Food Aggression

When you welcome a dog or puppy into your home, it’s extremely important to work on preventing or solving the dog’s possessiveness over its food bowl.

Step 1: No food in the bowl yet.

Step 2: Have the dog sit patiently while it waits for its bowl. Use a leash to control her movement and ask for a sit. With a brand-new puppy, it’s ok to build this slowly each day, asking for more and more patience each day.

Step 3: While the dog is sitting nicely, put the empty bowl on the floor. The dog likely will jump up from its sitting position, so use the leash to guide the dog back into sitting. Be calm, be quiet, move slowly. Lift straight up on the leash, applying pressure until the dog is sitting, then immediately release the pressure.

Step 4: Put a handful of food into the bowl and say a release word like “OK” to let the dog know she can now eat. LEAVE your hand in the bowl while she eats. Move your hand around. Touch the dog’s head and body lightly with your other hand to let her get used to that.

Step 5: Add more food, touching the dog lightly, and touching the dog’s bowl.

Step 6: Once the dog is relaxed and accepting of these steps, use some saved meaty leftovers such as bits of meat to add to the bowl while the dog is eating.

Tips:

• When the dog has proved to you that it is relaxed and not aggressive through these steps and you have children, let the children toss the meat bits into the bowl with you right alongside to monitor. If the dog is relaxed and continues to eat— no freezing, staring at the child or growling — the child can also practice moving around near the dog and touching the dog. If the dog does growl or freeze, have the child step back, still close to you, while you go through the steps again.
• If the dog is growling, snarling or showing serious signs of aggression, contact a professional trainer. Do not risk a bite! While you are working with the trainer, until the dog is truly safe, feed the dog locked in a crate or a closed room for safety. If the dog is in a crate, do NOT reach in to take the bowl. Call the dog out of the crate instead.
• Do not take the dog’s bowl away at any time during initial training. This will cause the dog to become more stressed and more possessive of its food, as you’ll only be proving to the dog that it has good reason to be concerned about losing its meal.