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Hey! First and foremost, I hope everything will be okay Mike!
Here’s this morning’s training session with KJ. I’d really appreciate your feedback—below is a video for progress review. But first, a bit of backstory.
KJ is a 7-month-old, unspayed female Golden Retriever. About a week ago, while she was chewing a bone, she growled at me when I tried to take it away. I did it on purpose to test for resource guarding, since I had noticed that she had started guarding toys from other dogs during group lessons (I always ask everyone to bring a tug or rope toy, and I also bring four identical ones myself. KJ, when running off-leash, sometimes steals one. While people can take the toy from her without any growling, she does growl at other dogs and gives the “whale eye.” Unfortunately, not every dog respects that, and some try to take the toy anyway—so we’re starting to work on it.)
I addressed the issue immediately during the bone incident. She hasn’t been taught a “leave it” command yet, as it hadn’t been necessary, but she does know “drop it.” So when she growled, I backed off, gave the “drop it” cue, then “come,” followed by “free,” and allowed her to chew again. We repeated this a few times, mixing in other commands like “sit” and “climb”Since then, I’ve been hand-feeding her meals. I place her empty bowl on the floor, hold a second bowl with her pre-measured food, and drop in handfuls, occasionally mixing the food near her and adding more. Her resource guarding isn’t very intense—during these exercises, she doesn’t growl at me or try to bite. It was only that one time with the bone that she showed guarding behavior towards me, adopting a defensive posture that made me think she might bite if I tried to grab bone with my hand. I consider this information quite important because she also started lying down with the toy and trying to chew on it during training—you’ll see it in the video.
Other dogs still sometimes take her toy, and she might snap at the air or let them take it and then try to steal it back.
Below is a training session using a tug. I already see a few of my own mistakes (as always ), and I’m sure you’ll spot even morę.https://youtu.be/t3WPC_jnJ1U?feature=shared
