Food Aggression Prevention. - Page 2

ALL Dog Training is "Trial & Error"...You try something and if it doesn't work...You try something else...SOOOOOoooooo Experience is the key...but All that Experience is is to know more ways of trying to accomplish a specific problem...
As was said...It's all difficult to give correct advice over the internet...In Person is the best way to get helpful suggestions...
When dealing with a problem that can get someone hurt...Such as getting Attacked or Bit...It's not good to just try something without having all the information possible...
I would not want to be the person giving the advice and having someone get hurt from trying it...So no matter what advice is given...the people applying it ALWAYS need to be wary When NOT to move forward but to know when it's not going well and time to STOP...
When dealing with problems like this...the key is to move slowly...Don't try to much at one time...

~Bob~

I'm sorry. I should explain better. I haven't had Bosco for very long, and I was leaving him alone during meals. I noticed that he would eat faster when I would put the food down and then walk away, like my movement was threatening to him. He's fine if I set the bowl down and just stay in one spot.

So, I figured this would be a precursor to food aggression, and I wanted to correct it. I looked up things on what to do since what I'd done with my other dogs was something to do before the dog feels threatened with someone around the bowl.

I thought that feeding from my hand and associating myself as something positive around food was the best method, so I have been trying that for the past two weeks every other meal.

The meal time where he nipped at me could have just been him looking back at me while he was chewing his food because I decided to pet him, which is what I think it was because he only did it that once.

Still! Just to be safe, I wanted to know what everyone else would do if faced with my situation. And I wanted to know what everyone thought of what I was doing.

Hundmutter :"Prager condemns such training methods, I strongly suspect, because he does not properly understand them and has never taken time to be shown how well they can work. But think on: skilled specialist trainers at dog-supply charities, for a wide range of human disabilities, certainly here in the UK, use them, so they must get results ..." :)  Normally I would not comment as blunt  as I will but in my comments below but  to be accused of ignorance demands some plush back on my part. 

It is easy, to without proof, simply   say that I do not understand   some dog training methods.  I assure you that in my 50 years of training I have encountered, used and studied just about every , method which came down the pike.  There are  not that many of them and to "understand " them  does not require IQ above numbers of room temperature. ( in Fahrenheit) 

 I will say this. Positive reinforcement methods only are like  fighting with one hand behind the back and  legs hobbled because it uses only 1/2 of the tools in dog trainers box. Regardless of the intentions that is not what good, responsible trainer does. 

 Especially with strong dominant working dog you need to use all 4 pillars od training as I have described them above. 

 To solve a behavioral problem or to avoid one through establishing of leadership position  is a one thing and to teach sit down stay come heel .... is another. Good obedience training involves both aspects. Obedience and leadership establishment.

 Mother nature gave us psychology of positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment  where 2 of these are negative and 2 are positive. For us not to use all the 4 tools is foolhardy  and I think that we can do it only partially with   positive reinforcement ( giving reward)  and negative punishment (=withdrawal of reward) and it  is "nice" and PC but it is unnatural and it simply does not work in dogs which have natural propensity to dominance as we see it described by OP.

 I would actually say that it is dangerous and problem causing  and in my experience of training of hundreds of overly aggressive, possessive, dominant and protective dogs that just about all were trained with + only or not being trained at all. Only some "gangster dogs"  were like that predisposed genetically and nothing much would help on them no matter how you train. 

 Actually I would go as far as to say that positive reinforcement only methods are    self serving - since they  promote them selves in error as gentle  method where they may actually be very harmful and problem creating and will often cause an innocent person to get hurt and then they are outright immoral and criminal. 

 I would also say that hiding incomplete training system behind moniker of "modern " and "scientific" method, as it is often done,  is either deceptive or it ignores 1/2 of the science.  There is nothing modern  in positive reinforcement (reward) and negative punishment ( withdrawal of reward) only and  to omit  negative reinforcement ( withdrawal of negative up on positive response of the dog)  or positive punishment ( correction)..... that  is most definitively not scientific. 

 To use only 1/2 a science instead (if possible) of all the science is not good science.  I would compare it   to use of only adding and subtracting  but ignore multiplying and dividing. 

JMO

Prager Hans 

  

Hans, I almost think you protest "too much" - I do not
accuse you of being ignorant, just of having certain
preferences for one half the tool-kit, which seem to force
you to always insult the methods you don't use as
ineffective / causing more problems than they solve.

Just when in your long training experience did you, for example,
attend a proper class in Clicker Training, taught by someone
who makes their living using it ? Just "knowing" about the
existence and claims of any method is really not adequate.

In order to look at the result of what the OP has already been
trying, and only that (at the moment), it seemed better to
discuss THAT tool, and where it's misuse MIGHT lead, and WHY,
than to tell her she was doing it all wrong and the method was
shit so she shouldn't be using it anyway - which is exactly how
you came across ! Nobody ruled out using other alternatives,
I certainly didn't. [Trying to "KIS,S" !]

Now I have a question for you: when the first humans tamed
the first wolves or wild dogs to their fireside, which method do
you think they used ? Throw a rope around the neck, put
pressure on it and say "No" a lot - show them who was Boss -
or use gentle bribery and corruption and marker-words ?

LOL Yes I used clicker training and silent whistle training and marker training of all sorts and I have even taught it .   Clicker training was developed for orcas training where other approaches are not practical since these orcas are living in the water. Dogs are not in the water and thus we can use other pillars of training and I think that it is silly to train dogs like cetaceans  living in water. .  

Clicker methods are passed as humane, modern and scientific by its creator Karen Pryor  and other after her . Humane,amazingly enough to me,  it is called by people who keep whales in swimming pools!!!!!

 Also they are calling it a modern method scientific methods while such training was used by for example sheepherders for  thousands of years. Except instead of clicker they used whistling. I have seen this in  Low and High Tatra mountains and Slovenske  Rudohori mountains when I was teenager in about 1970 and spend many weeks with sheepherders observing the way they train their herding  dogs there. I assure you since this training is around for probably thousands of years clicker is jut a gimmick and marketing ploy akin to rediscovering of America.

  The "clicker" method is based on classical and subsequently operant conditioning  and it is a reward based training  1. Get the behavior. 2. Mark the behavior. 3. Reinforce the behavior.  Big  deal .   

  Look I am sorry when I  have come too strongly with my opinions at you.  But that is what my posts are - my opinions. Nothing personal. I even make the point to say JMO.  I work on most of my o[pinions  for decades and thus they are quite strong and for some uncomfortable strong. That does not mean that they are  cast in stone and not changeable.  I generally  like you and your posts. Really.  However I feel extremely strongly about this issue,..I just care too much to just give   lackadaisical answer.  Let me explain to you that I have seen too many children's faces and owner's hands bitten  and sometimes permanently disabled partially or completely  and too many innocent people messed up by overly protective or overly towards their owners aggressive dogs. I have even testify as expert witness in court and  I have seen and trained and rehabilitated  hundreds of dogs and dealt with hundreds of cases and I always ask what training have they  done before this happened. The answer is invariably positive only or no training  at all.   That is why I am so adamant about it. I am not saying that all + training leads to this . I am only saying that all such aggression is caused by such training. I have and still make living that way and it pains me to see people  scared of their own dogs  and unhappy dog owners  and dogs put down because of inadequate incomplete methods which do  train the dog to sit, down, stay, come, heel...  but do not help the owner to establish leadership position and proper  relationship.  It truly pains me to see  this. Just today I had to rescue a dog  from being put to death because he was at first trained incorrectly  with + only methods in local pet store. 

 So I hope that you will forgive me my  blunt approach.  I want people to be shocked from their PC stupor of + only training by what I am saying here. . 

 Take care.

Prager Hans 

" I am not saying that all + training leads to this . I am only saying that all such aggression is caused by such training."

Prager, I don´t believe in positive training "only", but for sure not " all such aggression is caused by such training." That´s too easy.
.

If your only use of clicker training extends back to orcas kept
in swimming pools, can I suggest you give it a more modern
2nd try ? It developed a bit since Pryor's original (and in
DOGS not cetaceans) - which is why, as I said earlier, so many
specialist trainers use it. I am not saying it is the only answer
to every problem, you KNOW that only too well by now. Nor
am I saying there's never any problems with "positive only"
training; but like Susie I don't think you can blame everything
bad that ever happened on it, either !

Care to answer my final question BTW ?

Nothing shocking here.

Leave the dog be to eat like hunterjumper posted. Give your bonding some more time, too, like Q man suggests. Clearly, there was a reason the dog started to resource guard his food. If he learns from you instead, that you only give to him and not take from him, given time, he won't be feeling threatened at mealtimes, anymore.

Also, Are you feeding your dogs separately, meaning at separate times? Or, from their own bowls and spots but at the same time? The other dogs being present can have their own influences on how fast the food is devoured.

The dominance scenario can play out and switch out between dog characters. My two have their pack rules and they aren't simple. Lol

How many would consider sending their dog to a 'trainer' who claims that if you have properly established 'leadership'' your dog would not protest if you saw his legs off ? I realize that was a comment to 'shock' people, (considering the source, no shock here) , but anyone who does not understand that every dog cannot be trained using the same methods is not a trainer.

When I feed my dogs, it's their food, I allow them to eat in peace. Consider how a pack of dogs must eat...gulp what they can before some other dog takes it right out of their mouth...it's instinct and it's hard wired for survival. If there is a possessive issue with objects, then deal with that. Don't start a war over food with a grown dog you didn't raise.

I'd be inclined to agree in abstract Joan, but didn't know whether
Reliya has small kids or other pets running round, which could
increase the urgency of mending her situation ...