Resource guarding or a sudden aggression towards the pet owner.

There are a few reasons why a dog can show aggression (growling, barking, snapping, and lounging) towards its pet parent, but the most common cause is resource guarding or, in other terms, possession aggression.

This type of aggression happens when the dog is guarding their food bowl, a chew treat, a favorite toy, a dog bed, a couch, or a favorite human. In some cases, it can escalate into a dog that guards almost everything: found items on the street, stolen objects (e.g., socks), or literally anything you drop on the floor.

In this article, we will discuss how to recognize resource guarding and how to act safely around a dog who shows possession aggression, what strategies you can use to retrieve the item safely, and how to prevent resource guarding incidents from happening in the first place. We will also discuss potential mistakes puppy owners can make that provoke resource-guarding instincts to escalate in their dogs.

Disclaimer: resource guarding is a serious issue and should not be taken lightly; if left unmanaged or if treated incorrectly (for example, punished for it), dogs will most likely escalate into biting their owner. If you already have a dog with a bite history or multiple resource-guarding accidents every week, I suggest hiring a force-free pet professional specializing in resource guarding – a dog trainer, behavior consultant, or veterinary behaviorist.

Why dogs resource guard?

It’s natural for dogs to have a guarding instinct; in the wild, it is a part of their survival. However, it is unnatural for a dog to show aggression towards the pet parent. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon. When we deal with possession aggression, that means you and your dog have a broken relationship or mistrust. Dogs don’t resource guard to mess with us; they feel they are being messed with.

A dog who guards is threatened that something valuable will be taken away. Dogs don’t trust us around those valuable possessions.

In some dogs, resource guarding can be inherited: for example, puppies whose mothers didn’t have enough food might grow up with potential resource guarding issues.

In other dogs, it is a bad experience—if you have a rescue with resource guarding, they might have to fight for food or shelter to survive, so now, even with abundance, they still need to protect what is theirs.

And very often, resource guarding can be our fault: if we constantly take things away from the dog, mess with them when they eat, don’t let them finish their favorite treat and take it away, or force them to relinquish their toys – they might start distrusting us and start protecting their things.

Possession aggression doesn’t happen overnight; distrust and frustration are built over time. If we break this trust even more by punishing the dog or constantly taking things away, things will escalate, and you will end up with a dog who started barking or growling at you “for no reason.” Hot take: there is always a reason.

How to recognize resource guarding

The most important thing about resource guarding is recognizing it early and acting accordingly. To identify it, you must understand the dog’s body language.

You can watch the video below for a full explanation of recognizing stress and signs of aggression in your dog. Otherwise, here are a few noticeable signs of your dog showing signs of possession aggression:

Early signs

• Freezing / or being very stiff
• Looming over the object
• Eating faster (with food) or trying to ingest a non-edible
• Running away with items and hiding from you
• Side eye (whale eye) or hard direct stare
• Ears pinned flat against the head.

Before attack

• Hard stare
• Showing teeth
• Growling
• Barking
• Lunging
• Air snapping
• Biting

Ladder of aggression and why we don’t punish dogs for resource guarding

With most dogs, aggression escalates in the same patterns: dogs start by freezing and giving you a hard stare (or a side eye), then showing their teeth, growling or barking, snapping and lounging, and only then attacking us with a bite. All the steps before the bite are a warning system. The dog tells us to back off and stay away. If you ignore the warning signs, they will have nothing to do but bite.

If the dog shows an early signal of aggression (e.g., a hard stare) and we retreat, the dog knows that we understand the communication system and can be trusted. If we ignore the hard stare, the dog chooses the next signal (e.g., a growl). If we ignore them, they go with the following signal until we retreat.

If we repeatedly ignore the warning system or correct/punish the dog for it (e.g., punish for barking), the dog learns to suppress these warning steps and immediately attacks and bites. So, if you are dealing with a dog “who doesn’t show aggression ladder anymore” and bites randomly, that dog has lost all trust in us and considers us or whatever we do a threat to them.

We often see resource guarding in smaller dogs because people often disregard smaller dogs that show warning signals. Some people feel cute or funny when a little dog growls at them. If you deal with barking or biting small dogs, please remember that small dogs are still dogs.

To help the dog with resource guarding, we need to stop sending our dog down the aggression ladder, let them express their warning signals, respect those signals, and retreat every time we see those signs.

The five rules with dogs who resource guard

These rules will prevent aggression from escalating and getting worse with time. They are super important if you decide not to do any training or while you are still working on it.

1. Step back and leave the dog alone when you notice even a minor sign of possession aggression.
2. Never forcefully take things away from the dog unless it is a death/life situation.
3. Instead of fighting your dog to recall them away from the item (and then reward your dog there), send them away by tossing something yummy into the hallway or another room. Only pick up the object when the dog is away and doesn’t see you!
4. Items that trigger possession aggression should be removed when you have visitors in the house (remove toys, treats, or food bowl – or whatever your dog is guarding); if the dog guards location – use baby gates or an expandable fence to block your dog’s access to a dangerous area.
5. Ask all family members and guests to give the dog space if they suddenly start to resource-guard something and just ignore the dog: no eye contact, no talking, no approach.

How we train dogs with resource guarding (RG)

The goal of training is to create a safe and trusting space for your dog so that it doesn’t need to protect things from anyone, as well as to have positive associations when someone approaches when they have a valuable item. In other words, we teach our dogs to trust that we will not take things from them.

A training plan would include several important parts:

• Prevention of RG incidents from happening in the first place
• Management of RG moments
• Desensitization/Counterconditioning training
• Building necessary obedience skills through positive reinforcement.

Most resource guarding cases will take several months (or longer if your dog has years and years of practicing resource guarding), and some dogs might never fully recover, so management and prevention are crucial in resource guarding training.

Let’s look in detail, how I would approach a raining client with resource guarding:

Step 1. Write down a detailed list of everything your dog guards in what situations it is happening.

For example, 1) a food bowl when somebody enters the kitchen, 2) a particular type of toy (red rubber ball), 3) unfinished chew treats like large bully sticks, and 4) a couch in the living room when one of the partners approaches it.

Step 2. For each situation, we will define what can be done to prevent it from happening, how we will manage if the situation gets out of control, and what obedience skills can help with that situation or when we need to do desensitization training.

Let’s take the example of a dog that guards a food bowl when somebody enters the kitchen.

Step 3. Prevention:

• Let’s move our dog-feeding area into another room (e.g., a bedroom or basement) where no one will bother the dog when it eats. The dog will feel safe and will not need to protect anything.
• Every family member is asked not to enter the dog’s space when a dog eats
• If we have children or other dogs (dogs might resource guard from dogs too), we might install a baby gate so nobody enters the space by accident
• If the dog tends to guard an empty food bowl, we will get rid of the bowl in the meantime or buy another bowl
• Before placing a bowl with food, we will keep a dog in a different room, and the dog is only let out when the bowl is already placed, and the person retreated

Step 4. Management:

• If we need to take the bowl away after a meal, but the dog is still in the room, we will leave the bowl there until the dog leaves the room and forget about it
• If we need to grab the bowl before the meal but the dog is already in the room, we will go into the kitchen, shuffle a treat bag, and call the dog. When the dog comes, we will bring the dog into a different room, scatter some treats on the floor, leave and close the door, and retrieve the bowl.

Training:

Step 5. Useful obedience skills such as recall or “go to your bed”.

Step 6. For desensitization / counter-conditioning training we can do something like shown in the video below. Exact training protocol for your particular case should be established by your dog trainer based on your dog’s aggression severity and other underlying issues.

What about other situations?

As you remember above we established that our dog has other situations for resource guarding, each of them would probably require a separate article, but here are few tips to start with:

Guarding a particular type of toy (red rubber ball)

1. Buy ten red balls and place them all over the house; ask family members not to touch them, not to take them away, and ignore them for a few weeks (if you decrease their value, your dog might lose interest in guarding as well)
2. If the above method doesn’t work, test drive different toys and stick to ones that don’t trigger resource guarding.
3. Ask family members not to take toys from the dog and only play with those toys when the dog solicits play
4. Teach the dog how switching toys is fun: Buy new fetch /tug toys in a set of two and use both of them during play. When a dog doesn’t want to relinquish a toy, we ignore it and grab another one, entice the dog to come to play with us, and then switch toys again.
5. Teach all family members other ways how to play correctly (e.g. let the win and other things)
6. Train your dog to drop things using a Counting Game by Chiraq Patel (use for other toys to prevent new resource guarding from happening)

Guarding unfinished chewable like large bully sticks

1. Stop buying large bully sticks; get the ones that your dog can finish in one sitting
2. Give chew treats in a space where nobody walks in and nobody bothers the dog (similar to the dog bowl above)
3. Try different chews with a lower value for the dogs; some items can be more triggering regarding resource guarding.
4. If a dog obsessively guards synthetic bones and unedible chews, temporarily eliminate them.
5. Do desensitization training similar to the video with food.

Guarding a couch in the living room when one of the partners approaches it

1. Using positive reinforcement, teach your dog basic obedience skills such as on/off (get up / get down), go to your place and recall
2. Get your dog several comfy beds when they can be as cozy as on the couch.
3. When the dog is on the couch, instead of approaching it, call your dog to the kitchen, scatter some treats on the floor, and then go take a spot on the bed; if your dog decides to join you after, they most likely will not guard anything, since they are not the first on the couch.
4. If the dog still shows aggression on the couch, use doggy gates, place their dog bed there, call them to go there, and give them a nice treat so they have a solid motivation to be there.
5. Do desensitization training

Dog safety concerns

Although resource guarding is often exaggerated by humans when we feel a need to control what our dogs can possess, in rare cases, it can be a life-or-death situation. What do we do then?

Such situations can include our dog trying to ingest a pill bottle or a piece of dangerous garbage on the walk.

If garbage eating happens a lot on walks, the best solution is to train your dog to wear a basket muzzle that will prevent it from ingesting things. In this case, you can let them safely explore the item without risking their health. (Preventing them from exploring will increase their resource guarding.)

Regarding pill bottles and other things, management is your best friend. If your dog is known to ingest silly things, they can’t have access to anything that can be ingested. Besides that, you must double down on resource guarding training and teaching your dog solid cues with “drop it” as an emergency skill. If the “drop it” skill is not there yet, recall your dog with something yummy first. (Don’t panic, act like something fun is happening). Maybe keep a bag of jerky in the kitchen and toss it everywhere in the room so you can lure your dog away from the bottle. Or maybe grab a leash and say excitingly, “Let’s go for a walk.” It is always safer to distract your dog than to try to fight them since when fought; they will try to ingest the item faster.

Anyway, let’s hope nothing like this ever happens!

WORK WITH ME: If all the advice above is overwhelming and you want someone to walk you through all the steps or create a customized training plan for your dog, you can hire me in person in San Francisco or book a remote consultation – worldwide.