Territorial Issue


sdw1961

New Member
The book I’ve ordered “Click to Calm: Healing the Aggressive Dog” hasn’t arrived yet, so this forum is the only resource I have when it comes to behavioral issues.
Below is quoted from an email I received…
“This Dachshund 6 year old former breeder Dachshund was surrendered when a family had over their city limit. Missy's favorite thing is protecting her "space". That space is a 10 x 10 room with three kennels, a desk, and shelves of DVD's. Her never ending job of protection extends to any four legged animal that walks in the room. She greets them with a growl and snap to make sure they are aware that she owns the room. If they try to go into one of the open kennels she runs and snaps at them and jumps in the kennel, if they try to go to another open one, she proceeds to run to it and snap and get in!
I have now moved around things but she still "protects" her space .. any suggestions?”
What advice can I pass along to this foster mom in trying to heal Missy?
 

DeafDogs

Alberta Region Moderator
Well, Resource guarding is a tough one, especially when it's against other dogs. I'll have to think about it a little and see what I can come up with...

A couple of ideas here

Prevention... Do not let her practice bad behaviour, the more she practices, the better she gets at it. Keep her away from the space she's guarding, or keep the other dogs away from her space for now.

Give her one crate that's hers, and dont let her get into any other crate. Teach her to go in her crate, and reward her for doing so... You can do a bit of redirection training here, and teach her an incompatable behaviour. Basically, you'll want to teach her to go to her crate when she see's another dog... and possibly set up a barrier that's really long (like an x-pen the length of the room with her crate on one side, and the other dogs on the other side), so if the other dogs go to their crates, she has to run alot farther to try and get into their crates in front of them.

Or completely block off the room, except when putting them in their crates.

Try to have one or two more beds or crates than you have dogs, but spread them across the house, this can sometimes help resource guarding. With an abundance of resources, she will not need to guard (this does work in some cases)

Hope this helps... I'll see what else I can come up with for you...
 
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