This Week we are going to discuss Milo the cocker spaniel. Milo was relinquished to a shelter and subsequently rehomed twice, in both homes he had stolen items such as socks and kids’ shoes. When the adopters tried to collect these items from Milo, he showed aggressive behaviours, even when he appeared to leave the item alone.
At the shelter, Milo can be nervous of meeting new people and wearing his harness.
Behaviour Modification Plan
Resource guarding behaviours are often related to relationship and trust between the dog and the owner, as well as previous learning history. Often this can have an impact on our adopted dogs due to the time taken for our dogs to form strong relationships. So, one thing we want to do with Milo is increase the predictability of meeting new people to help boost Milos confidence. Milo enjoys playing with soft toys so part of his introduction plan will be teaching him to find these in a more structured way using his nose. Not only is scent work a great way to build confidence, provide enrichment and have fun, it also gives potential adopters a way of interacting with Milo which can be predicable. Often if we ask adopters to take things slow or don’t try and interact the dog yet this can be difficult for them, so thinking of an appropriate activity can be a great way to take this.
As well as building his confidence around people we also want to change Milos behaviour and emotions around stole resources. Milo is being taught several skills such as counting game, drop, swaps and leave its which are generally useful behaviours for dogs who like to keep hold of things. With dogs who already have some guarding tendencies I like Chirag Patels method of teaching the drop, just remember to not point to the food if the dog guards more than just objects. This method helps to remove conflict as we start teaching without any objects and can build up to higher value resources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndTiVOCNY4M
One of the difficulties with Milo is he will continue to guard the item even when he appears to leave it alone, so as well as counter conditioning him to people approaching items, a great way to start to change his emotion is to teach him a retrieve, stealing items and bringing them to you, whilst still not ideal is a better option than worrying about people taking them away, with Milo we will start with novel items that haven’t been stole and gradually generalise to other items and then look at practicing in real life areas and scenarios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBA&t=99s
These case studies may provide hints and tips but should not be used to form individual plans for dogs without prior discussion with a behaviourist.