Dog Food Aggression in a Family with Kids

There was an article posted about a 4 year old male Jack Russell has terrible food aggressive and has a history of biting family members.

The dog owner wants to know how to approach fixing this food aggression problem with her dog. She also notes that in addition to food aggression, because her dog does not like mussed with while his blanket. This is another big red flag resource guarding, which should say: "I've got to get this under control now!"

Dogs can protect the things that they perceive as being of high value. They typically center on things that falls into four categories: food, space, supplies of game and love and affection. That's right, you can become a high value resource for your dog so well (it is the love and affection part.) If not addressed immediately, this could be setting the dog up to a one-way trip to the vet

Why a dog is aggressive around his food bowl? It's a good question. There may be a number of factors when you put them all together, would cause this dog to be aggressive around his food bowl and aggressive in many other situations too.

One reason may be a lack of proper socialization and desensitization around as many children and adults as possible.

Another factor is desensitizing him to family members around him when he eats. This should include heavy doses of feeding him from your hand, as his food bowl up and give it back with a yummy treat on top of its remaining food.

Other influence factors could be a total lack of structure in the family, that is, not requiring the dog to earn things in life that he wants and also the dog's temperament.

Dogs are more leader type or Bossy would be more inclined to resource guard their food bowl than say a very submissive dog.

Now do not get me wrong, submissive dogs can become aggressive around their food bowls. I just say that Bossier dog, the more likely it aggressively to guard his food bowl.

I have also seen very Bossy or manager type dogs aggressively guard a point taken on the family couch and be totally fine with family members near their food bowl while they eat. It all depends on the individual dog, environmental factors, etc.

What does the owner do about her reactive dog? The very first protocol is to ensure all people and dogs are safe. This means that the dog must be physically managed - boxes, door or on a leash, so he is unable to be aggressively reactive.

Work to change her relationship with her dog by putting him on a teacher-to-earn program to do sit ups and downs of the things he wants. All family members should participate, so he gets the same message from everyone.

Come back in the training groove with sits and downs to give him a feeling of working for leadership rather than feeling responsible for it yourself.

Exercise her dog to more constructively manage its energies instead to the success of the dog in a destructive way.

Lastly, with a good trainer or behaviorist to start working on a behavior modification program to directly address the problems with food aggression and aggression about anything else.

This problem should be solved sooner than later, because the aggressive behavior grows stronger every time your dog growls or snaps causes people to back away. Dogs are simply what works.

If you find your dog growling around their food bowl or growling when you approach them in certain situations, call a trainer or behaviorist before the problem gets worse.