Now with that being said, I have been tested by an abused dog 140 german rott that we rescued, I was scared to death. She had taken a remote control and was chewing it when I walked in, I walked over to take it from her and she growled and barred her teeth at me. HELL NO was that happening in my home. I am Alpha and I will not tolerate a dog that will show aggression towards me REGARDLESS of the situation. I took the remote from her and she went for me, lets say that I won that fight. And she never tested me again after that.
This is interesting.
I've never had a dog that resource guarded against humans. Athena had issues with the cat going near her food when she was young, but that was solved easily and without drama using behavior modification/counter conditioning methods. Mostly, tossing good things in her bowl whenever the cat was around. When D'Argo came along, we did the same thing, and it worked fine with him too.
I did a lot of reading about this and dog aggression in general when she was growling at the cat. Trading up/counter conditioning was always the method recommended for resource guarding. Physically confronting the dog and taking the object by force was not. This was all behavioral science material, not just dog training advice. So, that was the method we used and it worked fine.
I think we can all agree on the early puppy stuff. Everyone should get their dogs used to hands being in their mouths, giving things up, all that jazz. I don't think that guarantees you won't end up with a resource guarding dog, though. (I've seen this happen with a friend's dog) And true resource guarders are irrational.
So, for those of you in the 'take the object no matter what' camp, what happens after the incident? If for some reason, your full grown dog decides to guard a sock from you, and you 'win' that sock back, what next? Do you expect it to happen again before the dog gets the point? Do you trust the dog again if it puts up a fight and bites you? What if it guards against someone else? Dogs are not good at generalizing, so how do you add other humans/animals to the 'do not guard against' circle?
The other methods are based on the goal of taking away the impulse to guard things in the first place. Also, it's easy to teach the dog that other people can take stuff because the methods are all really safe. You can include kids, cats, chickens, whatever.
If you just teach the dog that when it guards things, you take them, what does that do for the underlying reasons? Does it not matter? Does the dog automatically assume that *all* humans own the stuff? I get that if the dog thinks all the stuff is *yours*, it will not push you. But what if someone else is watching your dog. Why wouldn't a dog prone to guarding see if he could get away with it when someone else was in charge?
I have many questions, sorry.