Dog growls with food

rkisacelticfan

I need some inspiration! Excuse me if I go on a bit here but I'm trying to give a good overview.

I've got a four month old St Benrard/Rottweiler cross (he's gorgeous by the way!!) We've had a dog trainer and 95% of the training is going great. He doesn't jump up when we (or others) walk into the room, he sits, lies down on command and in the last 2 weeks has really go the hang of walking (doesn't pull anymore and kind of gets in the zone for 20 mins walks). he's great with other dogs and is really getting well socialised. He doesnt bite or nip anymore and loves being cuddled and played with BUT he's one strange trait and the more I read about it the more worried I get - it's his food.

We feed him with Kongs which once they hit the floor he's very possessive of - he'll growl and snarl at anyone near him when he's eating from it on the floor. The strange thing is he'll eat food from our hands or we can stand and hold the Kong and there's no problem. We can hold water for him or can stand right beside hime when he's drinking water and there's no problem - it really is only when he gets the Kong on the ground by himself.

I'm a bit mystified but I've read that behaviour like this now can lead to bigger problems in adulthood. Cash is a bit low at the moment so i cant afford another training session - any advice please??

votejohn

you HAVE to post pics, he must be gigantic!!!!


Id advise you to cut out the kongs for the time being.

When its his dinner time, call him for dinner, but first you eat in front of him, even a biscuit or piece of fruit, but get him to watch you eating.

Feed him a small amount of food into his bowl, then while he's eating, call him and offer him a tastier treat. Make him sit for it.

Then while he's feeding from his bowl, tell him to sit and drop a treat into his bowl.

Once he's fine with that, start telling him to sit and pick up his bowl, add a treat, and put it back down, tell him he's a good boy.


once he's ok with you taking his dinner bowl off him, give him an empty kong. then call him and tell him to drop and offer him a treat instead, and take the kong.

then put a small bit of plain food in the kong, again call him and tell him to drop and offer him a better treat.

Get him used to you giving him something better, and taking possession of the kong.

supermum1

rkisacelticfan wrote: »

I need some inspiration! Excuse me if I go on a bit here but I'm trying to give a good overview.

I've got a four month old St Benrard/Rottweiler cross (he's gorgeous by the way!!) We've had a dog trainer and 95% of the training is going great. He doesn't jump up when we (or others) walk into the room, he sits, lies down on command and in the last 2 weeks has really go the hang of walking (doesn't pull anymore and kind of gets in the zone for 20 mins walks). he's great with other dogs and is really getting well socialised. He doesnt bite or nip anymore and loves being cuddled and played with BUT he's one strange trait and the more I read about it the more worried I get - it's his food.

We feed him with Kongs which once they hit the floor he's very possessive of - he'll growl and snarl at anyone near him when he's eating from it on the floor. The strange thing is he'll eat food from our hands or we can stand and hold the Kong and there's no problem. We can hold water for him or can stand right beside hime when he's drinking water and there's no problem - it really is only when he gets the Kong on the ground by himself.

I'm a bit mystified but I've read that behaviour like this now can lead to bigger problems in adulthood. Cash is a bit low at the moment so i cant afford another training session - any advice please??

Firstly has he ever bitten when you tried to take the kong away? If he hasn't bitten then it may just be a case of reassuring him that if you take it he will get it back!

Have you tried feeding him just in a bowl? if so do you get the same reaction?

I have dealt with a lot of rescue dogs, most of which are possesive over food. One way to help them learn that your in charge, in every aspect is put the food down in a bowl, make the pup sit and wait for his food until you say he can eat it. Sometimes they just need to be reminded who leads the pack!!

rkisacelticfan

Hi guys thanks for the quick response! He has never bitten any of us - its growling and snarling - kind of letting us know he's not happy with us being so close. We make him sit and wait for the Kong and he does this but then if we try and get it back he'll start growling again - but as I said if I hold while he eats from it and move away and come back there's no problem.

I will try your suggestion above and see what happens!

supermum1

Good luck!!

I would also love to see pics! Don't think i've ever seen that cross!

LavaLamp

Another thing you can try is to put his bowl on a box or something similar so it is at his head height, this will stop him being able to crouch over his food which can cause dogs to be over protective of their food

rkisacelticfan

Sorry it took so long but I've attached the latest pic from last week!

lorebringer

He's gorgeous!

Food aggression/possession is a very common problem but luckily for you he's still only a pup and with a bit of work you can get this bad habit out of him. I know you said cash is low but it would be a good idea to even ring someone and ask for professional advice, just to see if they could help you out.

I have a dog that was very food/toy/treat possessive, he's a rescue who had a very bad time of it before he came to me and he has quite a few behavioural problems (most of which are worked out after 2 and a bit years!). He is not longer aggressive towards us but still has problems with our other dogs around him if he has something particularly nice or interesting.

We started by feeding him his meals a quarter at a time - after he finished each portion we would wait for him to look up at us until we gave him his next portion, telling him "good boy" etc. when he went looking for the food. We would stand reasonably close to him while we were doing this, not leering over him but in the general area. When he was ok with this we started to get a bit closer until we were sitting beside him while he was eating, still feeding him by the quarter.

We did not touch him a any point while there was food around up until this point. We then started to inch our hand closer to the bowl - sliding it along the floor, slowly so that he could see it coming - and stopping a little bit away from the bowl. As all of this was going on we were saying "good boy" etc. very calmly, no excitement or sudden noises. Finally were were able to get our hands into the bowl without a noise from him. When we did this we would leave a treat in the bowl as we took our hands out so that he associated out hands in the bowl with something really nice being left in there.

Eventually (this a a few weeks of work later!), we started to feed him his full meal at once and approached him while he was eating (just walked maybe two steps towards him), bent down and put our hand in the bowl then took it out and walked away - he got the message! We can not walk around the kitchen, stick our hands into his bowl, wiggle it around a bit or take a piece of food without any problems from him.

I just want to highlight that none of our other dogs were present during any of this training - quite the operation to get them out of a room that has food in it - and it was only myself and the OH, and the dog.

We have since taught him "leave it" and "drop it" with toys etc. so that we can take things off of him without losing a finger. "Leave it" is a matter of putting the bowl/toy/treat down on the floor in front of you (while on the floor) and saying "leave it" while preventing the dog from going at it for 3-5 seconds, then building up the time and building down your intervention until you can put something on the ground and say "leave it" and the dog won't go near it until you say (doesn't work every time but it's progress!). "Drop it" is done by saying "drop it" while the dog has something in their mouth (we used a sock, so that we could keep our hands a little away from his mouth - for obvious reasons) and wait until they drop it, and when they do giving them something even better than whatever they had before with loads of praise - we constantly sound like fools saying "good drop it" and "good stay" to the dogs but it does work!

Good luck and please let us know how you get on

(P.S. I have an Ozzy too - great name! )