Food aggression occurs because some dogs associate humans or other dogs coming near their food or stuff as being a bad thing.
Maybe you have a rescue dog that has had to fight for his food in an earlier life. Maybe you have been inadvertently taking food or other objects away from your dog, and now he thinks he needs to guard his belongings. Certain dog breeds (guard dogs) may also have a higher tendency to guard.
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Food Aggression - Stop Food Guarding, Stop Resource Guarding.
To reduce food aggression, make sure your dog associates humans approaching him with something positive. If your dog is aggressive and causing bite wounds as a result of food aggression; contact a professional trainer.
Never try to take food or other items away from an unknown dog. Even seemingly easy-going dogs may sometimes try to guard their food and toys.
Food Aggression Tip 1 - Add something really good to your dog's food bowl.
Shiba Inu Sephy is not aggressive over his food, toys, or even food toys.
Food Aggression Tip 1
Add something really good to your dog’s food bowl.
A good way to solve food aggression issues is to show your dog that people and dogs coming near him during dog feeding time is a positive thing.
Approach your dog while he is eating and throw some good dog treats into his food bowl (e.g. cheese or bacon). Do not reach down to pet him or stroke him. Keep repeating this until he is looking forward to you coming over. Once he is no longer aggressive, you can take the food bowl away, show him that you are adding yummy treats into it, then give it back to him.
I also take other objects (e.g. paper, sticks) away from my Shiba Inu, add food to it, and give it back to him. Sometimes I add food into his food toys or help him get the food out.
If you do all this often enough, your dog will be looking forward to having you around during his meals.
My Shiba Inu sometimes brings his toys over to me in the hopes that I will add some food!
Food Aggression Tip 2 - Hand-feed your dog.
Siberian Husky Shania licking me after a hand-feeding session.
Food Aggression Tip 2
Hand-feed your dog.
Only do this if your dog is not aggressive and does not have a bite history.
Hand-feeding occurs naturally when you use reward obedience training on your dog. I also hand-feed my dog during dog grooming and handling exercises.
Hand-feeding shows your dog that the hand is a really good thing and yummy food comes from it. It can also strengthen your bond with your dog because he sees that food comes directly from you.
Hand-feeding can also help you establish pack leadership because you can set the speed of feeding, you can demand good eating manners (i.e. no grabbing and soft mouth), and you can ask for dog training commands (e.g. Sit or Down before getting any food).
It is generally a good idea to keep up with some hand-feeding throughout your dog’s lifetime to maintain good bite inhibition.
Shiba Inu Sephy and Siberian Husky Shania have no food aggression issues because they have been hand-fed since puppy-hood.
Food Aggression Tip 3 - Teach your dog the Drop command.
Shiba Inu Sephy is willing to drop his toy because he knows he will get something good in exchange.
Food Aggression Tip 3
Teach your dog the Drop command.
First give your dog a fairly low priority and safe toy. When he takes it in his mouth, bring a high priority treat to his nose and say Drop. Chances are he will drop the toy to try and get at the treat. As soon as he drops the toy, mark the behavior (i.e. say Yes), give him the treat, and give him back the toy.
Let him play with the toy for a bit before repeating the exercise. Once he understands the command, you can try with higher priority toys and ultimately food toys.
If your dog is refusing to drop objects, then try using a higher priority treat. If instead your dog bites on you, then do a time-out. Do not overtax your dog. End the session early and on a positive note so that your dog will be motivated to play this game again.
Remember to also practice Drop sessions with your dog during walks; with sticks and other safe objects. This will help generalize the Drop command to outside the house, and to outside objects such as sticks.
During dog walks, I try my best to keep my dog away from questionable objects. If he does get one, though, I will non-mark him (ack-ack) then hold a good treat by his nose. Once he drops the item, I praise him and treat him.
If I really want an item back, I will hold firmly on the item (close to his muzzle) and give the Drop command. It is important that you do not pull back and make it into a tug game. Just hold it still and be as uninteresting as possible. Your dog will quickly lose interest and drop the item. If he does this, praise him and treat him.
Do not try this technique if your dog is aggressive and has caused puncture wounds before.
If an object is dangerous and is too small to hold, you may have to forcibly go into your dog’s mouth. Your dog will really hate it, but if you must do it, then you must do it. Make sure to do some simple commands afterwards so that you can treat him for his positive actions.
If you frequently remove items by force, your dog may get aggressive and start guarding food and other objects from you.
Food Aggression Tip 4 - Play the 'object exchange' game.
Shiba Inu Sephy is willing to give up toys in exchange for a tummy rub.
Food Aggression Tip 4
Play the “object exchange” game.
An alternative to simply teaching the Drop command is to play the object exchange game with your dog.
First, bring out several toys of about equal priority. Give one of the toys to your dog and let him play with it for a short time. Issue the Drop command, and exchange the old toy with a new one.
Initially, it may be necessary to sweeten the pot with some treats as well. Sometimes, I stuff the new toy with some food, so not only does my dog get a new toy, he also gets one with food in it. He is usually very happy to make that exchange.
Once you notice that things are going well, you may phase out the treats and just do the object exchange. If your dog is unwilling to give up his current toy then you may try to lengthen the time that he gets to play with it, or add food into the equation again.
If your dog misbehaves in any way (e.g. bites on your hand), then the game stops, and all toys and food are removed.
Food Aggression Tip 5
Get strangers to toss food to your dog.
When you have guests, give them some yummy treats so that they may toss food to your dog. This will make your dog associate new people with yummy food, so that he will be less food aggressive when strangers are around.
If your dog has a bite history, make sure you have him on a leash so that your guests are always safe. You may also place your dog behind a secure dog gate, and have your guests feed the dog by extending a chopstick or wooden spoon with food through the gate.
This will desensitize your dog towards having new people around his food, and make him less food aggressive towards strangers.
6. Food Aggression Tip 6
Ensure there are no high priority food items lying around when guests are present.
To reduce food aggression, it is important that you do not let your dog practice that behavior, especially with humans. Remove all food items as well as food toys and high-priority toys when you have human guests over.
It is important to remove all food and all toys when your dog is meeting with new dogs, or dogs that he does not know well.
Food Aggression Tip 6 - Ensure there are no high priority food items lying around when guests are present.
Food Aggression Tip 7 - Supervise your dog and intervene when he starts to show object or food aggression.
If there is any food guarding or resource guarding, I remove the resource and nobody gets it.
Food Aggression Tip 7
Supervise your dog and intervene when he starts to show food aggression.
Make sure you are always there to supervise and intervene when your dog starts to show any food aggression. When you are not around to supervise, remove all high priority food and resources, so that he cannot practice food or resource guarding behaviors on his own.
The house rule is; “all resources are mine, and I decide which of my dogs get what”. Whenever I give them food toys, I make sure I am around to supervise. I keep them away from each other to prevent stealing. In this way, they do not get to practice any resource guarding or food aggressive behavior.
If they start any food aggressive behavior, I remove the resource and nobody gets it. If they show any aggressive behavior with me, they get a time-out, and the play and food session stops.
Shiba Inu Sephy and Siberian Husky Shania each have their own food toy. No stealing and no food aggression allowed.
Food Aggression Tip 8
Do not give your dog constant access to food.
If you leave food or food toys around, your dog may feel that he has to guard it and become food aggressive. This can become very stressful for your dog and may also lead to obesity issues.
Leaving food around may also weaken your leadership position because your dog can get food by himself. He may decide not to follow your commands or house rules because he does not really need anything from you.
Be a good pack leader to your dog and follow the Nothing in Life is Free (NILIF) program. Only give him something, if he does something for you first. Stuff left-over food into his food toys and make him work for it. Remove the food toy once it is empty or after a fixed period of time.
A busy dog is a good dog.
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Hi Beth,
What has worked well for my dogs is to supervise them while they are eating and prevent any kind of stealing.
Dogs tend to be opportunistic and will steal food from each other when they can. This may make them start guarding their food.
When my dogs are working on their interactive food toys, I make sure that they don’t steal from each other. I also make sure to give each of them their own toy to work on.
My Shiba is lazy though so he will usually just dally and not work on his own toy. Once my Siberian is done working on hers, i.e., she gets up and moves on to another toy, then I let my Shiba pick off whatever she has left behind if he wants to. But no stealing while she is still working on it.
I also do joint training sessions with them together where they both get food rewards for doing commands, synchronized commands, and grooming. This helps them not to see each other as competitors for food, but rather as team-mates.
There was once where my Shiba tried to bully my Siberian into giving up her food toy (my fault since I didn’t stop them before they escalated), and for his troubles he got a time-out and I removed all the food toys so that he got nothing when he came out. And I didn’t put the toy back into circulation for a few days.
This way he learns that aggression to pack = does not get to be with pack and does not get the stuff either. Non aggression = everybody gets their own toys, gets to pick off what is left behind, and gets rewarded for playing nice.
If I take charge of deciding who gets what, when – there is no contention between them, and they learn the very good lesson that I enforce the rules so that they don’t need to enforce the rules themselves.
I’m so glad I found your site!! My oldest dog does not have any agression toward us, but she has food agression toward our new puppy, what can we do to help?
Hi Sarah,
How is your bf? Hope he is ok.
In terms of the bite, it sounds like it is more in response to being picked up rather than an issue with the food bowl.
Shibas are a primitive lot and can get stressed about handling. My Shiba was very sensitive about people handling him and also with people picking him up. Even now, he doesn’t particularly like being picked up.
From the dog’s point of view, being picked up is being put in a very vulnerable position. They are off the ground, their motion is limited, and if anything happens, they cannot get away because they are restrained and off the ground.
From what you describe, it also sounds like your Shiba may not be totally comfortable with your boyfriend yet.
I think it would be really helpful to get a good reward based trainer to come over and observe your Shiba and come up with a safe and more comprehensive program to desensitize your Shiba towards these triggers so that he doesn’t automatically resort to mouthing and aggression whenever he gets stressed.
I think it would also be helpful to do bite inhibition training and to keep up with it continuously so that he learns to control the force of his bite. Shibas tend to be a very mouthy breed so I find bite inhibition to be a must with them. But only do it if it is safe.
Since I cannot observe your situation it is difficult to exactly pinpoint what the issues are. That is why a professional trainer will be helpful -from a safety perspective as well.
What I did with my Shiba was to slowly desensitize him to handling. I would briefly touch one paw, and treat. Briefly touch his ear and treat, and so on. But again, you would only do this if he is ok and not aggressive to these brief touches. I did this several times, every day, and he got better wrt. handling. This is something that I still keep up with today.
Here is an article on handling -
http://www.shibashake.com/dog/hug-dog-teach-your-dog-to-enjoy-hugging
Still though, the best thing I think is to find a good trainer with Shiba experience. When I was looking for trainers, this trainer search site from apdt was helpful.
http://www.apdt.com/petowners/ts/default.aspx
Let us know what happens.
Please allow me to correct my first statement .. We have curbed his aggression towards people approaching his bowl WHILE he eating. We now have this other issue.
Hello again ShibaShake! Please help!!! :[ Well, I curbed my puppy's aggression towards people approaching his bowl drastically, its almost non existent now. :] And I no longer allow my boyfriend to try to pet him while he eats either, haha. That has helped enormously.
But we’ve run into another problem and I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of puppies doing this or if you have any tips to fix it, SAFELY. We’ve had our puppy for 3 months now. For the first month and a half, our puppy’s water AND food dishes stayed on the floor at all times. He eats his meals twice a day, so most of the day his food bowl would be empty on the floor. But whenever he was near that empty bowl, he would be aggressive to the point that he would bite to break skin with no warning. No growl, no lip curl, nothing. He would just bite. He’s done it twice now to my boyfriend. At that point, I had underestimated how smart my little Shiba is and instead of teaching him that possessiveness over his empty bowl was not okay, I completely eliminated the bowl and now after every meal, his bowl goes up. Its been that way for the past month and a half and we’ve had zero problems and no biting.
I have officially learned today that underestimating him was a big mistake and I never should have taken that empty bowl off the floor, but then again I didnt know what I could do. After his meal today, I forgot to put up his bowl. Of course my puppy knew I forgot too. He walked out of the kitchen into the room where I was, a room where his bowl is COMPLETELY out of sight. My boyfriend picked him up and without warning or hesitating, our puppy took a nice little chunk out of his lip.
I know our little Shiba cant read minds and so I know he doesnt understand that I forgot it, for all he knew I may have purposefully left it to put more food in, which is what I’m sure he was hoping for. He’s gotten used to knowing that the bowl on the floor means food and when its not on the floor, food is done. NOW I would like to correct what I’ve done and be able to leave his bowl on the floor at all times without him being aggressive. I need to teach him that his bowl on the floor does NOT always mean food.
Hi Enelle, Good to see you again.
Begging is a tough one to implement because it is difficult to resist the dog begging look – lol.
As with any behavior though, just don’t reward it and your dog will stop doing it and try something else. Dogs are very clever and will only repeat behaviors that get them good results.
You must be perfectly consistent though, which means no food of any kind for any type of begging. And everyone in the family has to follow that rule.
If you give in and give them food sometimes, then you are intermittently rewarding them, which will make them even more motivated to repeat the behavior – similar to a jackpot machine. Sometimes it gives you lots of money but most of the time it gives you nothing – which makes us even more motivated to pull that lever!
If it is begging at the dinner table that you don’t like, then you can give them an alternate command during meal times – e.g. go to your mat. Then only reward them intermittently for staying on their mat. I.e. walk over to their mat to treat them. Never treat them when they are close to the table because that is the behavior you want to discourage.
Hope this helps
Excellent tips – will def be trying a few of these! Do you have any tips about begging? Am trying to retrain and replace bad habits – one of which is begging whenever there is a thought of food – kitchen, table, snack, anything…have seen major improvements but still has issues…