So it’s Saturday morning, my absolute favourite day of the week, the weather is ‘springish’ and I’m busy teaching my favourite class as well which is our puppy group for ages 4-6 months.
I love working with this age group because the pups are absolute sponges and also because it’s an amazing privilege to be able to guide and assist families in the early stages of developing relationships with their new four-legged companions.
I decide to run through an exercise which teaches the ‘drop’ cue to pups. We use some very yummy beef heel chews that the handlers give to their pups which they then trade like-for-like, or with high value treats and teach the word ‘drop’ as the pups spits out the chew.
This is a really valuable exercise which teaches pups that it’s ok to let you take things from them and gives you a cue that you can use to get them to let go of, or drop something that could be harmful to them, or they’re about to destroy (we’ve all been there!).
Everything is going really well when suddenly I hear it – a deep and very grown up growl.
I turn around and see that Sasha, the young Rottweiler pup in the group, has her chew firmly tucked in under her paws and doesn’t look at all keen on giving it up – despite the handful of treats her dad is holding next to her mouth. I move closer and she growls again – the message is very clear – “you’re not taking it either!”
Sasha’s Mom says: “I’m not putting my hand in there!” “Good instincts” I tell her, “that would be a very bad move.”
Let’s freeze the frame here and talk about what’s going on: Is little Sasha showing some sort of serious behavioural problem, should we be labeling her as a danger to society?
Absolutely not. What she has done is give us a very clear warning. This is my resource, you gave it to me and I don’t want to give it back now.
By their very nature dogs are scavengers and that means that they see many things in their world in terms of resources.
Food is a resource, toys are a resource – we’re resources too – we provide the food and the love and the attention. Behaviour that old school trainers often want to describe in terms of dominance and pack leadership is for the most part just about competing for resources in different situations.
With various dogs of my own I’ve watched how so-called ‘dominant behaviour’ can be completely dynamic and often depends on which dog values a particular resource more at the time.
For example my golden lab girl Bailey, was completely easy-going about food and would allow bones and even her dinner to be muscled in on at times by Grover the chocolate ruffian, but bring out a rope toy and she would defend it to death.
He was never ‘dominant’ over her, her resource priorities were simply different to his and when she valued a resource highly enough she had no problem at all making sure he knew it!
One of the most useful things you can know about your dog is which resources they value the most – not just for dealing with potential guarding and conflict situations, but also so that you know how to provide the right motivation in training.
Sasha’s dad tells me she’s hungry – our handlers sometimes don’t feed breakfast before classes so the pups are eager to work for their treats. This is important for understanding as well.
At that particular moment the delicious chew was a seriously high value resource for the hungry little pup and she was willing to defend it.
I jokingly pose the question to the class: If you were starving and someone put a plate of ribs, or a nice juicy T-bone with all the trimming in front of you and then came back when you were about 4 bites in and tried to take it away – how would you react?
I go on to explain that in situations like this, old school approaches which are all about ‘putting the dog in their place’ and ‘establishing dominance’ are really just about escalating conflict and that’s never a good thing!
Sure we could wrestle the chew out of little Sasha’s grasp (I suspect not without having to do a finger recount after the fact), pin her down and do all those nasty things – and we’d ‘win’. But you’d be seriously damaging the relationship and teaching her that she can’t trust people near her stuff.
How does that play out when she’s 40+kgs of adult Rottweiler and you need to take something away from her, or worse someone’s child approaches her while she’s busy with a treat, or guarding a favourite toy?
So does that mean we just let her ‘get away’ with threatening us and do nothing? Well yes and no. Escalating would be a mistake, but we do need to (very carefully) use the opportunity to show her that she can trust us with her stuff.
I start out by offering her another chewy heel in a, like-for-like exchange. She eyes me out suspiciously for a moment, takes the offering and then very firmly puts one paw down on top of the chew she already has. This is awkward – now she has 2 chews and I’ve just been outsmarted by a 5 month old Rottweiler in front of the whole class!
I hurriedly try a different tactic. I show her a big handful of treats from my bag and then start scattering them just out of her reach. Sasha decides this is a worthwhile venture and deserts her prizes to go after the treats – I scatter a few more further away and we scoop up the chews while she’s distracted.
Another technique in this scenario, is to leave Sasha with the chew, approach her, and drop treats next to her. As she spits the chew out to take the treats, we cue her with ‘drop’, then walk away, without taking the chew. Then re do this exercise over and over again, to teach her that people approaching when she has something valuable is also a fabulous experience and in so doing you reduce the guarding instinct too.
With repetition she will start dropping the chew before you even get to her, as she will be looking for what you are bringing her. The end result is a positive response to people approaching her when she has something of high value.
Afterwards Sasha’s dad practices trading one chew for another with her a couple of times, she’s already started to warm up to the idea that we can be trusted to make fair trades.
I go on to explain that because Sasha was hungry this also wasn’t the ideal situation to practice trading with her, because the resource had too much value, but we managed to make the best of it.
Sasha does not have a ‘behavioural problem’, but she does have strong natural resource guarding instincts and I give her family homework to create lots of opportunities to make fair trades with her – practicing trading a higher value resource for a lower value one.
I also suggest that they work on this after she has just had her meal so that the resources have less value to her.
Over time she will become more and more comfortable with trading and develop a solid ‘drop’ cue which could be needed for anything from rescuing a slipper to spitting out chicken bones, or something worse found while out on a walk – dogs are very successful scavengers after all!
Class is dismissed, my dignity as a trainer has remained intact, we all still have ten fingers and little Sasha goes home to enjoy a well-earned breakfast!