Helping a Brentwood Maltipoo Stop Resource Guarding

For this West LA dog training session we worked with 2 year-old Maltipoo Chip, sharing tips on how to stop resource guarding.

Chip was very happy to meet me for the session. He showed good confidence and aside from the jumping, demonstrated really good social skills.

His guardian had done an extensive amount of training with him, so we just did a short refresher on dog training basics.

I recommended he change his marker word from “good,” as that word is used too frequently to be an effective indicator for dog training.

Next, I went over how to introduce a cue as well as how to eventually fade the lure. These are crucially important steps if you want to teach your dog to listen to you when you speak to them.

Since Chip does like to jump up on his guardian’s mother, I showed him an easy way to teach dogs manners. I like to call this celebrating and it’s a wonderful way to condition a dog to sit when it meets someone instead of jumping up on them.

We finished up our fundamentals section by discussing dog body language, specifically cut-off signals, dog consent and affirmation signals.

It’s really important to have a good read on your dog and what they’re communicating if you have any behavior problems, but especially when you want to stop resource guarding. Dogs give warnings before they bite so knowing what they are goes a long way towards stopping this behavior problem.

We spent the next few minutes discussing Chip’s behavior with strangers, when people come to the door and even how to stop his jumping on his guardian’s mother.

I made sure to point out the importance of people not correcting Chip or telling him to stop jumping. This is one of the most common mistakes people make with dog behavior problems.

For dogs, all attention is a reward. And whatever your dog is doing when you give it attention is what you are specifically rewarding. This is how people accidentally train their dogs to bark at the window, get into the trash or jump up on guests at the door.

I showed the guardian how to use a positive interruptor combined with hand targeting to redirect chip away from barking at the window or getting into things.

How to Stop Resource Guarding in Dogs

After breaking down all of the fundamentals and answering Chip’s guardian’s questions, we started to discuss why dogs guard things in the first place.

An easy way to identify a dog who is in a resource guarding mode is their posture. They are usually very still, standing over the item or having it in their mouth. When someone approaches, dogs who guard will usually freeze first, then emit a low growl, followed by a loud growl, teeth-bearing, staring, etc. As a general rule of thumb, stiff and still is not a good body mechanic for dogs.

Dogs are normally wiggly and jiggly. If you see the dog isn’t tense, its tail is wagging in the middle, it has bouncy behavior, runs in small circles or walks around you pointing their butt in your direction, that’s generally an indication a dog is happy.

We also discussed one of the worst things you can do if your dog guards things, taking it away. This is the last thing you should do if you want to stop resource guarding as it validates the behavior.

Fortunately, Chip’s guardian was not taking things away when his dog growled. This is also one of the most common mistakes people make when they’re trying to stop resource guarding from their dog.

Instead you want to help the dog learn that we are not there to steal their stuff. I spent a few minutes going over how to teach Chip to drop. That video explains how to do that as well as how to teach a dog to take and give.

Helping a dog practice dropping low value things like their toys is a foundational part of helping a dog learn to stop resource guarding.

People often ask why they should teach their dog to drop low-value items like toys. The answer is that it’s an easy way to develop a reliable drop cue.

If you have a dog with a guarding problem, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below.

Of course Chip decided to not guard anything when we were shooting this video on how to stop resource guarding. But that didn’t stop me from going over these tips to help Chip with this problem.

Key Element Needed to Stop Resource Guarding

The most important thing to keep in mind when you want to stop guarding in dogs is to stop before the dog gets upset or gives a warning. Many people keep on pushing after the dog has communicated it is uncomfortable and that is where dog bites can occur.

By contrast, this method to stop resource guarding works because we adjust the instant the dog gives the very first indication that it is uncomfortable.

By backing up, giving the dog more space and then creating a positive every time someone approaches, we help the dog feel they don’t need to protect their stuff. You can only really stop resource guarding once a dog feels comfortable and confident that you are not there to steal from them.

An important yet small tip is to also avoid approaching Chip when he has a high value item like a bully stick or other chew. Many people think their dog looks cute when they are engaged in these things and go over and try to pet them.

But if your dog has a resource guarding issue, that’s the last thing you should do. A much better approache is to police up and remove anything that the dog may decide to guard so they don’t get access to it in the first place. Prevention is a wonderful tool when it comes to resource guarding.

But you also want to take every advantage to teach a dog to not resource guard things when the behavior happens. To that end, I recommended that the guardian leave small stashes of treats around the house, especially around places where Chip is likely to guard something.

This way, anytime Chip shows that behavior, the guardian can pull out a few treats and immediately go to work to stop resource guarding in his dog.

As we were wrapping up the session, the guardian asked what his mother should do when Chip decides to cry or protest bark when they are visiting a neighbor.

A much better approach than reacting to the behavior is to set the dog up for success. Taking Chip out for a nice long sniff walk and then giving him a high value item like a bully stick or lick mat before they leave would be a better approach. There are of course other things you can do, but since we had been at it a while, I wanted to focus on the basics and resource guarding in this session.

It will be really important for the guardian and anyone that Chip interacts with on a regular basis to ignore him when they first come home. Same thing as when they leave.

Many people think it is mean to not pet a dog who is excited when we return home, but this simply cultivates that excited behavior. The dog gets more and more excited for the person to arrive home and once they reach a certain level of excitement, it’s hard for them to contain themselves.

A better approach is to get into a habit of ignoring the dog when you come home, until it is calm. Once that is the case, you can ask the dog to sit or come over, but you need to immediately stop giving it attention when the excitement returns.

This requires start-and-stop methods that many people don’t have the discipline to continue. But it’s crucially important if you want the dog to give up the behavior.

By ignoring a dog when it’s overexcited, and then giving attention when it is calm, we are communicating what behavior we want from the dog. This needs to be a consistent lesson if you want your dog to stay calm when you come home.

It’s crucially important that no one makes a big fuss when they come home and Chip is excited, otherwise they are simply training the dog to continue doing that behavior.

We covered a bunch in this in home Brentwood dog training session. To make sure Chip’s guardian can remember them all, we recorded a Roadmap to Success summary video that you can watch below.

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