# Chewy aggression



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Personally I like to pick my battles and if one of my dogs was so aggressively possessive over a rawhide I would give this dog rawhide. Rawhide isn't the best chew in the world anyway.

Find a different chewable treat this dog likes and train as if there had been no prior issues. Give the chew to the dog and keep your hand on it. Let the dog have it for a few seconds and then tell the dog to give up the chew and give a small tasty treat of very high value like a little bite of chicken as soon as the dog lets go of the chew and mark with "good dog." Repeat and repeat and repeat until you can have the treat laying on your open hand for a while. Then repeat with the dog holding the chew by itself. As you gain better responses make sure you switch to a random reinforcement reward schedule for the trade up treat. Eventually you will stop using the trade up treat and instead mark with "good dog" to indicate that the correct response has been given. What you will be teaching is that while the chew itself is nice to have, giving it over when told to do so is also rewarding.

I would also have everyone who has had problems with the dog over this do the same process so that the correct behavior is generalized to all people.


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## sasha.pettinger (Oct 9, 2016)

Thank you!!

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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

I think there may be a "not" missing from "I would give this dog rawhide", and I agree - stop giving them to him if they cause issues, and start playing lots and lots of games of swapsies. Offer something even better than the chew he has and, when he exchanges, give him the treat and then return the chew. For dogs possession is 110 points of the law - you need to teach him that it is really worth his while to play the game by human, rather than canine, rules.

PS - if your dogs, and house, are anything like mine you may need to do a hunt through the toy box, under beds, behind sofa cushions, etc, etc for all the tail ends of rawhide to ensure he doesn't find them and get possessive. There again, I have to admit my housekeeping standards are not always of the highest...!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Oops, thank you fjm for catching that super important missing not! *Do not* give this dog rawhide chews.

Even though I always proof read my posts before I hit submit, I do end up missing errors until it is too late to edit..


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

I would not recommend giving rawhide chews at all. There are some health ramifications which you can read about online if you like. 

Another reason I would not give them is that obviously your dog values them highly. If he is showing this possessiveness, he should not be given anything high value until you go through a protocol to help him get over this feeling. 

First, have you ever used punishment or sterness with him when taking something from him? 

What do you do when he acts aggressively? 

Has he had a lot of things taken from him since you've had him? 

See, it's natural for a dog to want to hang onto his stuff. It's a survival instinct. What we have to do is prove to him that he will get his stuff and even more and better than his stuff. But we can't start out with a very highly valued thing.

Start out with giving him something he likes well enough but is not totally crazy about. And figure out what you're going to trade him for. (if you think that you are the boss and you are entitled to take whatever you want from the dog, then you will get nowhere. I don't know if you think this way but many people do...people I've worked with and this is what escalates the problem) But they can also act this way simply by unknowing owners inadvertantly taking things from them a lot with no positive outcome for the dog. So he has something that isn't extremely valued by him but he likes pretty much. You get a treat that he likes better than what he has, but not completely fantastic. (yet) You want to save the really high value treats for later as you advance. 

So you show him the treat right in front of his nose. Hang onto it as he drops the toy or chew out of his mouth. Give your cue, "drop" or "give" (I teach both. Give to my hand is useful if it's something dangerous he some day gets hold of) Drop is useful if he's a distance away. Then as you pick up the object, feed the treat and give the object back to him. Repeat. Use your happy, playful, silly voice as you do this. It is a game. Not an order. 

Then after he's getting onto this as a game, you increase the value just a little of the item he has. And you increase proportionately the treat's value...a better treat than the thing he has. Do the same thing you did before. Trade, give back the item. Repeat a few times. Then when you get the item. Put it away and play a little game. (wait to teach tug until he gets it that it's fun to give you things on cue) 

So, keep working up gradually...over a few weeks. Increase the hierarchy of value in both the item he gets and the treat...proportionately and so that the thing you're trading him is always better than what he has. 

Eventually, you don't have to always give him back the thing he had. Do it sometimes. 

And still later, you don't have to give him something good every time. But do it often. It is not a totally random delivery of reward but like a slot machine works. There are a certain average number of correct responses to reward. So, it might go something like this: he gets a treat after he's given you something for 2 reps, then 4 reps, then every rep for 3 or 4 times, then every 6 reps, then 3 reps. In many tasks you can fade the rewards to only occasionally until you might see the behavior regressing. Then you beef up the reward frequency. But in this case, where the behavior is hardwired as an evolutionary necessity, you don't want to let too many times go by that you don't reward for his giving up a valued item. It keeps the behavior fresh.

Don't be in a hurry to raise the criteria. Go gradually as you increase the value of the items he has and the treats. Vary things a lot. Vary the location you practice in and the context. Think of all kinds of situations where he might get something and work him in that. You get things started first...get him onto the game and then later let other people have a try. 

If you are worried or if things are not progressing satisfactorily, do get yourself a certified behaviorist or very experienced and reputable behavior consultant to help you before it gets out of hand. This is something that can be fixed. But it is also something that can escalate to being very dangerous. I've worked with dogs that were so awful. One client's dog was so bad, you couldn't be across a big room if he had a valued item. He would charge. They actually had to bribe him with a really good bowl of food to get the thing away from him. It was very dangerous. They had been very rough with him after watching Cesar Milan on TV with his forceful, intimidating techniques. Of course he was a big mixed breed, not a young, toy breed. Take your time and work through this systematically and I bet it will be fine.


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## sasha.pettinger (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks all very much...we have taken away the rawhide chews and don't plan to give them back. I'll give these ideas a try! He's such a sweet little guy...it was so shocking when we saw this behavior develop.

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