Understanding and Managing Canine Resource Guarding

Have you ever seen a puppy just getting a tad too possessive over a toy, or maybe their food, and you thought to yourself oh, that's so cute. Look at that puppy guarding that giant toy. Well, it might be something that's very cute when a puppy is small, but it's a much bigger issue when it turns into an 80 pound dog. And, in fact, 20% of dogs have an issue called resource guarding and if you don't deal with it early on, you can find yourself in a situation where your dog has given someone a serious bite. So we're going to tackle this tough topic today to keep not only you safe, but your dog as well. So let's explore this together. You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets. We also share inspiring rescue and adoption stories from people who've taken their love of pets to the next level by getting involved in animal welfare. My name is Amy Castro and I'm the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue and a columnist for Pet Age Magazine. I've rescued thousands of animals and helped people just like you find the right pet for their family. My mission is to help pet parents learn all the ways that they can care for, live with, and even have fun with their pets so they can live their very best lives and their pets can, too. Joining us today on the show is Will Bangura, an internationally renowned certified dog behavior consultant with more than 35 years experience. An expert in addressing a wide range of canine behavioral issues, will is going to bring an evidence-based approach to our discussion today, enriched by his extensive background as not only an author but host of the acclaimed Dog Training Today podcast. His work, deeply rooted in scientific principles, offers invaluable insights for pet guardians seeking to understand and enhance their relationships with their canine companions. Will welcome to the show.

Good to be here, Amy. Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate you making the time to do this with me today, because this issue of resource guarding comes up. I mean, I've been doing animal rescue and volunteering in a shelter for probably 15 years now and I'm a long time animal person. I work for a vet in high school, things like that and it's to me one of those topics that can start out seeming like it's almost funny. Like I said in my teaser, it's like, oh, isn't that cute. We even get kittens that'll slam their feet down and guard a bowl of food from the other kittens and it's funny. But it wouldn't be so funny if it's an 80 pound pit bull or a great dane or whatever it might be. So I really wanted to kind of take people through the process of understanding it, knowing how it develops, what they can do about it, if anything, obviously with working with a professional trainer like yourself. But before we dive into that, I'm always curious when I have people on the show. How did you get into this and why specifically this interest in this topic? Because that's why I sought you out.

Sure, sure, do you have a couple days? No, yeah, you know, I started out like probably a lot of trainers. I was a kid who loved dogs. My dad was into dogs. I had a dad that was raising German shepherds, breeding German shepherds and training and competing in AKC obedience matches. Now this was back mid 70s, early 80s. Things were very different. Back then Everything was about force and coercion. So training methods, styles, philosophies a lot has changed since then. That's where I got my start and my love for all of it. And then I went to school. I got my bachelor's degree and my master's degree in psychology. I did a little bit of time working as a therapist and I worked in a psych hospital. I worked in a drug and alcohol rehab place. I did outpatient psych and I wasn't happy with it. I was like, no, this just isn't for me. Okay. So I'm like what do I do now? What do I do with this degree now? And I went back to my first love. And so then I started to take some courses specifically on animal behavior, because my background was more in human behavior. And then the rest is history. Yeah, that kind of thing.

Yeah, that kind of leads me. Well, number one, the first thing you did was trigger a horrific memory as a child. Now that you said 70s and dog training and how it's changed, we used to have this boxer named Bootsy and she was a runner.

Like if that door was open, you're not going to you know what You're going to. Tell me the same story I could tell you about my dad and our dog, Max. I know how this, I know how the story goes, but go ahead.

Well, part of the story was the trainer. I remember my parents finally got fed up with it because she was terrorizing the neighborhood and the only thing I can really remember out this trainer is him literally like with a choke chain, lifting her up a little different off the ground. You know, between the brutal tactics Like you said, like just totally manhandling dogs back in the day and thinking that's going to work with aggression, and then just giving up on it. I just you know, looking back on it now it's like there's so many other things we could have done or tried or whatever it might be, that just weren't even part of the equation. It was about dominating the dog until it was terrified of you so that it listened to you. Sure, that's when it's 20 feet away going down the street. It's not coming back when you're calling it when it's terrified.

Oh, exactly, and we had a dog like that when I was a kid Max, and Max was a runner. He would take off and my dad was frustrated and so next thing you know, he's got a shock collar on the dog. And that was going to be the answer. Right, the dog's not going to run away, so the dog takes off, he hits the button on the remote. All I can remember is the dog screaming and yelping and jumping up off the ground and rather than say hey, I shouldn't run away and come home, the dog ran further in family. Yeah, I mean yeah, so that didn't work really well.

No.

But yeah, lots changed for thank goodness.

We see, I see a lot of people running around with the shock collars and I can't.

Oh, we've got a lot of work We've got. That could be a whole other podcast We've got another.

We've got a lot of work to do.

Yeah, yeah, crazy industry, this dog training industry that's not regulated.

Yeah, and that's yeah, that's part of it. I mean it's such a wide range of knowledge and experience and that's, you know, for those who are listening so important to choose wisely and do your homework. Not only you know it's like for you, obviously, as somebody that's got a master's and you know I value education, the fact that you've gone through the trouble of taking all these certifications, you know that's, that's a piece of it. Not everybody has to have. I don't think all that alphabet soup, but I think I think, you really need to understand before you take your dog to a trainer is, you know, understand what is the philosophy of methodology, because we even had a German Shepherd that we recently adopted out and it it didn't. It wasn't ours originally, it went through a trainer and it basically came to us with the shock collar and the and the clicker. And you know, not having done a whole lot of research that on that, because I've never done that before I tested the shock collar. It wasn't like it was, it was barely, you know, you could feel a little tingle on your hand, but it wasn't like it was blasting the dog out of its skin. But at the same time, what I always thought was that's the only thing controlling the dog. So what if the collar is not on, or what if it's not working, or what if the battery?

Well, what if the dog doesn't listen at that low level?

Exactly Now you're going to crank it up right, and eventually you're going to hit maximum capacity, and yeah, so it's just. I just have always thought there's got to be got to be a better way.

Well, you know, because I started so early and there's been so many changes in the way we train dogs. You know, I did all that stuff. I used prawn collars, I used electronic collars because I've been training for a long time and those things were more involved. You know, today I think you know modern dog trainers, people that are educated today, that have chosen to educate themselves, that understand the science that's out there no modern dog trainer uses those tools today. They're just unnecessary. But, like I said, we could do a whole other podcast because it also goes into wanting to get things done fast and there's a financial benefit for dog trainers to want to get things done fast. And that's where we start talking about ethics and animal welfare. And where do you balance that? Yeah, you're in business. You need to make money as a trainer, all right, but at what cost? Yeah, that's to the dog.

Right, that's the yeah, that's so true, and there's, you know, there's two sides to that coin too. Is that the consumer, the pet parent, pet guardian, pet owner, whatever terminology we want to use they want it done fast and they don't want to have to do the work. And I will 100% admit I am lazy as all get out. My dogs are not. You know, I've got some dogs I can take out in public and some dogs it's just, you know, they just be too excited. It's not like they're going to be aggressive to people, but they just like out of control. But what I've done with them is it works for our life here and I think that's you know, understanding what kind of lifestyle you're going to live with that pet. Like, does my dog need to know to heal? No, because I mean she spent her entire life off leash with me walking around this property and you know she stays within three feet of me. If I tell her, you know, go on, or she'll go and run around, but she comes back when I call her. I don't have to call her twice, you know, unless she doesn't hear me. But I mean, once she's got my, I've got her attention she comes right back. So do I care that she heals? No, but I. But I think what happens with pet parents is they get super excited about the puppy and they may or may not get involved in training it. So they'll go to a puppy kindergarten and they've taught it to sit and they've taught it to stay ish and they've taught it to come ish and um, and then they think they're done with the process and then when problems crop up, they don't want to fall, you know, they don't. They want to ship it off somewhere, get it taken care of and then have it come back and not have to follow through. So I think we're just very inconsistent as human beings and we're lazy. Let's let's bring it back to the, to this issue of resource guarding. So how does how does that all kind of start? Or women, you know? Cause I know I've seen we've had litters of puppies. You know a dog has 10 puppies, you know nine puppies. In the beginning they all sort of seem the same and then the personalities get a little bit different and then you get that one where you can see their resource guarding and it's so interesting. For anybody who's ever had a chance to see how the mom manages those behaviors. It's very interesting, but what? What should pet parents? I get a new puppy, I bring it home. When does that all start to become an issue that I should be, you know, turning in my attention?

Well, I think the first thing when when we talk about resource guarding that we need to say is that it's a very natural canine behavior. I think there are so many people that are surprised when a dog displays resource guarding like, oh my God, it it. You know, it's amazing how, quite frankly amazing, how little that we see, even though I don't want to minimize it, there's a lot of it out there. But when it comes, when you take a look at the genetics of dogs and the fact that you know, for most of their evolution they're in an environment where resources are scarce and they're having to protect them, they're having to fight for them. So that's a normal canine behavior. However, you know, with tens of thousands of years of evolution and domestication, you know a lot of that has been bred out of the dogs, but it's still part of the makeup of of a canine and there are some breeds that are going to be a little more predisposed, you know, or a guarding breed. So our shepherds, our mastiffs, you know great Pyrenees. So there are going to be certain breeds that if, historically, they were bred for guarding well, resource guarding guarding's in half of that word, right? Yeah. And so they're naturally going to be a little more prone towards that. There are genetic factors that can come into play. You had talked about you know, a litter of 10 puppies or so, and you know this, Amy, that you can have in that litter. If we were to do a bell curve, on one end we may have some dogs that are really shy and timid. On the other end of the spectrum, we may have a dog that's extremely rambunctious. And. We can have same breed. You know, people are always like, well, which breeds are more prone? Well, I talked about the guarding breeds, but any breed of dog, any breed of dog, can be a resource garter. And I will say that if, right from the beginning, we've got a puppy that is insecure right from the beginning and we've all seen them, you've seen them right the puppy that's skittish, nervous, fearful, not so social, those dogs are going to have problems across the board and one of those things are going to be resources, because resources they need to live, they need food, they need water, they need space to be able to have comfort. There are dogs out there that have had a lot of trauma. You know a large litter, let's say we got a litter of 12 and we've got 10 nipples and we've got puppies fighting for resources right there Because the resources are scarce. And now take a runt, or take a dog that's a little more withdrawn, a little more shy, a little more fearful, a little more anxious, because that's its makeup, and now there's more scarcity. Okay, and what happens is we also do certain things as pet owners, guardians, pet parents, but we make a lot of mistakes with our dogs.

We get a puppy.

How many times does a puppy grab something it shouldn't have and run off, run off with it. It's so cute.

Yeah, it's cute and it's funny, right, we get it on video.

The puppy wants it. But we run and we grab it and we take it away from the puppy. So the puppy lost, we don't replace it. Oftentimes Most of us know, oh my God, he's got my remote, boom, let me grab that. Oh my God, he's got my glasses, let me grab those, let me never replace it. So a puppy that's, you know, kind of exploring the world, just a happy-go-lucky puppy and starts grabbing things and starts realizing that, hey, every time I grab something, it gets taken away from me and starts to develop a little bit of protectiveness, starts to develop a little bit of possessiveness, and that's just a normal happy-go-lucky puppy. People that with good intentions, you know, sticking their fingers in the food bowl, taking the food bowl away from the dog or the puppy and trying to make a point and prove hey, I can take the food away from the puppy, I can stick my hands in there. But creating situations where they're causing some level of discomfort, okay. First, guarding is about the fear of loss, the fear of losing something that is very important, okay, and that can be food, it can be toys, it can be any object, it can be a location, space, it can be a person, it can be another pet. Yeah. Inanimate objects, it can be anything.

I'm glad you said person, because that's another thing that crops up. A lot is that and I made this I made this very mistake we had a lab who was, you know, brought up kind of isolated because we were in them, I was getting out of the Air Force and we were moving from Colorado to Texas, so the dog spent a lot of time by himself during formative time where he didn't get socialized. That was a huge piece of it. But I remember thinking, when he was a puppy at the time, but then a young dog, how cool it was when I would be walking my daughter in the stroller and the dog would be walking and he would growl at people that came up. He's protecting us. And I hear people say, oh, he's very protective of me, he really loves me, and it's like is he protecting you because he loves you or is he? You know, they don't understand what's really happening and I didn't in the time either. And it escalated into a good bite to my daughter in the face at one point.

So it's, you know. Yeah, the dog may love them, the dog may be protecting them, but it's not altruistic, it's selfish. The dog, you know. That's why I get a kick out of even today, in 2024, people saying hey you need to be alpha, Even though we know that's BS. We know that.

Oh, and a lot of people still think it. We've seen famous people on TV say it, and so therefore yes.

But I tell pet owners I say listen, you feed your dog. Your dog doesn't eat without you. You provide water for your dog. Your dog doesn't drink without you. Provide shelter for your dog. Your dog doesn't have a place to live without you. Alpha, your God. Yeah. What are you talking about? You got to be you're already God to them and this whole idea of you know. You've got to show him who's boss. You've got to be alpha. No yeah. But despite that right, that love that they have and everything that we provide for them, they can view and this is the one thing that I think a lot of pet parents don't grasp, and I think aggression in general is when a dog's aggressive in the pet parents like but there's no threat, I don't see a threat. Dog does there doesn't. First of all, there doesn't have to be a real threat. It can be a perceived threat, and what one dog is going to perceive as threatening is going to be different than the next dog and the next dog and the next dog. And again, pet parents, they they're trying, and they're trying to find logic and reason and use critical thinking. For you know why is the dog upset? Why does the dog feel that it needs to attack?

Yeah, yeah, I've even in a situation where it's like a big dog, little dog, it's like what's he so worried about? That's just a little chihuahua, and it's like it's not the point that you know the size of the dog is not the point. Whether he can take him or not is not the point.

Yeah. So I think one of the things that's important when we talk about resource guarding, that we don't take on the thought process or the idea that my dog's a little jerk and he's being dominant. But that's the first thing that a lot of people want to think and that's what, unfortunately, a lot of well intentioned trainers that are out there that you know promote that as well. It's my intention. No animal goes into fight or flight unless they perceive a threat. And if they're perceiving a threat they're uncomfortable, they're nervous, they're stressed, they're anxious, they're fearful. It's that underlying emotional state that's the real problem. The aggressive behavior is a problem for the pet parent, it's a problem for anybody that you know is on the receiving end of that. But for the dog, that aggression is the dog's solution to the problem of, hey, I'm afraid that you're going to take my food or my toy, or you're going to harm or take away my pet parent or this comfortable couch that I'm on, and as a result of that anxiety, they may start to display behaviors. Right, they might start to growl and if the growling isn't heated, maybe they show their teeth. If that's not heated, then maybe they start doing some lunging or snapping, and if that's not heated, then maybe they actually bite. But think about what the dog wants. The dog is feeling threatened, that it's going to lose that and it feels that this is a very important resource. I'm going to lose it. I'm scared, so I want that threat to go away. I want distance and space between me, the scared dog, and that person or that other dog or other animal that I feel is a threat. And so all that aggressive behavior is very functional for the dog to try to get distance and space, and what typically happens? We go whoa, whoa, we back off right, but these behaviors become functional. The dog wants distance and space and oftentimes that's just what's going to happen. It works for them to get distance and space and when they can get that distance and space and that keeps on working for them, they're not going to give up that behavior. One of the things that I have to do is educate pet parents on what negative reinforcement is, and that's the removal of something uncomfortable, that if a behavior causes the removal of something uncomfortable, that behavior has value, because who wants to be uncomfortable, right? So if you are a dog or you're a person and I've got a resource guarding issue, I'm a dog with a resource guarding issue and you're coming near me and I want distance and space and I growl or I snap or I snarl or I do a lunge and that threat that I'm perceiving moves away. That takes away some of this uncomfortable feeling. This emotional pressure that I have is removed. Negative reinforcement is the removal of something uncomfortable Pet parents would understand it about. When you get in the car, all right, if you don't buckle up, there's a negative reinforcement tool in there. Ding, ding, ding, ding. It's annoying and as soon as you engage in the behavior that they want, that something unpleasant goes away. That ding, ding, ding goes away. And so aggressive behavior is used to create distance and space and oftentimes it works for the dog and it reinforces and strengthens that behavior, and so they need to understand that these behaviors are getting reinforced, they're getting strengthened. The other thing that I have to talk to pet parents about is in the beginning, when they've got a problem and they want to address it, avoiding all the triggers. What does that mean? When it comes to problems with food, we don't put the dog in a situation where, whether it be, it's afraid of another person approaching it when it has food, whether it be another dog, we don't put that dog in that situation. And what I tell folks I said, listen, if you called me and you said, hey, I've got a busted water pipe, first thing I'm going to tell them is not how to fix the busted water pipe. I'm going to say, hey, listen, I need you to go find that main water valve. I need you to turn that off completely because there's no fixing. There's no fixing that broken water pipe when everything is just spilling out all over the place. And it's the same thing when we have these serious behaviors that have these underlying conditioned emotional responses. Number one we need to avoid those triggers so that we don't continue to condition the behavior we don't want. You know, repetition makes for conditioning, makes for habituation, and if the dog's going to continue to rehearse these behaviors day in and day out, well, we're never going to be able to get a handle on it. I should back up for a second and say first, one of the most important things is safety and management. So, avoiding those triggers. Not only is it critical for the behavior modification process, but for management and for safety that we need to do that, especially when we're talking about the smaller breeds, a lot of resource-guarding people think is funny and we see on social media. We see these video clips of these little dogs being aggressive and they think it's cute. But it's not cute and little dogs can do a lot of damage and especially if you've got kids, you know then you've really got an issue. But having people take this serious with little dogs is important. The other thing is letting them know your dog's probably not going to grow out of this. This isn't something that just goes away over time and usually those behaviors don't. But a lot of pet parents think, oh, it's a normal puppy behavior, it will go away.

But let me ask you this before we go too too far, because I've had this thought about the very first example that you gave of you know puppy ran off with my headphones for my, you know for my phone, and you know chasing it around and turning that into a. Now I've got the puppy corner and I'm going to take it away from them. To me that's the beginning of a lot of that conditioning right. So in an instance where it's a little puppy, I mean, how much damage could he do? Kind of thing. What should a person be doing? Like? My thought would be you know, sit down on the floor with something the puppy wants and get it to come, take that and give it to that, and then you know, he's either dropped the headphones or he's brought him back to me, kind of like diversion. I used to do that with my daughter. It's like if I told you to do something, you know, it would just be like, you know, if I couldn't get you to come over here, I, yeah, I could run after you and play that game. Or I could say, hey, well, I'm just going to sit here and read this book by myself then, and then suddenly she's super interested in coming back over to me.

I'll go back to what I said initially, and that is avoiding the triggers. So the first thing is don't leave your headphones out, don't leave those things out, and especially if you know your puppy's starting to take it, you know it's going to happen again, right? So puppy proof the house. But then people say, well, how long do I have to do that? For I don't want to do that. I, you know, you're training me, you're not training the dog. How come I got to make things different? Why doesn't the dog just behave? You can avoid a lot of problems by picking these things up and not having them out there, so that the puppy doesn't ever develop that. And one of the things that I think is absolutely critical. You know when you're talking about. Okay, when they grab something, you know it's one thing if we put it up, but let's say we didn't and they did grab something. They said, hey, what do you do? What do you do? Well, the first thing that I want to do is be proactive with dogs. When it comes to food, when it comes to toys, when it comes to spaces like crates and dog beds and things of that nature. I want to start doing a lot of trade-out games proactively with the dog and when I'm doing a trade-out game, I'm trying to make sure that what I'm giving the dog, what I'm trading for, what I'm giving them has higher value than what I'm asking them to give up and allow me to have.

And so yeah, if they've got a steak in their mouth, they're not going to take a toy or a carrot.

Yeah.

Right, no, thank you, I'm happy with what I have.

I want to create the experience proactively early on, whether it be a young puppy or if I adopted an older dog and maybe I don't know the history of that dog. I'm going to start doing lots of trade-outs. So I might start with a food bowl that has a little bit of kibble in it and the dog's eating it, and I may get the dog's attention and I may have a handful of chicken and as the dog looks at me and gives up that food and thinks about moving towards me with that chicken, I might label the behavior of the dog leave it. I did not ask for it. What if the puppy doesn't know? Leave it. I need to start creating positive associations with taking away resources and I'm going to do that by doing trade-up, giving something more valuable to the dog. And then some dogs are going to be more toy-motivated than food-motivated. It's not always about food for every dog and different foods are going to have different value. How many times have we heard a house that has multiple dogs? They can eat next to each other, their food bowl is no issue, but boy, give them a bully stick and now all of a sudden they want to kill each other. So different food resources are going to have different values depending upon what they are for the dog. Every dog has what I call their chocolate. But I'm going to do a lot of proactive trade-up games with resources. If I notice that I've got a new puppy or I've got a dog and that dog is wanting to grab things in its mouth, I'm a big proponent, amy, of capturing. If I've got a dog picking up something I don't like I know it sounds crazy I'm going to label it fetch, I'm going to click and I'm going to reward that dog. When I can teach fetch, I can teach drop. I have more opportunity to teach drop because the dog will have more things in its mouth if I can ask it to do that. So I can be very proactive. Even if the dog has something in its mouth, I can begin to teach a behavior that can help me stop it. Maybe I transfer that instead of on the remote. Maybe I roll a ball to the dog and the dog goes and grabs that ball. As it grabs it, I go fetch and I click and reward, or I mark and reward over and over until this becomes a conditioned fun game and the dog understands fetch is pick up and I get a reward After a while. We get to reverse engineer that Ask for fetch. If we put enough time in, if our timing was good, the dog will do that we can start getting fetch.

Can we get him to come in the entire house that way?

Wouldn't that be nice. You know it's fun. I had a Malinwag years ago and we'd go to the park and we'd work on retrieving and a big part of our retrieving was cleaning up the park. Go grab that and we'd go to the trash can and throw it in there. We had a lot of fun doing that. But with these dogs that we are working on proactively trying to prevent resource guarding, being able to teach a dog to fetch and drop becomes a huge part of when they're grabbing something that you don't want. Dogs, puppies, they're going to grab things that they shouldn't have in their mouth. For me it's a no brainer that I begin to start teaching fetch and drop. I could do that again. I could roll a ball. The dog picks the ball, fetch and I reward the dog. Then I just become the most boring thing in the world and just freeze. The dog's going to drop the object because I'm being so boring. When it drops it'll be drop and I'm going to reward. I'm going to do that with benign objects and teach those behaviors so that when my puppy is grabbing something that it shouldn't have, I can say drop it, lets it go, guess what Something better is going to happen. Then I'm going to bring out appropriate toys and we're going to play with those things too. I always tell people when they want to use that to hold the dogs being dominant wants to be alpha, I go no, your dog's unruly. What does that mean? It means that they don't come into the world with rules. It's our job to teach what those rules are. They're just being a dog. It's natural for a dog to just pick up whatever Very natural behavior.

You address a lot of important issues in there, but I want to tag back to. We're such a quick, quick society and you had said at the very beginning you're not going to fix this. It sounds like this is a process of fixing it, making it better, but what do you mean by it's not cured, it's not fixed?

Every animal is going to make a mistake. I make a mistake every day, whether I want to or not. I just hope I get it out of the way early in the day rather than later in the day. Dogs are going to make mistakes. I talk to people when we've got these behaviors that we don't want, don't think in terms of a cure. If we get a cure, if we can quote, unquote, fix it, hey, that's fantastic, that's icing on the cake. What I'm looking for is what is the frequency of the behavior when we had the problem and now we're creating a training plan, behavior modification plan. As a result of that, are we decreasing? Are we seeing the frequency of behavior decrease? Are we seeing the severity or the intensity of the behavior decrease? If the dog is engaging in that behavior, is the duration shorter? Those are all measures to be able to take a look and say, hey, are we making things better? And to me, that's our goal to always try to make things better, to mitigate things, to modify the behavior, but not necessarily cure or fix. It'd be nice if we could get that every single time, but that doesn't always happen and also being able to teach alternative behaviors to dogs, because what do most of us do when we get frustrated with the dog? We tend to go to punishment, and if there's one thing that is absolutely going to make resource guarding worse is punishment Any aggression that's going to make it worse. You are not going to fix aggression with force. When we use punishment and some people won't use the word punishment, they'll say correction. But let me define that Anything, anything that causes discomfort, fear, pain, intimidation, discomfort, even at a mild level, that's punishment that increases anxiety and that's at the root of the problem. When we're talking about aggression, that can temporarily suppress that outward behavior, but it's short lived. The only reason the dog is not engaging in that behavior is because it's afraid. Oh, you're going to shock me again, or you're going to hit me with that rolled up towel. Are you going to toss a can with pennies in it? That's going to scare me, or you're going to use a compressed air sprayer, or you're going to jerk me with the leash or something like that, or you're going to yell at me and scream at me.

To make sure I'm understanding, because it makes sense to me that when you're talking about trying to upgrade, so if they've got something and so you're going to get a higher value thing that they love as a way to upgrade what they've already got and get them to give it up, that totally makes sense. The punishment it's like the punishment is of higher fear or anxiety. So if I have to choose between the two, I'm going to try to avoid the punishment by stopping doing this. Like you said, once that's gone, I'm going to go right back to doing what I was doing. Is that? That's basically what you're?

saying yeah and I'm going to be more nervous about it.

Yeah, because now I'm waiting for that to happen too.

Exactly. Yeah, it also teaches the dog. Yeah, resources are scarce. Yeah, look at this, the universe is hostile. Yeah, I'll tell you a thing Validating that perception that there's a threat.

Yeah, there is. So I want to talk for a little bit about acquiring a pet, because one of the things that I thought about when I thought about that litter of 10 puppies that we had is that there are probably things that I could have done, and I sort of did it, but I only did it halfway right, because it was 10 puppies. But we have these large feeding bowls and I always, from a common sense standpoint, would put out multiple bowls as opposed to yeah, I could have gotten a horse trough and filled that with dog food and let them all dive into it, but it made more sense to me multiple bowls. So there's two or three puppies here, two or three there. Would it make more sense to help, not reinforce that natural behavior early on, to give each puppy its own bowl or to really spread it out like that. And let's say it's a smaller litter, let's say it's four puppies or five puppies, and you know, oh, this is a big enough bowl, I'll just throw this bowl out. But now that's the one resource that now I've got four competitors for and maybe I'm going to guard it versus five bowls, or does it make any difference? I've also thrown food on the floor to avoid resource guarding, because you can't guard what's spread out all over the place, or it's hard.

Yeah, yeah. Now you bring up a really good point there. okay, Because and you were talking- about a very large litter and imagine having one bowl and what was it? Nine or 10, you think it was 10 in that litter, 10, and they're trying to all get in there. I mean, how big of a bowl do you have? Right? They're all trying to get in there and fighting over it and whichever one's the biggest and the strongest is going to win and the smallest and the weakest is going to get pushed aside there. So, yeah, having multiple bowls feeding in different locations, you know something. Naturally, that I've always done, and maybe it's just because I just am so much into prevention. I've never had dogs that were resource garters myself, but I've always fed them separately. Yeah, I've never fed my dogs together, ever. I just haven't done it. It just made more sense to feed them separately. It's easy to do it, it doesn't take any time, doesn't take any effort and they can't be fighting if they're fed separately in different locations. I hear it and you probably hear this too. You know, I hear from pet parents that say that have multiple dogs. Well, we got a problem because, you know, this one doesn't like to share Dogs, don't share.

Yeah, I was going to say he doesn't have to share.

Yeah, if they want to play together with that, that's one thing, but they don't share. It's not a normal behavior for a dog. Oh, let me give you my toy to play with, oh, and you give me yours, it's no. Yeah, that's not the way it works. Now, that doesn't mean that they, you know, get into, you know fights when they're stealing the toy from the other dog.

Right, but it's about who has it, and that starts in puppyhood too. I've got plenty of video of it. Doesn't matter if you have plenty of toys out. It's like once somebody's got it and starts playing with it, here goes everybody else and then it turns into this game of chase, of running around. It's like, why do you need to chase that? It's like over here. But and it's funny, you said that too about the feeding your dogs, because even yesterday I go and I we've got five dogs in the house right now my personal bulldog, my daughter's terrier, my Chihuahua, a blind pit bull and a really messed up French bulldog that we got. So those are rescues and so obviously, wide range of sizes, behaviors et cetera, even the newer ones, even the fosters. When we get the food out, you know, sometimes I'll just feed them while they're all and I've put a video out the other day like giving them treats and they'll all sit there. But I'll do it by hand. I'm not going to put the bowl down and let them go at it, but when it comes to dinner time, once I get that bowl and it becomes obvious this is not like a treat, she's just going to hand out to us. Here, she runs and gets in their crate. Yeah, even the blind one knows to find her way back and she gets herself in her crate because that's where we eat. And I don't lock them in necessarily because they eat pretty quickly, I mean I close the doors, so there's a semblance of a barrier and I'm closed in here and everybody finishes, and then you don't have to worry about getting into a fight over something or somebody getting torn up.

Exactly, and it's little things like that that are so easy. But is it a fix? No, it's management. That's a management strategy. Now why do we want to go about trying to modify the behavior if we can just manage it? Well, because management can fail. Oftentimes it does fail. And if you've got a serious problem of resource guarding meaning that, hey, I've got a dog that when it feels it needs to guard a resource, it'll bite, and it'll bite bad we definitely need to be working on modifying that behavior because management can fail. Remember, we talked about making a mistake. I make one every day, whether I want to or not, and as a trainer working with aggressive dogs, I've made the mistake. I thought, oh, I thought the crate was closed. So, if I can do it, of course an everyday, normal pet parent certainly can fail with management. We're human, we're going to make mistakes. We can make mistakes.

From a standpoint of a rescue. To be perfectly honest, it's a constant struggle. If I've got an animal, that's especially if it's an adult, that is a resource garter to feel comfortable. And I know you said obviously little dogs can do damage, especially to children. And that's where we get into these situations in rescue where it's like, okay, is it appropriate to say I've got a 10-pound little dog and it's a resource garter, so we're going to adopt it out, but we're not going to allow, we're not going to adopt it out to anybody that has children under the age of 10. I mean, that's a management thing but you're relying on even with the adult people, because I've made the mistake once and I don't know that I want to make it again. But it was also again a little dog where there were aggression, behavior issues that I had gotten to a point where they were not being exhibited. I transitioned the dog to the home, visiting them several occasions, teaching them what they needed to do. All was going great, no problems. A year and a half later they're calling me up. Can you take the dog back, or we need to put him to sleep because he's bitten my husband and my granddaughter and whatever else, like six times kind of thing. And it's like well, first of all, why are you waiting so long to tell me about it and not doing anything about it? Basically everything that I had taught them to do to avoid the behavior, I mean I don't even know. It was almost even beyond management. It's just like we had it completely, seemingly under control, but they basically then stopped doing any of those things. And it's like well, yeah, obviously he reverted back because you're now basically breaking all the rules that got it manageable. And then I think about okay, again, that's a little dog. Is it going to kill somebody? Well, no, it's not going to kill somebody, even if it you know it could again hurt a child, obviously cause some damage, yes, but it's not going to kill somebody. Now let's transfer that to an 80 pound, whatever dog that has the same issue. I would almost not want to adopt a dog like that out at all. I already have a problem with the little one because I know human nature is not to keep up with the management. Or, like you said, we fail, we make mistakes and it's like that's just too high stakes for that to come back on me. when you tell me you know it mauled the child, another disfigured or worse, what are your, what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I go back to what I said management fails and I think when you're a not just a pet parent, but when you're a parent parent, you've got kids. And, let's face it, most parents not only if they've got kids or they're raising their kids, but they're working outside of the home and they've got a lot of stuff on their plate, a lot of things that they're doing. It can be exhausting for parents and can be exhausting for kids, depending upon what their lifestyle is. Are they fully cognizant and are they? Do they have what it takes to be able, you know, to manage? You know that situation. So I mean, ideally, it would be great if we didn't have to place any dogs that were aggressive in homes that had children.

I think that and you'd be surprised because that's what, that's what we've done and people will. I mean, we'll put very and even if it's not like anything has really happened, we just know that let's say let's take aggression off the table just for a second, and it's, you know, just a big boisterous dog that is not going to be a fit for a two-year-old because it's basically going to plow them down on a regular basis and be an unpleasant experience for everybody and you make it really clear like, hey, you know this dog needs, you know adult owners, people who are active, people who exercise a lot you know not going to be great with, you know, with children of a certain age or size, but if it's pretty, if it's cute, if it's a breed that was just in a movie, here they come the parents of people under, you know, under the age of five, and it's like did you not read what I put there? So it's like, even when you try to protect people from themselves- it's tough and it's frustrating.

It is. It's tough, it's frustrating.

Yeah, we've even had people who have been denied for adopting for whatever reason. And then the next thing you know they've got, and we dig the next thing you know they've got their mom, their dad or some other person living at another address conveniently applying for that same animal. So I'm going to go get my mom to adopt the dog for me so I can have it with my little kids. That the rescue said is not appropriate. Yeah, you know, it's like you can only save people from themselves so much.

Aggression and kids, they don't go well together. I just you know, I would prefer if there's, I would prefer a dog not going to a home if it has any type of aggression where there are children. And for me you said 10, I kind of I'm up at about 13, 14.

Well, I want them all Even better yeah, the bigger the less, I kind of the less at eye level. That's my always, my always thing.

That is a big thing for the dog, but I, yeah, I want, I want the kid to be able to think a little bit abstractly and not just thinking very black and white terms, and so being a little bit older, I can get a little more of that from them.

Yeah, good point, and you know, a lot of it too is a case by case. I mean, we do this with with, especially with, dogs. I mean it's not as much of an issue with cats, but there are exceptions to every rule. You know, there are 13 year olds that act like five year olds. Yeah, Five well, 12 year olds act like 18 year olds or physically large or whatever it might be so, but I think that's a good ballpark in that age, you know, in that age range. So the last kind of major thing that I wanted to ask about was and you kind of already hinted at it, but I think people won't hurt anybody to hear it again I've gotten this dog. You know whether I ignored the behaviors early on and then that grew and developed into something that was a bigger issue. Because the other thing that I think people need to realize and I've said it before on episodes with with shelter pets and with rescue pets, I call it the 72 hour rule. That's not a magic number and in my experience in bringing strange dogs into my home, that 90% of them seem mild mannered and look how calm, look how quiet, look how good, look how this, look how that, look how none of this, none of that is happening because there's probably because they're terrified and they have no idea what's going on. And usually in about 72 hours, you start to see their real personality. And then there's some people that talk about the you know three, the three weeks, three months, three, whatever you know the pattern, but it is things to me, in my experience, start to emerge at that point. So let's say that I get an you know, an older adult dog, a bigger dog, whatever it might be, and I realize that this, this issue, is starting. What would be the progression of steps?

If they've got a problem, you know the first step is what I call triage and that means keep everything safe in the house. You do what you have to do to avoid the problems so that everybody's safe. After that, take the dog to the veterinarian, your regular vet. Your dog needs to have a medical checkup. Make sure, rule out there's nothing medical that is a contributing factor, because training and behavior modification is not going to tackle medical stuff. It's usually not the cause, okay, but there's a good number of dogs that have aggression. Where there is a medical contributing factor Could, pain is always a big one, you know. If you know, if I'm, you know, especially dogs that have a favorite comfortable spot and have pain and you another dog comes close to that, you know they start feeling vulnerable and they start getting aggressive. So pain, you know, I read somewhere, and I don't know how they came up with the number 11% of dog bites. The dog had a very painful oral conditioning, conditioning, you know, like a rotten tooth or something like that, and people going to pet, you know the dog biting. So we definitely want to rule out pain and things of that nature. And there's hormonal imbalances, potential neurochemical imbalances, you know, but those are the areas you know where we need to, and I think as trainers, as behavior consultants, we need to be educating pet guardians and pet parents that there is that medical component that we do need to rule out and make sure and address that as well.

Right. Once the medical has been ruled out, then the next step in the process would be to find a professional that can help you.

Okay, you know, this is an industry that's unregulated. You never know what you're getting. And I tell people you know, try to find somebody who's certified and find out where they were certified, because there are trainers that are certifying themselves out there. I mean, it's kind of silly. Do they have experience working with aggressive dogs? What's their success ratio? How do they work with dogs? You know, is this somebody that is using punishment to suppress behavior or do they really understand what real behavior modification is? One the quickest way that you can find out if they really know what they're talking about or not. Say do you know what counter conditioning and desensitization is? And if the pet parents don't know that they need to learn. Because when it, when it comes to aggression, beers, phobias, anxieties, reactivity, it's all about counter conditioning and desensitization to modify that behavior. When you've got Trainers out there that are using force, that are using aversive tools, what I have found is that the vast majority and don't even know what that is. Their idea of correcting the problem is punishment. But yeah, I think that anybody that's looking for Real experience trainer or a behavior consultant, definitely if they do group classes or if they do private training, ask, ask and see if they'll allow you to, you know, check out what they do, and maybe they're not comfortable with that, but I'm sure a lot of trainers have videotaped certain things and maybe there's something that you know they can watch a session or something like that.

Because a lot of my wealthy friends, they like to send the dog off to someplace for a month and then it comes back, and you know is that I'm always fearful. What the heck's going on when you, when you're not looking?

when it comes to aggression, which we could say when it comes to fear, you are not gonna send a dog away for one, two, three, four weeks and have that fixed. This is what happens, because I get the calls all the time. They send their dog to board and train. The dog's been punished, the dog's experienced Corrections, the aggressive behavior has been suppressed. The dog comes home and you say it's 72 hours. My time frame is 72 hours to two months. Somewhere in that time frame the dog goes back to that behavior because Nobody addressed the underlying Emotional state of the dog which drives that behavior. You punish, you correct that outward behavior. You're gonna suppress that behavior temporarily and you're gonna make it worse because from the emotional perspective it's worse. The only way that you're gonna have permanence, reliability and success is through this low, gradual process that it really takes to modify behavior. And, to you know, we talk about the word counter conditioning. Counter conditioning means hey, the dogs been conditioned that whatever it proceeds as a Threat is bad and it's been conditioned because of that emotional state to behave a certain way and to behave aggressively and that becomes over time a conditioned Reflex. They're not even thinking about it, just conditioned reflex. Well, the new behaviors that we're trying to teach in and really the new emotional states that we're trying to create with those triggers and and pair positives with those triggers has to happen enough times that it's an automatic reflex for the dog to go into that positive emotional state. It takes a lot of repetition think conditioning muscle memory. It doesn't happen in one, two, three, four weeks, just doesn't happen.

Let's say, you board and train your pet and they were doing everything in the appropriate way. Once the dog comes home, it's now a different person, a different environment. You know you still have to continue the process. Yeah. You know it's not gonna be fixed. And now you don't have to do anything.

You want to be able to dance with your dog and you don't want to take the dance classes. Yeah, you sent the dog to dance class and the trainer, their dance partner, can dance very well with that dog and the dog comes back. No one how to dance, but you don't know how to dance. Let's say that you're the greatest quarterback in the world and you get traded to a new team and the receivers on that new team are phenomenal receivers. You're a phenomenal quarterback, but for the first two months on that new team there's all kinds of fumbles, there's all kinds of interceptions. It's not because you, as the quarterback, don't know what you're doing, it's not that those receivers don't know what they're doing, but you didn't practice together. You don't have the chemistry, the rapport, the, the communication that goes with being a team, and you and your dog are a team. Right, if they don't practice, if they're not taught how to practice and maintain it and they do that they're not gonna have success. Right, and especially, here's the thing too, what people miss out on, especially when it's the more severe behaviors and they try to send them to board and train. They weren't part of the process of taking crazy and bringing it down to calm. And so when the dog makes a mistake and goes into crazy, what are the pet parents do that sent their dog away? They throw their arms up in the air and they panic. They don't know what to do. Yeah, they don't know what. They don't know what to do. Yeah, they don't know how to handle that situation. When you've been part of the process of change, when the animal makes a mistake, you're in a much better place to be able to know what you need to do in a situation like that. And and you don't get that when you send the dog away right, yeah, that's such a good, such a good point the one thing that I would add and I'm not trying to criticize or beat anybody up, but I do see an area where there needs to be a lot of improvement, and if there was a lot of improvement, that area, I think, would mitigate a lot of aggression, not just resource guarding, and that's breeders, breeders working with those puppies early on instead of just housing them, and there's so much that breeders can be doing as far as exposing those puppies early on, the things that they need to be exposed to, that by the time they're 13, 14, 15, 16 weeks of age, it's too late and they've already developed fears. You know, I hear people all the time they say well, you know, the dogs one, two, three, four need to socialize my dog. That window has closed. Yeah, you are now dealing with counter conditioning and desensitization. You are now dealing with behavior mod. It's not about socializing. Your window was three weeks to 13 weeks roughly, and so, if you think about it, amy, look, if most people are getting their dogs at eight, if they're, you know, getting a puppy at a Young age and they're not getting an older dog or adopting Eight, nine, ten weeks of age, most of that window is closed and and then they're scared to death because they're afraid that Well, if my dog doesn't have all the shots, it's gonna die of parvo and distemper. So that little remaining time that they have the pet parent has, they're scared to death to get the dog out. So the breeders could be doing a lot in terms of Helping exposing dogs, puppies, to a whole lot more. And I think, if you are looking to get your dog from a breeder, understanding that not all breeders are created equal, so to speak- right and you know.

And one other thing that made me think about is the you know how much of this preventative behavior Maybe it isn't related to aggression, but I know when we have dogs with puppies we try to not have them go to homes until at least 12 weeks, but there's so much that happens in just watching the interactions with the mom and how she Disciplines them and the behavior that she cor. You know the things that are. And then socializing and learning to play and you know Learning to let go when somebody screaming bloody murder, that kind of happens in that in that area.

But you know what about I don't know whoever Go at six weeks. Well, yeah, that's way too early, but even for me. I don't know who came up with the idea that the magic number was eight weeks. That's the beginning of the fear stage. Eight to twelve weeks is a fear stage of development. They're more sensitive if, if they experience something Traumatic during that time, it's much more likely to imprint on them. And people are putting eight-week-old puppies on planes and flying them out, yeah, yeah. So I don't know where they came up with that crazy number eight.

Yeah, so if people wanted you know, if people were finding themselves in it, and I apologize for not, I don't know how I did not know that you did everything virtual, like it had.

Well, I do in person. It's just that for most people it makes more sense for them to do virtual. Based on the problem number one and number two, if I'm doing in person, it really takes up three times the amount of time it takes me for virtual because of travel and and so virtual I can provide at a better cost Point and so financially it helps out a lot of people to be able to do virtually as well. You know so I'm located in the Phoenix, arizona area. I do see and I do work with people in person but again, most of what I do is virtual. But yeah, if they're in the Arizona area, they can find me on the web by going to Phoenix dog training calm and then, if they're outside of Arizona, I've got a global website, dog behaviorist calm, and I do behavior consultations with people in and outside of the US as well.

And tell folks that you know about your, about your. Like yeah, what would they expect if they listen to your podcast? What kind of information are you providing there?

Sure, so I don't know. We've got about a hundred and forty some odd Podcasts that are up there and I've talked about just about everything. Everything I do, I try to make sure that it's evidence-based, science-based, because I Specialized and most of my clients have dogs that are aggressive, reactive, have fears, phobia, separation, anxiety, that kind of stuff that Tends to be kind of the leaning of the podcast. It's dog training today with will bangura and you can find that on just about any Podcasting platform. I'm sure you know I do stuff on jump nuisance behaviors jumping, barking, pulling on the leash, you know, all the way up to resource guarding, human-directed aggression, fears, phobias, like I said, separation anxiety. So once a month I'm doing a Q&A. But Facebook live Q&A, that's great. This Saturday, 11 o'clock Eastern time, facebook live on the dog training today podcast great, great.

Well, I'll definitely put links up in the show notes so everybody can see that so.

I appreciate that.

I mean, I I could talk to you for hours because I have so many other Questions that keep popping up, but I really appreciate your time. I think this is such an important subject for people to better understand and I feel like what we, what you, what you've shared today Should give people plenty. You know, plenty of information to form at least a foundation of being able to understand and identify and, you know, at least start the process of intervening before things get out of hand and become a serious, serious problem. So thank you so much for sharing your advice and your wisdom today with us.

Well, thank you, amy. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share with you and with your listeners and hey, thank you what you do, because I Can't even imagine working with rescues I mean full-time like kind of you do in the shelters and stuff like that. It's exhausting for me just to be working with the clients that the few that I have, you know that have Rescues. I just can't imagine that. It's got to be very emotionally taxing and physically exhausting.

Yes, it definitely is, and I tell people it's a labor of love and people take that as you know, because I love animals and my dog. I do. I do, but it's a labor of love, because I wish I could get paid to do it.

Yeah, because I'm not getting.

Yeah, so I appreciate that, and so, for those of you who are listening, thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Starlight Pet Talk podcast. Please share this episode with your friends and family members, especially if you can catch them before they've even gotten a dog, so that they can learn about this important issue and Avoid some of the problems that those of us who've had to deal with them have had to deal with. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks for listening to Starlight Pet Talk. Be sure to visit our website at wwwstarlightpettalkcom for more resources, and be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, so you'll never miss a show. If you enjoyed and found value in today's episode, we'd appreciate a rating on Apple, or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, that would be great too. Don't forget to tune in next week and every week for a brand new episode of Starlight Pet Talk, and if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a big hug from us.