Possessiveness With Dog Food

Rosie arrived from a big litter of beautiful dachshunds however we are a peace loving family and did not want her to be aggressive with her food or toys. She is doing much better but she’s nothing like Annie. But I know they all have their different personalities just like we do.

Though sometimes we want to believe otherwise, food is our dog’s 1st priority, so the first step to training being a success is for us to establish yourself as the leader of the pack.

How To Stop Possessiveness With Dog Food

This can be achieved by showing them that they can only have their food at your discretion and your command.

To stop her from being aggressive with her food, don’t give her possession of it! By this I mean feed her by hand for a couple of weeks. Prepare her food in the bowl as usual, but don’t put the bowl on the floor for her. Simply feed her a handful at a time. The bowl of food on the floor almost instinctively makes her want to guard it, so if she is not put in this position of needing to guard, she will not bite! I did this with Rosie for several weeks even though she was doing much better. I still do this periodically to just to remind her who is in charge.

Feeding by hand also helps if your dog is dominant in other areas. It makes her completely reliant on you for the most important thing in her life, her food, and this will reinforce your position of pack leader, as she is only receiving the food from you and not from the bowl. You can also use this period of hand feeding to your benefit by making her obey some minor command from you for some of the food. Get her to sit first before one handful, or to lie down for the next, and so on. Don’t make her run around for the food as this could cause digestive upsets. Rosie now will sit or go around in a circle when I offer her food. I’m working on shaking hands (her paw)…but she HATES her paws being handled so not having much success with this one yet.

You will find that after a couple weeks of this regime, her general attitude over possessions will change. You can then try giving her food in a bowl again, and, provided there is no sign of aggression, continue to feed her normally.

After some time start to give them their dinner in their food bowl on the floor, allow her to eat for a few seconds, then take the bowl away.

Use an appropriate command each time you do so, such as “stop” or “leave it”, and keep the bowl for a few seconds.

Provided she didn’t show any aggression as you removed the bowl, tell her how she’s a ‘good girl’, give it back and allow her to continue eating. Repeat this process 2 or 3 times during each meal for a few days, then one or two times a week for a few weeks.

What Makes Them Be Possessive

Some dogs are never possessive with their food, but you may find if your dog came from a large litter, the only way she could obtain her share of the food was to threaten her brothers and sisters. Finding this action achieved the desired result (getting more food), she may well try it with you. If you don’t sort this out very early on, this possessiveness will transfer to other things, such as bones, toys, furniture and so on, perhaps even to other members of the family.

For dogs that are food possessive, do not give them bones or toys, as they will attempt to guard these in the same way. Once the food possession has been sorted out, you can try introducing a toy, but make sure the dog understands that it is your toy, and she is only allowed to play with it with you, and when you decide the game is to end, you must end up with the toy.

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