Its a long story but.... About 2 hours a go my hubby got scratched in the fsce by delilah. She had a zukes bone and was being very possessive about it and she started nipping and then when he tried to hold her down to grab it (which i told him was the wrong thing to do) she must have started flailing and she scratched him right above the eyebrow and now we are in the ospital for stitches.

Delilah is not an aggressive dog usually, in fsct she is the opposite, but with bones she can be so horrible. Chris is stongly considering getting rid of her but she is my heart dog. I know i csn at least help tjis problem if not fix it. Help me out guys, how can i convince him that she isnt some malicious tyrant because she has a bone guarding problem? Gosh im a mess about this. I cant stop crying because i know that surrendering her wil just mean she gets put down and i cant do that to my girl.

P.s. She has nipped at me before regading bones...i have already decided that we are no longeer going to give her bones. She doe guard here food,

Sorry for the bad spelling and grammar. On the ipad at the hospital

I would have sent him to the hospital too if he tried to hold me down and take away my treat. When will some men learn that muscling an animal into anything will either make your dog perpetually scared of him or cause them to become aggressive? Sorry if that sounds rude, but I don't blame Delilah one bit here. Your husband's actions caused his predicament and he's lucky that they didn't cause Delilah's death (had she bitten him, she could be put down).

Resource guarding is a very common problem and is often more prevalent in rescues. Most of the cases I have seen have come from insecure dogs. When a dog feels backed into a corner (literally or figuratively) it's either going to fight or flight. You need to help Delilah feel more secure in your home.

Step up Nothing In Life Is Free training. Make her work for everything she does. She should learn that all good things come from you and your husband and therefore you can take them away whenever you want.

Start practicing this training with her at random times. Grab a couple of high value treats (a bone, a toy, a treat, etc). Start with the lowest value toy. Let her play with it. Then bring out something of higher value and tell her "switch" and switch out the toy. Keep doing this over and over. When you get to the highest value treat/toy, switch it with another of equal value. Keep rotating treats/toys.

You want her to learn that if you take something from her, you are going to give her something better. She should never feel like you taking something away from her means that she loses out. Eventually you won't need to switch anything out, but keep practicing this training with her and she will understand.

Good luck. And I hope your husband's stitches heal soon, but I certainly hope he doesn't take out any anger on Delilah for it. He did a stupid thing and got hurt. There's no one to blame but himself.

I'm with Tori on this one. Dogs are animals. They have instincts. We as humans brought them in to our lives and homes and must learn to overcome some of their resource guarding instincts. When your husband started muscling the dog to take it's bone it became a fight over the bone. Dogs have big teeth, thick nails, and a lot of muscle. Not a fight I care to be a part of. Sounds like Delilah won that fight.

Start teaching your pup that it's ok if you take something because it's not going without, but getting something better in return.

Honestly thats just a lesson when your husky has a bone dont bother her.... bc if shes good with everything else... than its no biggy. My dog jackson Dachshund is the same way... he will growl and be all possessive over it. so for me to take it i would have to distract him. by go to ur cage... or call all the puppies to go outside or something.

hope that helps.

Yup, I would say no bones then. You are both going to need to be active participants in training if this behavior is to be extinguished and I sense hubby isn't going to be very receptive for a bit. I've eliminated the human responses to taking high value things from all of my dogs. Mostly along the lines of what Tori posted. I'm still a little confused about the pinning for snapping. Was the bone still in her possession while being pinned down? Oi, the dog on the ground thing should NOT be done by 98% of the population. It's an absolute last resort thing and you had better know how to immobilize the animal in question or don't even think about it. Maybe a lesson was learned here?

I think your Hubby is luck to have only escaped with a scratch to the eye honestly. If someone did that to Odin I think there would have been teeth involved...

Odin is guardy around stuff like raw bones and marrow bones. But it used to be anything food. I stopped giving him free access to those types of items and when he did get them I was holding on to it. Teaching drop it and "give" really helped too. I use give to communicate with Odin that i'm going to approach him when he has an item I need, instead of just grabbing it- which I can do with all my other dogs. It's a work in progress. He no longer cares if you take a toy, bowl, cookie, food, ect. ect. ect. away from him so we're heading in the right direction.

What Tori suggest about trading is really good if they have multiple things they like. Odin doesn't lol

Thanks guys...im trying nilif....ill keep you updated.

NILIF itself is not going to be enough. You need to add supplemental training or you're going to see the same problems.

Elvismyhusky, I wouldn't say it's not a big deal. If they ever have children over their house and the dog gets possessive over food or a bone and bites the child that can be the end of the dog.

If you want to stop resource guarding you've got to be very strict and control a lot of things like feeding time, play time, sleep time etc. Your dog needs to look to YOU for approval to play, to chew a bone, to eat, to sleep. When they're left to free roam they get in their head that THEY decide what to do and then their instincts kick in.

We have the problem with Sasha, and unfortunately we never did enough to fix it and she still has guarding issues.

You've really got to control all of her treats, her feeding time and do the swap out *a lot*(and over a long period of time) to let her know that when things get taken from her, it's ok. It's going to take a lot of time so be patient and don't give up.

I've also heard about feeding your dog little bits of food(at a time, so a half a cup...dog looks up, half a cup....dog looks up etc) during feeding time so they realize that feeding comes from people, and to look to you for food...but I don't know much about that tactic.

I've got to agree with Tori and Riley. This was instinctual and especially if hubby was trying to be the Alpha dog! I guess I'm not really sure WHY he was trying to take the bone from her anyways?? But with the right training and patience, the right way to go about taking a fav from ANY dog would be the best way to handle that. Giving her up? Well I just couldnt imagine that unless it was the last resort. I trained mine when they were pups to take gently and remove bones or toys or food without a growl, nip or bite. I had 2 young grandchilden in my home. Years ago I rescued a Rottie. I was able to train her the same way with love and patience, she overcame food and bone aggression quickly. Trick is to convince the hubby to have the patience especially with an injury.

Koda wrote:

NILIF itself is not going to be enough. You need to add supplemental training or you're going to see the same problems.

As a mother of human kids who has my dogs around kids ALL the time (not just mine), I think it is extremely important to begin positively training this guarding instinct out of her. Many adults may see this as funny (because I've seen grown people try to take a prized possession away from their dog by teasing the dog and then laughing at the dog's growl.) or maybe we adults take the stand of "just leave the dog alone when he has his bone". But I personally believe that you MUST work like Tori suggested to let her know that you are protecting her and trying to give her things that are fun and yummy. When you are out in public, you never know when Delilah will find a yummy Ritz cracker that some little toddler just dropped. You do not want a nasty situation if that toddler tries to take his cracker back!

Good luck with your training!

I just straight out won't give her bones. Zoey used to do it too, I'd put a shoe on and kick it out from under her and take it away and not give it to her until she sat nice and took it nicely. Now I can take the bones away without being nipped by her.

Elvismyhusky wrote:

Honestly thats just a lesson when your husky has a bone dont bother her.... bc if shes good with everything else... than its no biggy. My dog jackson Dachshund is the same way... he will growl and be all possessive over it. so for me to take it i would have to distract him. by go to ur cage... or call all the puppies to go outside or something.

hope that helps.

Being able to take things away from your dog is extremely important (even with a bone, A piece could be small or splintered and ingesting it could potentially harm them), especially if they have something in their mouth that could harm them. I agree with all the training methods that were mentioned, especially the drop it , leave it commands. Extremely useful, especially out on walks and on the trails. It's to the point now with Kale that if he doesn't drop it, I can open his mouth and stick my hand inside to retrieve it without any fear of getting bitten. (had to do this last night, had a hunk of cotton in his mouth )

About your BF, stress to him that dogs don't think like humans do, and by trying to muscle something away triggered a " ive got to fight for whats mine" response. My BF has had MANY dogs in his life, and I still have to tell him that they dont have the same feelings or thoughts that we do about some things lol everything will work out, it'll just take some time, patience and love

Well we are working on it, but he started crying about all of it this morning (he never cries) and he said he feels like she isnt his dog snymore wnd thwt he is afraid of her...so, i had to plead my case. And right now im going to find her a behaviorist.

Tell him it's normal and let him calm down. Men always overreact over stuff like this and weeks later forget all about it. I've experienced it, and multiple owners on this forum too.

Right now, he needs to understand that she's a dog and it's not her fault. She needs to be trained. That's your and his responsibility. Once he sees that she's not to blame, hopefully he'll come around. It's always the owners' responsibility. They're not little people, they are animals and need to be trained appropriately. He's taking it personally and needs to snap out of it. If he's never had dogs before, he needs to read up and learn about them. He needs to step up and take responsibility for what happened. The Dog Bible is a great book, lots of good advice in there.

Best of luck, and we're with you here - we got your back and will try to help you as much as you can.

His ego is bruised. Give him time. But he NEEDS to understand that Delilah did NOTHING wrong. As soon as he realizes that HE caused the issue, he'll change his tune.

Honesty, training is about training people, not animals. He needs to learn to speak her language.

ETA: Sam and I were on the same page Great minds think alike

Tori is so right on this!

Deliah was just being a dog.
It has nothing to do with love or loyalty.
It is instinctual behavior.
She can learn another way to behave if your husband can learn another way to have her mind.

I'd try the methods Tori espoused.

Koda wrote:

His ego is bruised. Give him time. But he NEEDS to understand that Delilah did NOTHING wrong. As soon as he realizes that HE caused the issue, he'll change his tune.

Honesty, training is about training people, not animals. He needs to learn to speak her language.

ETA: Sam and I were on the same page Great minds think alike

ha! We have good taste in dogs too!

Yes - the #1 thing is for him to understand HE did something wrong, not her. And to not take it personally.

Chili growled at me 3 weeks in and I took it personally until I realized he's a dog and he's challenging me. It was MY responsibility to be the leader and speak HIS language. It happens...he'll learn. I read somewhere (might be here?) that having a husky is like being a politician who constantly is being re-elected. You have to keep proving you're a better leader.

I can say that if I thought I was doing everything right and either of my dogs attacked me, I'd be worried about them, worried about their future in my home and scared of them as well.

I mean, in my mind I'm doing what's right and they just up and attack me for no reason?! Well what the heck am I supposed to do then?

I think educating your husband as to why the dog attacked is pretty important right now. It will help a lot once the realization hits that dogs need to be handled in a different way to achieve the results we look for.

Trading for a higher valued object does work. Use it with mine all the time. Also patiently waiting for "Drop it" does work. Once Braiden grabbed a rotting fish carcass on the beach on our walk. He wasn't going to give up that darn fish for anything. We stood for 10 minutes with him firmly clamped onto the fish with disgusting drool dripping from his mouth , and me holding his collar and saying "Drop it" in a normal voice. Once he figured out I wasn,t giving in he lowered his head and dropped it. If I wrestled him to the ground and forced the issue I would have been the loser. Wrestling dogs to get them to comply is disrespectful and faulty logic. Even if it works a time or two the dog eventually will deal with the human stupidity in a most unpleasant doggie-like manner. My dogs are allowed high valued bones and treats in their crates only. No fuss....no muss...no issues. If I am going to give them a bone it is theirs for keeps. They never have to experience stress from it being taken away. Don't give me a glass of wine and then come and take it back through force unless you want it on your HEAD!!!

Alright guys im going to give him time to calm down. She has never guarded herr food, but i thought i should start there so she just finished her first hand fed meal and she was fine. She took her food gently and didnt push when she didnt get anymore. Ive got high hope for delilaha and i am so thankful for all of the advice,

P.s. I spoke to a behaviorist... So we are on that path as well.

Megan, please don't take this the wrong way, but your hubby is being a wuss..lol. My hubby DID the exact same thing with Mya. He would get all heart broken and ignore her for days when she tried to bite him over a bone or whatnot (men! haha). Actually, she caught his hand once when he was trying to be the "tough guy". That's just not the way you handle it. He didn't pin her down, but just reached in after all of her warning signs and BOOM!

Training, patience, and outsmarting her is the way to go. Trust me...Mya has the bone possessive issue also and there is no way to take it from her. I just trick her with a treat or tell her let's go outside. Whatever distracts her. Now, I know that we need to work with Mya on it also because god forbid one day she has something that can be harmful to her we need to get it out of her mouth without the fear of her snapping.

Please tell your hubby that Deliah DID NOT do it because she doesn't love him or hates him. He pinned her with her prized possession. I would probably snap too if somebody did that to me. She didn't bite him either so that's a good thing. Mya would have bitten my hubby...for sure!

Oh melissa, believe me, i know. The hard part is getting him to realize what he did was wrong, im gonna let him cool down and then address the situation. This stuff is just really stressing me out.