dogs as a threat.

Dog on dog aggression is not natural. It’s a learned behavior and we teach it. In order for our dogs to unlearn it and become socialized, we have to become aware of what we’re doing to make our dogs antisocial and we have to learn what to do to let our dogs be dogs.

Injury or Illness

Sometimes, a dog that has never shown any signs of aggression will suddenly lash out and snap at a family member unexpectedly. If none of the above cases apply, then this may be your dog’s way of letting you know that it’s in pain and the snarl or nip is a spontaneous reaction similar to someone yelling “Ouch!” when they stub their toe on the coffee table.

If your dog suddenly lashes out at a familiar human when being touched, then your first step should be to visit the vet and find out if there are any physical causes for the reaction. If this is the case, your dog will be grateful to you for helping stop the pain.

A lot of people assume that a dog is either naturally aggressive or not, but this isn’t really the case. Aggression is not a cause, but a symptom. If your dog is aggressive, then it’s telling you that something else is lacking. By paying attention to the behavior, we can understand what our dog is telling us and then figure out the cure to the problem.

Does you dog currently display any of the undesired behaviors that might lead to aggression? Now that you’re aware, how do you intend to address the issue? Share it with us in the comments.

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Domestication has made it possible for dogs to receive their food without having to hunt it down themselves, but it’s still in their nature to feel the need to work for it.

Before my dogs eat, I take them for a walk. In this way, I ask my dogs to work for food and water. This is a form of waiting, which is psychological exercise that helps nurture a balanced, happy dog.

My Tips for a Healthy Routine

The morning routine should look like this:

• You project calm-assertive energy before you give your dog affection.
• You walk your dog to exercise her body and allow her to explore the world.
• When you get home, prepare her food.
• While you fill the bowl, ask your dog to sit.
• If she sits quietly and projects calm-submissive energy with no negative behaviors, place the bowl of food in front of her.

Some of my clients think this routine sounds too rigid, but from your dog’s perspective, it is instinctual. Focusing the mind and body brings the dog back into a more natural, balanced state.

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Domestication has brought about a change in the way dogs receive their meals and in the way they behave before mealtime. Dogs will often become excited, anxious, or aggressive at the prospect of being fed. If you feed your dog when he displays negative behaviors, you are reinforcing the behavior, and it will almost certainly reoccur.

I feed many dogs at the same time with no problems. Dogs that show calm-submissive energy get to eat first, and dogs that show negative behaviors such as aggression or nervousness must wait. When these dogs project calm-submissive energy, I reward them with their meal – much like their mother or pack leader would do.

Mealtimes are a useful tool to help you connect with your dog and work to shape his demeanor. Make sure your dog has reached a calm-submissive state before you place the food bowl in front of him. By doing so, you are not only providing him with nutrition, you are helping him lead a balanced and happy life.

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