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Preventing toy guarding in puppies – Resource guarding prevention game

- by MarkW2002 - 28 Comments.

Preventing guarding or being possessive of toys for puppies.

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This video goes over an exercise that helps prevent toy guarding in young puppies. Please stay tuned for more videos of food guarding prevention for puppies.

What to look for:

Puppy looks up happily, with soft eyes and relaxed expression

What are signs you are asking for too much too quickly:

Puppy freezes
Looks away without turning head, looks away, turns body away, moves away
Flattens
Stops chewing to give a hard stare
The whites of the eyes flicker
Tail wags frantically
Growling, whining, snarling
Black pupils
Tense body muscles

Tutorial to teach leave it:

Tutorial to teach eye contact:

Tutorial to teach Drop it:

Teach fetch:

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28 Comments on “Preventing toy guarding in puppies – Resource guarding prevention game”

  2. Holy cow Emily.  I recently rescued a beautiful little red heeler, and while he was doing well, my first dog was not used to another dog wanting her toys.  It did not take long for my 3 year old lab to start guarding her toys.  

    Make sure you catch any guarding as early as possible like she showed here.  They’re doing great now but wow, be very careful and always condition out guarding as soon as you see it.  Thanks for the great video Emily 🙂

    1. Yes, nipping things in the bud before they are ‘rehearsed’ can save a lot of work and make the behaviors more reliable.  I like also to teach my dogs not to hover or steal other dogs toys.  

    2. The stealing of other dogs toys is a very tough one for me.  I usually rely on leave-it and just buy alot of toy doubles for them.

        I did manage to teach them to fetch in tandem recently.  Once I charged a specific toy to each dog it, wasn’t that hard to then start having them fetch together.  I didn’t think they would take so well to one toy, but they will literally swap toys out in the field before returning to me if they dont have “their” toy 🙂  Appreciate the videos and hope all is well where you are.  Happy new year as well!

  3. Hi Emily, Happy New Year and it’s great to see another video! 
    I recently picked up an injured puppy from the market area, the vet told me she was no more that 50 days old with a severe wound on her front paw. I brought her home and she is still healing. I have two dogs, a 3 year old & a 1 year old already. The puppy I’ve brought ”guards” all the tug toys. My dogs have always enjoyed tug toys, but she seems to take it a bit more seriously I suppose. She would growl and bark and both of them seemed very surprised by this, and moved away. I’m hoping that I can find somebody to adopt her once she heals, but I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on preventing such guarding behavior against other dogs. I would hate it if she became un-adoptable because of this. She does not show any signs of “guarding” when I come close to the toys  or her food, but she growls & barks at my other dogs.
    Thanks for your videos! 🙂

  8. Hi, it’s always great to watch a new vid from you. I wrote you an email some time ago, about my Boston Terrier puppy who used to have ressource guarding problems. I was asking you if by any chance you would know any good positive trainers in France (I never got an answer from you. But that’s ok, I am sure you got tons of emails everyday). Anyway, I worked a lot on this and thanks to ‘Mine’ and the help from the fantastic guys from ClickerSolutions and CU-Dogs (yahoo groups), Jango and I made drastic improvements on this. It’s day and light.
    I wish you could come give a conference in Paris.

  9. I would really love if you could make a video describing how you teach each dog which bed/crate is theirs and not to go into the other dogs’ crates. Especially how you make sure that if one dog is in his crate, the other dogs stay out of the crate and give him alone time. 🙂

  11. Thank you SO MUCH for this video. We just rescued a 5-month old pitbull girl and she is the sweetest little thing ever. Never showed any signs of aggression. But just a minute ago she totally attacked my chihuahuas when she was having dinner and they approached her bowl. Very fiercely. She was a stray and we don’t know what she’s been through, so I guess it’s understandable, but we really need to work on her with them, seeing that she’s so sweet and calm with us already. She’s not at all interested in toys so I’ll try this technique with her food for now. But how do I do it if she’s only aggressive with our other dogs?

  12. One of our trainers has reinforced drop-it for stolen items so much that her dog dropped a foot-long dead, rotten fish in her lap when they were on the beach! “I just dropped something that you usually wouldn’t want me to have. Pay me now!!!” LOL Dogs are the best!

  13. My puppy is pretty food motivated. Once I give him a treat, he just stops whatever he’s doing, comes to me, and waits for the next treat.  I think this is also because I’ve trained him to say “please” by sitting.

    Any idea on how I can prevent resource guarding in this case, since after the first treat he just gets excited and waits?

    Thanks!

  14. awesome video! I have a 6 month old mini Aussie and a handicapped client. The dog has serious resource guarding issues with items the owner drops. This is so straight forward that I sent it to her to watch!

  16. My German Shepherd does this with his tennis ball, though he only does it to other dogs. He used to not like playing with toys as a puppy, but he suddenly picked up with playing with his ball once he got a little older. He is a little over a year and I wouldn’t know if these exercises would help in the case of him being overprotective of his ball towards other dogs only.

    1. You can do the same exercise with dogs, where you approach with a dog on leash. But its best to have a helper so both dogs are on leash and out of eachothers reach. Then the person with the dog with the toy on leash drops a treat when the other dog approaches. Other exercises you can work on is teaching your dog “Drop” to drop the toy and “Come” so the dog drops the ball and comes to you if another dog approaches to prevent the guarding in an emergency. Also you can teach “Leave it” from dogs and people, so you can say “leave it” to your dog when your dog is approached by another dog. You can also go and rescue your dog from being bothered when another dog goes to mess with him when hes got a toy. I mean, the reason dogs guard, is because they dont want the other dog to get their toy.

  18. I have a 9 month old Australian shepherd that has recently begun to slightly resource guard. He is fine with me around his dog food and even his toys, but if he has something he shouldn’t have (like a sock) he immediately stiffens up when he sees me because he knows that I’m about to take it. I used to to be able to easily grab it from him but it is becoming increasingly difficult and I’m afraid that I unknowingly reinforced his behavior. I’ve tried trading treats and that seems to be slightly better, but it doesn’t always work and I’m at a loss of what to do

  20. Hi Emily, great video! do you have any tips for resource guarding from other dogs? I have a black lab who is extremely excited over food. so when training outside with food can get her both excited and defensive from other dogs. any suggestions how to approach this?

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