training
Beyond 60 Days Diane Garrod outlines five tips and games for dogs who have undergone initial training to take them from resource guarding to resource sharing, that will help both dog – and owner – avoid reverting to old habits
© Diane Garrod
© Diane Garrod
The final step, for all dogs guarding a resource of any kind, is that while interested in an object, item, food, or location, they will eagerly and willingly give it up, and share it on cue
The Find the Resource game engages the SEEKING system and makes finding resources fun, allows for sharing the find, telling the handler about it, and waiting for the release, plus then being responsive to a strong, established cue
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feet. You should be able to bend and pick up things like a ball, toy, Fris bee etc. without incident because the reward (and thus the reinforce ment) exceeds the trigger. Here are five tips to keep in mind going forward (see Fig. 1 on p.32): 1) Keep cues strong; use them often in training and in real life. 2) Keep prevention, management, and supervision at the top of your task list. 3) Regressing? Go back to kindergarten (i.e. the initial training steps). You will progress faster, and this routine will become the default for the dog. 4) Progress? Highly reward everything the dog does right, always. You want to make the point that a good decision will be highly rewarded. You want to take away the dog’s urge to even feel like they need to guard a resource. 5) Watch the dog’s body language. Know what you are seeing; do not assume.
his article is a followup article to From Guarding to Sharing (see BARKS from the Guild, March 2021, pp.40‐43), where I set out my process for addressing resource guarding in dogs, including the importance of differentiating the behavior from possessive aggression and avoiding inaccurate labeling. In my experience, 60 days is more than enough time to turn re source guarding behavior around, so to speak, get strong cue develop ment, and get compliance with sharing high value items. But what do you do beyond those 60 days to keep cues strong, and avoid going back to old habits on both sides of the leash? The focus of this article is to help make sure your cues remain strong and that your plan is results oriented for your dog’s entire lifetime. Prevention, management, and supervision are key to the structure you want, and teaching should not stop suddenly with the belief that the dog is “cured.” All dogs can guard resources; it is normal, natural, and instinctual. Making sure it does not escalate, and that relinquishing a resource is always a positive experience, with reinforcement, is an on going mindset. The more a dog is successful with the process and the cues, the more they will share without hesitation.
Going Forward Let’s start then at the 60day mark, assuming you have read and imple mented the recommendations set out in my previous article. By this stage, your dog (even in extreme cases) should have diminished scrounging around for food and items. They will be bringing items to you, including high value items, and laying them in your lap or at your
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BARKS from the Guild/September 2021
Cues for Practice Next, practice the 16 cues listed below, starting with three cues per day, five times a week, for one to two months past the 60day mark. You will know when the dog is fluent in their understanding of these cues by the way they respond to them, and to you, even with high value resources. Then select two cues per day in the third month post the 60day mark, and practice in real life until you are doing some quality reminder work once a day. Thereafter, work first with the weaker cues, and once in a while, the strong cues (so they stay strong).
