How Puppy Owners Often Times Create or Exacerbate Resource Guarding

Don't fall into this common trap of creating resource guarding in your puppy.

Resource guarding is normal. The idea of having something that is seen as important to survival or that is high in value, and then displaying avoidance or aggression in order to keep the “thing” when approached by someone else is an adaptive trait that has allowed individuals to survive long enough to sustain an entire species. If individual canids in the wild were to always give up whatever valuable items they had to any given passerby, they would not survive long enough to sustain their species. And yet, it is something that dog owners “complain” a lot about.

While genetics can play a big role in how much resource guarding a dog can be predisposed to displaying (hello guardian breeds), the “nurture” side can certainly also play a role in developing learned behavior.

A mistake that I see many puppy owners make is constantly pulling everything out of the puppy’s mouth. Anytime they pick something up, the owner runs over, grabs their snout, pries their mouth open, and then pulls the item away. And this can happen dozens of times a day quickly adding up to hundreds of times over the puppy’s first few months. And what does this teach the puppy? Picking things up in their mouth is a normal part of their development. No more strange than a toddler touching things with their hands. They don’t even recognize what they’re doing half the time. So while owners think they are teaching the puppy to not pick things up (they’ll keep picking things up because that’s what their genetics and growing brain are telling them to do) instead they are teaching the puppy that every time they have something in their mouth and someone approaches them, they will lose the item. This encourages and validates resource guarding for them, as it becomes true that items are taken away when they are approached by people. And eventually at some point in social maturity, the puppy develops the confidence to say “I’m sick of this and won’t tolerate it anymore.” They stand their ground and guard the item and that’s the first time a growl or tooth display or air snap or even bite happens “out of the blue” as the owner would say.  And that’s how owners end up creating and/or exacerbating resource guarding in their dog.

Instead of validating the idea of “when I have something important and someone approaches, I lose” we can teach them “when I have something important and someone approaches, I gain.” We do this by ALWAYS trading items from the puppy. If we take, we give them back something in return - of equal or ideally, GREATER value. Sometimes toys, sometimes food, sometimes the same item we took PLUS food. We really need to instill that it is not a bad thing when someone approaches you while you have something of importance. Then at bare minimum we can control what we can control - the “nurture” side, and not cause or worsen resource guarding tendencies in a developing puppy. We can’t change genetics, but we can certainly change how we interact with a growing puppy and make the conscious effort not to throw gasoline on the fire.