# Possession guarding



## ohyeahitsclaire (Jun 22, 2013)

Tilly is 4 months old now and last week she was with a group of dogs that she normally is with down the park. When treats were brought out by one of the owners one of the dogs turned aggressive and bit her nose. She squealed a bit but after that I thought nothing of it.

Since then she keeps having episodes where she will snarl at us if we attempt to take something away or touch her. More often than not it will be a treat so we started to avoid giving her certain types of treats and it seemed to work for a while. Tonight however, she picked up a small snail in the garden and brought it inside. When I tried to take it she clamped down her jaw and snarled. I eventually persuaded her to drop it for a bit of sausage but now I have no idea what is triggering this.

She isn't bothered if we touch her while she eats or stick a fist in her bowl, hold on to things while she chews them etc and we've been working hard on the leave it command in which she swaps whatever she has for something a bit tastier. 

Has anyone else ever had this problem or have any ideas of what the cause could be. I'm starting to think I have a problem pooch.


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## sugerlump (Oct 6, 2012)

i don't know what you can do to stop that,,but i don't like it .i only had one dog in my life that did that and she got really nasty and i had to get rid of her because at the time i had three small boys ,and could not take the chance of them being bit .i hope some one can give you a good answer


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## tessybear (May 1, 2011)

Firstly joint treats in the park is a silly idea in my opinion and asking for trouble, poor Tilly! 

Guarding is a unfortunately a natural instinct in dogs and something we all want to avoid in our pets. I think the swapping for something better is the only thing you can do really. 

With my dogs Bonnie is very submissive and will give me anything. Dexter would never have a bone taken away from him and I give him his space so we never have a confrontation.


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## ohyeahitsclaire (Jun 22, 2013)

Yes, hopefully perseverance will help reduce the problem and also asking owners not to feed her anything. 

We'll see how things pan out and fingers crossed it will work.


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## ohyeahitsclaire (Jun 22, 2013)

After an afternoon with google we have discovered Tilly has all of the traits of a dominant dog. What we thought was cute as a puppy turns out to be exactly the things that have caused our problem on top of the incident at the park.

Now it's a case of asserting pack leader and getting the ideal family dog we are all after.

So let this be a lesson for all people with new puppies and people looking to get a new cockapoo that they are smarter than you think. I know we would do things a bit differently second time round.


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## kendal (Jul 16, 2009)

Keep working on the leave, give her things the chew and hold onto them the take them away, and work up to letting go then taking back. 

In my opinion from the star we taught out lot we can take anything we want off them when ever we want. I don't beleave any dog should be able to prevent you from taking something. As you never know their may be a situation when you need to take something from them to save their life. 

If they get the chance to my lot will run with it but if I catch them they will let me take it. 

I had to work on Echo being possessive around other dogs when we got delta and I need to do a bit more work on delta as she is very food obsessive. 

But keep working on it and you should be able to nip it in the bud.


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## Lexi&Beemer (May 5, 2013)

kendal said:


> Keep working on the leave, give her things the chew and hold onto them the take them away, and work up to letting go then taking back.
> 
> In my opinion from the star we taught out lot we can take anything we want off them when ever we want. I don't beleave any dog should be able to prevent you from taking something. As you never know their may be a situation when you need to take something from them to save their life.
> 
> ...


I had this issue with my last dog, so from the beginning I took things directly out of their mouths. It also helps in conjunction of the leave command. There are countless things they pick up that I've had to literally swipe their mouths to get out (things like small pieces of plastic, paper, seeds, bugs). At this point, though, I would work on the leave command and other commands as this would also help with the dominance thing too.


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