My husband gave them both treats and Lemon snarled and lunged toward Berry. He started to back up and cry in fear! After we separated them I started to pet them both, near the food bowl and she did it again. This time she latched onto his face and he screamed in pain. When I unlatched her and separated them I noticed that I got a puncture to my finger from her. I was so upset I was shaking. After being separated for a few hours I noticed her waiting for him at the gate and I let them back together determined not to interfere so as not to upset her, I started cleaning up the food mess from earlier and had some food in my hand when she did it a third time. This time she did not latch onto him but when I plopped her on the couch and swatted her snoot (not hard) and told her ‘NO!’ she growled at me and bit the side of my hand. I realize this was the wrong response. Because she became afraid of me. I know I didn’t hurt her but I feel like I betrayed her. Berry ran to his safe space (under our bed by the headboard) where he’s been for hours now and Lemon is now sleeping peacefully on the couch. “ I feel like
I’m failing as a shiba mom because the first one I had as a teen was so easy to train I must’ve been spoiled. I’m very open to suggestions. I’m sorry if reading this offends or upsets I’ll freely admit I don’t always get it right but I would love to know how to keep them both and peacefully. I don’t know if this is food aggression or her being possessive of us. I should also add even though she’s afraid of people she has never growled, lunged or nipped anyone, ever before today.

Please help, any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Have you tried essential oils for you dog?

He lunges for trash on walks and I have to use tongs to get it out of his mouth bc he bites me badly if I try to take it from him. At meal time, he flips out. As soon as I start preparing their food bowls he starts screaming and barking and neighbors have complained. I have to slide his bowl across the floor so he doesn’t bite me as I put it down. As soon as he’s inhaled his food, he runs at the other dog and barks at her nonstop, and I have to block him from attacking her with a broom, which he viciously attacks instead (I don’t hit him with it; I just block his way).

He just goes into a RAGE. I’ve worked with private trainers, but their suggestions didn’t work–putting the dogs in different rooms or crates makes him bark worse. Squirting him or using a citronella collar had zero effect. Any reward based methods haven’t worked bc he is so flipped out he doesn’t respond or even notice. I even tried him on Prozac and sedatives but nothing helped.

I borrowed a friend’s shock collar yesterday out of desperation. It increases the shock with each bark within 30 seconds, and it did get him to sit and be quiet. I tried it again this morning, and after eating half his food and then barking at my other dog and getting shocked, he curled up in his bed and refused to eat. That’s NEVER happened, EVER. I think he associated the shock with eating, and I feel terrible for trying this bc he was probably abused as a pup and wasn’t suited for shocks.

I cannot afford a private trainer now, but I have no idea how to get him to relax at meal time, to not bark and be aggressive. I feel like he needs to be less wigged out before I can even try some of the reward techniques for food aggression. It’s like he goes to a dark, unreachable place! How can I get him to trust that he will get his food, as a first step on the path to teaching him to behave during meal time? Any ideas? Thanks.

Guarding food is an important survival trait, especially for a shelter dog who has had to live in the streets.
More on why dogs get aggressive over food.

In order to help my dog be more comfortable with resources, I do two things-
1. Desensitization and counter-conditioning
I do desensitization and counter-conditioning exercises to help my dog re-associate having people and other dogs around food with positive and calm experiences. With desensitization training, I need to start small, in a structured environment, so that I can control the strength of the trigger stimulus, i.e. people being near food. For desensitization training to be effective, I need to get the timing, environment, and everything else exactly right. When I first started desensitization training with my dog, we did it under the guidance of a good professional trainer/behaviorist.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/finding-professional-help
https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/

More on how I desensitize my dog to people.
ASPCA article on desensitization and counter-conditioning-
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/desensitization-and-counterconditioning

I also desensitize my dog to being in the car so that he can be more relaxed.
http://shibashake.com/dog/dog-anxiety-problems/comment-page-2#comment-643406

2. Management and success
The more successful (structured) experiences that my dog has (through desensitization), the more confidence, trust, and positive associations he forms. Similarly, reactive experiences will undermine that confidence/trust, set back our desensitization training, create negative associations, and worsen my dog’s future behavior.

Therefore, a very important part of helping my dog is to manage his routine and environment carefully, so that I do not expose him to situations that he is not ready for, and that will trigger an aggressive/fear response. I always try to set my dog up for success, so that he learns to trust me and to look to me for direction. If I miss something and we find ourselves in an uncertain situation, then we leave right away, before my dog becomes reactive.

I set up a fixed routine and a very consistent plan. In this way, my dog knows exactly what to expect from me and what I expect from him in return. Routine and consistency help to create certainty, which helps to reduce stress and conflicts.

For something like this, it is important to start small, set my dog up for success, carefully manage his environment, and slowly build up his trust and tolerance.

However, dog behavior is very context dependent. In cases of aggression, it is best and safest to get a professional trainer who can observe my dog in his regular routine and environment, as well as help me develop a safe and effective plan for rehabilitation.

Onfortunately, when we want to give sweets to all 3, Laïka, our husky, transforms into a monster. She gets this trigger with the smell of dogsweets or other foods that falls within her nearby reach. Her eyes turn evil and she doesn’t growl, to warn you. She jumps forward. Teeth first. However she will protect us and those smaller than her, even children, normally, when she is triggerd, she will attack the weakest first. She had attacked us both already in one of those moods. when she is calm, she comes and begs for forgiveness. It’s like, she knows she had done wrong, but that the need to be bad and evil is to strong.

The tips above are good, but what do I do, with my little girl? We want to be able to take her with us everywhere, as we have done with every dog we ever had before her. Now we avoid markets because she would attack everyone to get to the food, if she sees it. If it’s in a bag, she mostly leaves it. That is impossible right now to walk within a crowd or go to a restaurant. Having drinks works on the terras. but winter comes, and that means, for now, she can’t come, with the lack off faith she will behave. I’m afraid to say.

Doglovers as we are, our Husky is in our heart and we want to show her off, in good manners, for here they are known as dangerous beauty’s.

please help?

My Shiba Inu showed similar behavior when he was a young puppy. High priority food items that he cannot finish with one bite will really stress him out and he will run around trying to find a place to hide it.

With Sephy, I put him in his crate first, then I gave him his Greenie and shut the door. In this way, he can take as long as he wants to work on his Greenie, he doesn’t have to worry about it being stolen, and he associates his crate with getting high priority rewards. However, I stopped giving him Greenies because of possible risks of it getting stuck in a dog’s digestive system.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/14/dangerous.dogtreat/

Management and prevention is best with my dog. If I let him go crazy, then take away his Greenie as punishment, he will associate people coming near him with losing his high priority items. This will worsen his resource guarding behavior. Instead, I want him to associate me with getting rewards, and keeping him safe while he works on his chew.

Sephy also learned very early on that if he ran to hide under the bed or under the papasan chair, it becomes difficult for us to get to him and stop him from doing his Shiba hijinks. It became like a game to him. He would start doing crazy behaviors and then run to hide under the bed or chair.

To stop him, I put a drag-lead on him (Only under supervision and only with a regular collar. Absolutely no aversive collars). This allowed me to effectively stop him from running away. It also allowed me to get him out from under the chair and bed easily and without physically putting hands on him.

In general though, I always want to set my dog up for success. If I know that a Greenie triggers stress and guarding, then I want to change the management process so that my dog doesn’t keep repeating those behaviors. The more reactive episodes my dog has, the more likely he will repeat those behaviors, with greater severity, and in a wider variety of contexts.

Careful management of my dog’s routine and environment has served me very well. I want to maximize successes and not expose him to situations he is not ready to handle. With my dogs, prevention is always better than punishment after the fact.

My lovely siberian husky is 1.5 years and is exceptionally affectionate and playful. She goes on play dates everyday and does very well with other dogs and is well trained can do anything I ask (in most cases). I have noticed, she is very territorial when in small spaces such as under the bed. Its not very often, but she does become aggressive when she is trying to hide a greenie and has bitten but not pentrated the skin and growls … When she has done this I usually Will tell her no but getting her out from under the bed is rough to punish her… I feel that I should just block the area but is that really the best solution?

Do you have any solutions for getting my husky to be less territorial of small spaces?