Tips and Tricks to Help Two Young Coonhounds Respect Personal Space

By: Sam Kanouse

Published Date: July 21, 2017

Trapper Scout Sadie - Tips and Tricks to Help Two Young Coonhounds Respect Personal Space

Trapper and Scout are one-year-old Coonhounds who live in Omaha with a nine-year-old Beagle named Sadie. Their guardians set up a dog behavior training session to help the dogs stop resource guarding, stop invading personal space, and respect boundaries.

The dogs didn’t jump up on me as much as their guardian expected when they greeted me at the door. I used a dog training secret that David, a dog behavior expert, had taught me, which is to redirect their attention through scent. Dogs explore their world and greet people through scent.

You can see how they greeted me in the video below.

When I talked to the guardian about her dog behavior concerns I noticed that the Coonhounds were repeatedly invading personal space. The dogs were demanding attention from their guardians, so I taught them the Escalating Consequences we developed to disagree with her dogs and Petting with a  Purpose to reward them for good behavior.

I also learned that the dogs didn’t have any rules, boundaries or limits to follow. When dogs don’t have rules or a job, they often try to create a job for themselves; in this case Trapper had decided to start resource guarding food items from her guardians and the other dogs.

While this is a natural instinct for dogs to guard their food, Trapper was escalating into biting at the other dogs. To get ahead of this problem before it occurs, I taught the guardians how to train the dogs to respect their personal space, especially when food is around. Increasing the distance between Trapper and the food will help her stop her perception that she needs to do resource guarding. Distance can equal respect in the dog world.

To see how I trained the dogs to respect personal space watch the video below.

As you can see in the video above, the dogs repeatedly attempted to cross the invisible boundary that I had set for them. Dogs don’t think as holistically as we do; they learn through testing all areas of the boundary until they have exhausted all possibilities. If your dog keeps testing boundaries this means that your dog is going through a learning process and it is especially important for you to be consistent during this time period.

By the end of the session the dogs were had stopped not invading personal space and I had taught the guardians some dog training techniques to help Trapper stop resource guarding. To keep up this good behavior, it will be important for all members of the house to be consistent with the rules and structure that we covered during this session. To help the dogs adopt a followers mindset and look to their guardian for leadership and direction I suggest they incorporate the leadership exercise, which they can see demonstrated in the write up to another session.

We ended this session with Trapper, Scout and Sadie’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.

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This post was written by: Sam Kanouse