Food aggression occurs, because some dogs associate people or other dogs coming near their food, as being a bad thing.
- Maybe we have a rescue dog, that had to fight for his food in an earlier life.
- Maybe we have been inadvertently taking food, or other objects away from our dog by force.
Now, he thinks he needs to guard his belongings.
Certain dog breeds, for example protection dogs, may also have a higher tendency to guard.
To reduce food aggression, we want to make sure our dog associates people approaching him, with something positive.
Never try to take food, or other items away from an unknown dog. Even seemingly easy-going dogs, may sometimes try to guard their food and toys.
Note – The exercises below, help to prevent food aggression. Do not perform these exercises on dogs that are already food aggressive, and/or causing bite wounds. Instead, contact a professional trainer.
1. Add something really good to our dog’s food bowl
A good way to solve food aggression issues, is to show our dog that people and other dogs coming near him, during dog feeding time, is a positive thing.
When my dog is eating, I throw some good treats into his food bowl, for example little pieces of cheese or bacon. I keep repeating this, until he is looking forward to my visits.
Note – Do not reach down to pet or stroke, food aggressive dogs.
Once my dog is comfortable with my presence, I sometimes take the food bowl away, show him that I am adding yummy treats into it, then give it back to him. I also take other objects (e.g. paper, sticks) away from my Shiba Inu, add food to it, and return the enhanced object. Sometimes, I add food into his food toys, or help him get the food out.
This teaches our dog that having people around during feeding time, means more food. It also shows him that when we take something away, it usually comes back with an added bonus. If we do all this often enough, our dog will be looking forward to us coming over, during his meals.
My Shiba Inu sometimes brings a toy over to me, in the hopes that I will add some food to it!
2. Hand-feed our dog
Only do this if our dog is not aggressive, and does not have a bite history.
Hand-feeding occurs naturally when we use reward obedience training. I also hand-feed my dog during dog grooming and handling exercises.
Hand-feeding teaches our dog that the human hand is a really good thing, and yummy food comes from it. It can also strengthen our bond with him, because he sees that food comes directly from us.
Feeding with our hands, helps us establish pack leadership because –
- We can set the speed of feeding.
- We can demand good eating manners. For example no grabbing, and only take food from us gently.
- We can ask our dog to work for us. For example doing a Sit or Down, before getting any food.
It is generally a good idea to keep up with some hand-feeding, throughout our dog’s lifetime. This helps him maintain good bite inhibition.
3. Teach our dog the Drop command
- First, give our dog a fairly low priority and safe toy.
- When he takes it in his mouth, bring a high priority treat to his nose, and say Drop. Chances are, he will drop the toy, and try to get at the treat.
- As soon as he drops the toy, mark the behavior (i.e. say Yes), give him the treat, and give him back the toy.
- Let him play with the toy for a bit, before repeating the exercise.
Once he understands the command, we can use higher priority toys, and ultimately, food toys.
If my dog is refusing to drop objects, then I try using a higher priority treat. If he bites on me, then I usually do a time-out. I try not to overtax my dog, and keep sessions short and positive. In this way, he will be motivated to play this game again.
I also practice Drop sessions during walks, with sticks and other safe objects. This helps a dog to generalize the Drop command for outside the house, and for outside objects.
When we are out on walks, I try my best to keep my dog away from questionable objects. If he manages to pick up an undesirable item, I no-mark him (say Ack-ack), then hold a good treat by his nose. As soon as he drops the item, I praise him, and treat him.
If I really want an item back, I will hold firmly onto it (close to my dog’s muzzle), and give the Drop command. It is important that we do not pull back, and make it into a tug game. I just hold it still, and try to be as uninteresting as possible. My dog will usually lose interest, and drop the item. If he does this, I praise him, and treat him.
Do not try this technique if our dog is aggressive, and is likely to bite.
If an object is dangerous and is too small to hold, we may have to forcibly go into our dog’s mouth. He will probably hate it, but if we must do it, then we must do it. Make sure to do some simple commands afterward, so that we can treat him for his positive actions.
If we frequently remove items by force, our dog will likely get aggressive, and start guarding food and belongings from us.
This is why we want to set our dogs up for success, and prevent him from picking up dangerous objects in the first place. In this case, prevention is much better than cure.
4. Play the “object exchange” game
An alternative to simply teaching the Drop command, is to play the object exchange game.
- First, bring out several toys of about equal priority.
- Give one of the toys to our dog, and let him play with it for a short duration.
- Issue the Drop command, and exchange the old toy with a new one.
- Initially, it may be necessary to sweeten the pot with some additional treats. Sometimes, I stuff the new toy with some food. Therefore, not only does my dog get back a new toy, he also gets one with food in it. He is usually very happy to make that exchange.
Once we notice that things are going well, we may slowly phase out the treats, and just do the object exchange. If our dog is unwilling to give up his current toy, then we can try to lengthen the time that he gets to play with it, or add food into the equation again.
If our dog misbehaves in any way, for example bites on our hand, then the game stops, and all toys and food are removed.
5. Get strangers to toss food to our dog
When we have guests, give them some good treats to toss to our dog. This will help him associate new people with his favorite food, and lessen his food aggression when strangers are around.
If our dog has a bite history, make sure we have him on a leash, so that our guests are always safe. We may also place him behind a secure dog gate. Then, our guests may feed him by extending a chopstick or wooden spoon with food, through the gate.
6. Ensure there are no high priority food items lying around
To reduce food aggression, it is important that we do not let our dog practice that behavior, especially with people. Remove all food items, as well as food toys and high-priority toys, when we have friends and family over.
It is important to remove all food and all toys, when our dog is meeting with new dogs, or dogs that he does not know well.
7. Supervise our dog and prevent food aggressive behavior
Make sure we are always there to supervise and intervene, when our dog starts to show any food aggression. When I am not around to supervise, I remove all high priority items, so that my dogs do not guard food or resources, from each other.
I have a simple house-rule –
“All resources are mine, and I decide which of my dogs get what.”
Whenever I give them food toys, I keep them away from each other, to prevent stealing. In this way, they do not practice any resource guarding or food aggressive behavior.
If they start any guarding behavior, I remove the resource, and nobody gets it. If they show any aggressive behavior with me, they get a time-out, and the play and food session stops.
8. Do not give our dog constant access to food
If we leave food or food toys around, our dog may feel that he has to guard it, and become food aggressive. This can be very stressful for him, and may also lead to obesity issues.
Leaving food around may also weaken our leadership position, because our dog can get food by himself. He may decide not to follow our commands or house rules, because he does not need us for anything.
To be a good pack leader to our dog, we want to follow the Nothing in Life is Free (NILIF) program. Only give him something, if he does something for us first. Stuff left-over food into his food toys, and make him work for all of the things that he wants. Remove the food toy once it is empty, or after a fixed period of time.
A busy dog is a good dog.
SHIBASHAKE,well she show aggression when someone of my family approach to her to take something that not suppose to be there in her mouth of curse.That’s have started when i found her with pencil in her mouth and i wanted to take it away i come close to her and said Bella give me that,she ignored me,then i come close to her she just look me in the eyes and continue her work,then i just said Bella drop it and i touch her on the head gently she snarl on me and start barking.With quests she really happy waving her tail,laing down,and not show any kind of aggression.Only show when she find something that is interesting to her and (dangerous.When she eats i pass close to her bowl but she just look at me and continue with eating.
Hello Bojan,
I had some similar problems with my Shiba Inu when he was young. He would pick up pretty much everything and sometimes I would have to forcibly remove the bad stuff from his mouth. However, the more I did this, the more he started to protect his items because he has learned that when I approach him, I just want to take things away from him.
Some things that helped me most include –
1. Stopping my dog from getting the object before he gets it in his mouth. I walked him on a shorter leash and was always on the look-out for bad stuff.
2. Reduce number of force removals. I limited force removals to only dangerous items. Tissues and such I will try to stop him from getting them with the leash but if it is in his mouth I don’t forcibly remove it.
3. Playing the object exchange game, adding food to his objects, and teaching him the drop command.
4. Bite inhibition training.
Here is another article on resource guarding that focuses on why dogs develop this behavior –
http://shibashake.com/dog/resource-guarding-shiba-inu
A professional trainer can be very helpful in these circumstances.
I really need some advice. I have golden retriever 3.5 months old female.She start to snarl on me when i want to take something from her that not suppose to be in her mouth.It’t only for when she sees that i have food or treat in my hand,but when i am not she just start snarling on me and i have a few marks from her teeth.She is very angry
Hmmm, then it may not be food aggression.
Does she just snarl at you or at everyone in the family? Does she show aggression towards young people, old people, men, women, dogs?
Since she is so young and already showing aggression, it will really help to get a professional trainer to come over and observe her. A professional will be able to identify what triggers are causing the aggressive reaction (whether it is people, food, toys, dogs, or something else). Once you identify the aggression triggers, there are a variety of methods that you can use to lessen aggressive behavior. The method you use will depend on the aggression triggers so it is necessary to first identify the triggers.
Sometimes dogs can also show aggression because of health related issues.
Here is more on how I deal with changing my dog’s behavior-
http://shibashake.com/dog/how-to-deal-with-bad-dog-behavior
i love this site, very informative! i am really curious about “time-out” but the link won’t open because my computer doesn’t recognize the link because of the double ‘h’ in the http so it must have copied ‘hhtp, if you could please adjust this i’d appreciate it. it’s on the stop-food-agression-stop-resource-guarding page under tip 3
Hi Erin,
Thanks so much for letting me know about the broken link. I have fixed it.
Please let me know if you run into more issues. These things are really difficult to catch so it is great when people report these bugs. Thanks!
Hi Beth,
What has worked well for my dogs is to supervise them while they are eating and prevent any kind of stealing.
Dogs tend to be opportunistic and will steal food from each other when they can. This may make them start guarding their food.
When my dogs are working on their interactive food toys, I make sure that they don’t steal from each other. I also make sure to give each of them their own toy to work on.
My Shiba is lazy though so he will usually just dally and not work on his own toy. Once my Siberian is done working on hers, i.e., she gets up and moves on to another toy, then I let my Shiba pick off whatever she has left behind if he wants to. But no stealing while she is still working on it.
I also do joint training sessions with them together where they both get food rewards for doing commands, synchronized commands, and grooming. This helps them not to see each other as competitors for food, but rather as team-mates.
There was once where my Shiba tried to bully my Siberian into giving up her food toy (my fault since I didn’t stop them before they escalated), and for his troubles he got a time-out and I removed all the food toys so that he got nothing when he came out. And I didn’t put the toy back into circulation for a few days.
This way he learns that aggression to pack = does not get to be with pack and does not get the stuff either. Non aggression = everybody gets their own toys, gets to pick off what is left behind, and gets rewarded for playing nice.
If I take charge of deciding who gets what, when – there is no contention between them, and they learn the very good lesson that I enforce the rules so that they don’t need to enforce the rules themselves.
I’m so glad I found your site!! My oldest dog does not have any agression toward us, but she has food agression toward our new puppy, what can we do to help?
Hi Sarah,
How is your bf? Hope he is ok.
In terms of the bite, it sounds like it is more in response to being picked up rather than an issue with the food bowl.
Shibas are a primitive lot and can get stressed about handling. My Shiba was very sensitive about people handling him and also with people picking him up. Even now, he doesn’t particularly like being picked up.
From the dog’s point of view, being picked up is being put in a very vulnerable position. They are off the ground, their motion is limited, and if anything happens, they cannot get away because they are restrained and off the ground.
From what you describe, it also sounds like your Shiba may not be totally comfortable with your boyfriend yet.
I think it would be really helpful to get a good reward based trainer to come over and observe your Shiba and come up with a safe and more comprehensive program to desensitize your Shiba towards these triggers so that he doesn’t automatically resort to mouthing and aggression whenever he gets stressed.
I think it would also be helpful to do bite inhibition training and to keep up with it continuously so that he learns to control the force of his bite. Shibas tend to be a very mouthy breed so I find bite inhibition to be a must with them. But only do it if it is safe.
Since I cannot observe your situation it is difficult to exactly pinpoint what the issues are. That is why a professional trainer will be helpful -from a safety perspective as well.
What I did with my Shiba was to slowly desensitize him to handling. I would briefly touch one paw, and treat. Briefly touch his ear and treat, and so on. But again, you would only do this if he is ok and not aggressive to these brief touches. I did this several times, every day, and he got better wrt. handling. This is something that I still keep up with today.
Here is an article on handling –
http://shibashake.com/dog/hug-dog-teach-your-dog-to-enjoy-hugging
Still though, the best thing I think is to find a good trainer with Shiba experience. When I was looking for trainers, this trainer search site from apdt was helpful.
http://www.apdt.com/petowners/ts/default.aspx
Let us know what happens.
Please allow me to correct my first statement .. We have curbed his aggression towards people approaching his bowl WHILE he eating. We now have this other issue.
Hello again ShibaShake! Please help!!! :[ Well, I curbed my puppy’s aggression towards people approaching his bowl drastically, its almost non existent now. :] And I no longer allow my boyfriend to try to pet him while he eats either, haha. That has helped enormously.
But we’ve run into another problem and I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of puppies doing this or if you have any tips to fix it, SAFELY. We’ve had our puppy for 3 months now. For the first month and a half, our puppy’s water AND food dishes stayed on the floor at all times. He eats his meals twice a day, so most of the day his food bowl would be empty on the floor. But whenever he was near that empty bowl, he would be aggressive to the point that he would bite to break skin with no warning. No growl, no lip curl, nothing. He would just bite. He’s done it twice now to my boyfriend. At that point, I had underestimated how smart my little Shiba is and instead of teaching him that possessiveness over his empty bowl was not okay, I completely eliminated the bowl and now after every meal, his bowl goes up. Its been that way for the past month and a half and we’ve had zero problems and no biting.
I have officially learned today that underestimating him was a big mistake and I never should have taken that empty bowl off the floor, but then again I didnt know what I could do. After his meal today, I forgot to put up his bowl. Of course my puppy knew I forgot too. He walked out of the kitchen into the room where I was, a room where his bowl is COMPLETELY out of sight. My boyfriend picked him up and without warning or hesitating, our puppy took a nice little chunk out of his lip.
I know our little Shiba cant read minds and so I know he doesnt understand that I forgot it, for all he knew I may have purposefully left it to put more food in, which is what I’m sure he was hoping for. He’s gotten used to knowing that the bowl on the floor means food and when its not on the floor, food is done. NOW I would like to correct what I’ve done and be able to leave his bowl on the floor at all times without him being aggressive. I need to teach him that his bowl on the floor does NOT always mean food.
Hi Enelle, Good to see you again.
Begging is a tough one to implement because it is difficult to resist the dog begging look – lol.
As with any behavior though, just don’t reward it and your dog will stop doing it and try something else. Dogs are very clever and will only repeat behaviors that get them good results.
You must be perfectly consistent though, which means no food of any kind for any type of begging. And everyone in the family has to follow that rule.
If you give in and give them food sometimes, then you are intermittently rewarding them, which will make them even more motivated to repeat the behavior – similar to a jackpot machine. Sometimes it gives you lots of money but most of the time it gives you nothing – which makes us even more motivated to pull that lever! š
If it is begging at the dinner table that you don’t like, then you can give them an alternate command during meal times – e.g. go to your mat. Then only reward them intermittently for staying on their mat. I.e. walk over to their mat to treat them. Never treat them when they are close to the table because that is the behavior you want to discourage.
Hope this helps š
Excellent tips – will def be trying a few of these! Do you have any tips about begging? Am trying to retrain and replace bad habits – one of which is begging whenever there is a thought of food – kitchen, table, snack, anything…have seen major improvements but still has issues…