Food Aggressive Dog - Page 4

I'm not sure why people deem it necessary to intervene when their dogs are eating.  I've read numerous articles on how to deal with dogs who are food agressive.  If we know this as dog owners and the simple methods have not worked, then why not just leave the dog alone when eating.  People who like to put their hands in dog bowls and constantly aggravate their dogs when eating are asking for trouble.  Most dogs are not food agressive, but when you get one that is, and all the pet dog articles on how to overcome this problem has failed, why not just leave the dog alone.  Maybe just feed the dog in a crate...But going to all of these extremes to solve a problem that is genetically hardwired is foolish.  I for one am aggressive if anyone puts their hands in my food bowl when eating...!!!!!

Hexe and others gave really good advice on this thread, I took away some pointers myself :)

EchoEcho, I'm glad you're able to work with this dog, at least this dog is in a home situation that she could be correctly worked with (unlike the person who had the hound dog that was aggressive towards her toddlers and she wanted to keep working on teaching her toddlers and the hound how to work nicely together)

I've owned and lived with a lot of dogs, never had one who was food aggressive with people (some who gaurded food from other dogs, but never me.)  Personally I don't know if I could stand to own a dog who ever showed the least bit of any kind of aggression towards me, but kudos to those who can work with these dogs effectively. 

I'm not a professional trainer but I have taken classes and done some training of other peoples dogs.  I've only worked with one dog who showed food aggression, it was an intact male pitbull.  However his temperament was not nearly as hard and strong-willed as your girl seems to be.  I taught his owners how to do obedience with their dog and to make him work for his rewards.  Once the pitbull realized he was no longer running the household he stopped any food/toy possessive aggressive issues (and other dominance problems.)
I once worked for an English show labrador breeder who had many, many fine dogs.  She used a very nice stud dog on a couple of her dams and kept 3 progeny from two different litters.  All 3 progeny showed food/object possessive aggression early on (never saw this behavior in the dozens of other dogs I took care of and trained for this breeder.)  I was able to stop their behavior towards me (they had otherwise soft temperaments) but these 3 dogs had to be permanently kenneled alone (unlike all of the other dogs at the breeder's kennel who were 2 dogs to a kennel) The breeder ended up placing the 3 dogs in pet homes and never using those bloodlines again. 
The degree of strong will that EchoEcho describes of her female makes me think this probably genetic rather than learned behavior, either that or maybe this female was supreme ruler of her littermates, lol. 


For those who wonder why anyone would fuss with a dog's food, especially if there is food aggression involved.  There have been countless times where I needed to take a dog's food away.  Either because they didn't finish it, or I needed to add or take something away from it.  The biggest reason someone should be able to safely handle their dog's food is if that dog should try to eat something that wasn't part of it's diet, say if a dog grabbed some cooked chicken bones from the trash or something.  It's a matter of the dog's safety that a person should be able to take food from their dog, even out of their mouths.   

EuroShepherd I do believe that she was the supreme ruler of her litter mates (no joke). She was rather obnoxious to them and most dogs she came into contact with for that matter (even at 8 weeks of age). I do think their must be a genetic component to food aggression. I have fostered 20+ dogs and several of them have been food aggressive to dogs however, they haven't growled at me. Good new is it seems to be getting better. I don't think this issue will ever go away completely. I have zero tolerance for my own dog growling at me so this issue is rather irritating to me. I have found that telling her to "leave it" when she gets a little growly with me does work very well so I find it interesting that although she growls at me (assuming this is an attempt for me to leave her alone while she eats) she will readily leave her food if I tell her to do so. 

FYI

My male chocolate lab has such a ravanous appitite that he gets aggressive, but not towards me, but my other two dogs.  I asked a few vets about this and they all seemed to agree that it is a genetic appitite problem, called Ravenous Appitite Syndrome.  I have to feed him separately from the others as he will try and steal their dog food too.  I know it's not quite the same problem your experiencing with the dog growling at you, but he will get aggressive towards my other dogs and they are scared to go near him. If I interfere with his eating, he will start gobbling more as if it were his last meal? Anyway, the vet wanted to test his Thyroid glands and take other tests which were going to amount to hundreds of dollars, so I turned them down.