In b4 getting flamed for my Caesar post: I love dogs and dog psychology, so if anyone does have any tested and effective ways for breaking dogs of food protective aggression, I really do want to know.
So, I personally haven’t had this issue with my dogs but this is what I know about solving resource guarding:
Dogs guard resources because they are insecure. A dog who growls when you approach its bowl of food is afraid that you will take their food away from them, and is warning you. Many people will punish this behavior, which could do one of two things: Either the dog stops growling, and you’ve essentially punished the dog for telling you it is ready to defend its resource, or the dog becomes even more visibly aggressive in defending its resource because you’ve punished it for letting you approach, making it more insecure.
The best way to actually solve resource guarding is classical conditioning; you want to change the dog’s emotional reaction to you being near its resource. So, you play what many call “The Trading Game.” Essentially, you teach the dog to give up something that it values because it will be returned later or replaced with something even higher in value. This teaches them that they don’t have to guard things so carefully and allows them to trust you around the things they value.
This is also just a really good game to play with dogs who don’t have issues with resource guarding, if not to prevent it, but to prepare for a possible situation if they happened to get ahold of something toxic or a choking hazard and you need to take it away.
To everyone interested, here’s another way to handle the situation!
When my 120lbs retreiver (Jeb) was younger he was food protective, but never bit or snapped at us. He did however growl if we got near him with his food. This was a big concern for us because no one wants a 120lbs dog to start getting aggressive, but also we have lots of family with small kids and even smaller dogs that come to visit. We also lived with an aging dog didn’t want Jeb to attack him.
What we did is we practiced taking his food bowl away from, waiting, making him lie down, and then we’d return it to him. We did the same with his favorite toys and large treats that he didn’t eat in one bite. He’s seven-years-old now and we don’t have the same problem anymore.
However he does like to play keepaway with things he steals from us so that Trading Game sounds like a good way to break him of that. … actually Jeb’ll probably just steal things and hold them ransom, knowing him.
So in this game you can fight with honeycomb and a leg of ham while defending yourself with a cheese wheel. And wearing a flower crown.
No, you can fight with a beehive attached to a stick!
Enchanted with a honeycomb. :D
Also, a giant fishing rod as mage staff.
Oh my god there’s a fish rod mage staff too?? Now I need to find that one, hahaha!
In b4 getting flamed for my Caesar post: I love dogs and dog psychology, so if anyone does have any tested and effective ways for breaking dogs of food protective aggression, I really do want to know.
Darwin: “How you doing? Feeling comfortable? That’s funny. Cuz a lot of people on this planet aren’t. In fact, there are a lot of people who have it really, really bad. How does that make you feel?” [angrily] “Are you proud? Are you still feeling good?” [shrieking] “What is wrong with you?! Give them money! Give us money so we can give it to them! Get off your couch and do it!” [screaming] “DO IT NOOOOOW!” [commercial ends; cheerful music plays]
Darwin: [offscreen] “My charity would get bigger and bigger and it will be called the Coalition Of Really Really Useful People Together.”
If you loom in an extremely threatening way over anyone, not just a dog, when they are in a vulnerable position, yes you should just let them bite you because you made a very stupid decisions.
The question presupposes that the dog is the antagonizer in this situation. The dog is in a position of defense, not attack.
“Should he just let the dog bite him?” is the wrong question. If someone showed a clip of a child playing with his bike, and a stray dog running up and assaulting him viciously, and he began to strike the dog to defend himself, then the question would be valid. What else should the child do, but to begin defending himself?
This is not the situation. Millan presents himself as a power-figure, one to be feared. He immediately presents a threat by positioning himself in a threatening position with his body language. The dog is on the defense, because he wants his food, and he fears it will be taken from him.
Then, Millan strikes. The dog’s fears are affirmed, and he snaps back in defense, and as a warning. But note that as he snaps, HE IS BACKING AWAY. The dog does NOT want this fight. He does NOT want to attack him. He JUST wants to eat in peace and he is backing away, but attempting to defend himself.
In short, if Millan doesn’t want to get bit, he should probably not antagonize a reactive dog.
BOOM
In this gif he genuinely seems to be provoking the fuck out of the dog, violently. He seems to be hitting the dog, and even if he’s just feinting… that’s awful.
I’ve watched Victoria Sitwell (also dogs) and Jackson Galaxy (cats). They both present themselves in the animal’s space to see what reaction they get. But I’ve never seen either of them come anywhere near hitting an animal. Honestly, what the hell is this asshole’s problem.
I’ve only seen Jackson but if the cat is aggressive he backs the fuck off. He does NOT strike a cat. For any reason. Even being attacked or scratched he thinks about how HE made the mistake and how to fix it.
<p>^^^ also this. He’s very good at not antagonizing aggressive cats at all, but when they ARE aggressive he would let a cat bite or scratch him before he so much as touched it, let alone hit it. </p><p> I spent a few minutes on google, to refamiliarize myself with Victoria, because it’s been a while since I watched “It’s Me or the Dog” – but immediately I found an article asking readers to compare these two specifically, and whoa Ceasar is terrible and should stop. </p><p> FYI, Victoria has never been bitten by a dog. Google’s pretty firm on that. And when dogs bite people in the family, she recognizes where the bad behavior is – their adult owners. Ceasar on the other hand appears to be operating on the pseudoscience (and outright myth) of “alpha males”. Victoria uses positive reinforcement, in the casual rather than the literal sense, like treats and figuring out what the dog needs emotionally from its owners; Ceasar intimidates dogs into compliance, which will just deepen the fear and insecurity being displayed by the dog in this gif. </p><p> Here’s <a href=“http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/its-me-or-dog/training-tips/child-dog-safety/”>a very brief post from an interview with her</a>, it looks like, on child-dog safety that illustrates her point of view.</p> <p>Meanwhile Ceasar is apparently a jackass who uses choke collars and shock collars. There’s no excuse for that, ever.</p>
FUCK Cesar Millan.
Wow this is so gross
Okay, so I’m not a dog expert, but I actually watched this episode and I remember it very vividly. You CANNOT JUDGE this situation by the gifs alone, so here’s some background:
The dog is the problem in the situation. She is “the antagonizer.”
The dog, Holly, was hyper protective of food and territory and would not let ANYONE near her food without lunging and snarling at them, and the family had a baby. You don’t have to approach this dog in an aggressive position, she will threaten you anyway. Caesar had spent a good amount of time trying to give and take food from the dog, but it led to this confrontation:
(BLOOD WARNING)
The dog snarls at Caesar so he jabs at the dog’s throat, mimicking warning nips that dogs use. He didn’t hit the dog like the gif suggests and the dog getting aggressive around food has been a continual problem that he’s trying to break her of. When Caesar stands for too long between her and the food bowl, and he’s NOT IN AN AGGRESSIVE POSITION, she lunges and BITES HIM AND DOESN’T LET GO. He fights her off, then stands over her, trying to get her to realize who is in control of the situation. He has a deep puncture wound bleeding and still doesn’t back down.
What this video doesn’t show is that he tells the family he cannot comfortably let them keep Holly while they have a baby, so they allow him to take her to his facility to rehabilitate her. She spends a month or so there, spending a lot of time around calm dogs and getting healthy amounts of exercise to burn off energy. Eventually she becomes friendly with the dogs but ultimately the family did give her up out of concern for their baby.
I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with Caesar’s methods, I go back and forth on them myself, but don’t ignore the entire truth of the situation. Slander only weakens your argument. If you want to argue against Caesar’s methods, then offer suggestions on how to deal with a dog that won’t let you near her food without threatening to attack.
it’s okay dude, it’s a more common problem than most realize.
