SO.
I have a few questions!
I've read several posts about food/snack/toy aggression but I wanted to post my own so I could get some more help.
When we brought Alki home, he was fine. When he ate, we could stick our hands in his bowl and pet him with no problem. A few days ago, I pet him while he was eating and he started growling. I've read that hand feeding him will help over time. We've been hand feeding him but last night he went further than he ever has. We gave him a small bone (usually we had been holding them and letting him chew but we were working on a project and just gave it to him). I went to the bathroom and Caitlyn was in the living room with him. All of a sudden I heard this horrendous noise. Apparently Caitlyn was talking to him and pet his back. He had not only growled and snarled, but he snapped at her and hurt her hand. I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe he did that! It just developed so suddenly. He was fine and then BAM, started resource guarding. He doesn't do it with toys-just treats, bones and food. We're continuing to hand feed and hold his bones, but it's just so frustrating. How long does it usually take to work? Is there anything else we can do to help?

He also seems to think I'm playing when I say "no". He's SUPER mouthy and whether we're sittin on the couch or walking, he's jumping up and biting. I've told him no, sternly. He minded at first, but now he just starts barking and jumping and staying mouthy. I know he's still a puppy and he just has a lot of energy, but is there a better way to get him to stop being mouth and jumping in addition to telling him "no"?

Now, with the cats. I know they have a high prey drive, but we're trying to just raise him with a cat. Currently, our cat stays in the bathroom. To give both of them a reprieve, we'll shut the door to the bathroom. The dog just barks at the cat and tries to chase him. We've tried having the dog on leash and letting the cat get used to him but the cat bolts as soon as the dog barks. He does it non-stop. Wherever the cat hides, the dog will just bark at him...non-stop. We really want them to at least be able to be in the same room without bothering each other but I'm at a loss. With all the animals I've had before, I've never had a problem with a cat and a dog not getting along.

On a positive note, he's housebroken! He hasn't had any accidents in a few days. It's so nice. Haha.

I don't have much advice about resource guarding. I'd say keep working on it and don't give up. Megan's thread is an interesting read and talks about her experience with it: https://www.itsahuskything.com/t2828p40-i-really-need-some-helpits-an-emergency#128738

As for the biting, completely ignore him when he does this. Either separate him or separate yourself. Chances are you're pulling your hands away quickly and it's probably just getting him more excited. Turn your back and either put yourself in a different room or put him in a different room. Make it a very boring time and make him understand that when he does it, he doesn't get to have anymore fun. Just my advice.

I don't have any advice for the cat situation, but is he actually trying to harm the cat? If not, I'd let him bark all he wants and when the cat's finally had enough I assume the cat will swat and let him know. That might be the worst advice ever, but I feel like there isn't much to deter that behavior other than separating them or waiting until the cat tells him to stop. That might just escalate the problem though, and I'm sure someone else will have better advice though!

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Food, bones, and treats are usually higher value and that usually what dogs will guard.

When dogs are eating, you shouldn't bother them. Sticking your fingers In their bowl, taking away their food, and rubbing all over them is annoying. If someone did that to me I'd he irritated too. Start hand feeding and begin to transition that into feeding limited amounts into his bowl at one time while you sit next to him. Don't face him just sit next to the bowl and drop a small bit into the bowl at once. That way your calm no -intrusive presence (as well as your hand coming near the bowl) is seen as a positive thing- rather than intrusive and annoying.

For the bones... Work on holding it while he's eating and just let him chew it. Periodically ask him to drop it and once he does celebrate and reward him with a smear of PB on your hand. Again creating a positive association with your hand around his face and mouth in the presence of something high value.

For the cat... If he's being that way he needs to be put up or locked up for timeout any time he barks, chases, or shows any bad behavior towards the cat. How much exercise and mental stimulation does he get? He sounds pretty wired. You can make up 2 kongs (soften the food with water and add something good so he'll see it as a higher value) and feed out of those while swapping and trading to work with his food issue. Kongs help to work their brain.

If he's barking at the cat, give some sort of market to let him know that it's an inappropriate behavior and immediately put him away. Take him back out in a few or when he stops throwing a fit. Try again. It's best to nip this as soon as possible. And being constantly on top of it and showing him that even though the cat may not retaliate... YOU aren't tolerating it.

Thanks for all the advice! We'll definitely stick with it and try those new suggestions! As for why we want him to be non-aggressive while eating, we plan to have kids in the future and I don't want them to get hurt because they touched the dog while he was eating something. A dog shouldn't do that. He hasn't finished his shots, so he can't go to the park or anything. We play with him literally every time he gets hyper. We'll throw his toys and he'll play fetch with us. We run him until he passes out. We don't use his crate as a punishment. It's more like his safe spot. So besides locking him in the bathroom, there's not much choice for that. It's just so frustrating.

Food aggression, got to love it. Lucian still has problems with it. If it were just myself and my husband I wouldn't worry about, I'd leave him alone while he ate. But I have a 3 yr old that just doesn't get that.
I sit on the floor with pieces of carrot in my hand when Lucian is eating. I touch him for a second, and drop a carrot in his bowl. He has gone from growling at me, to backing away from his bowl in a few days. I also trade his food bowl with a carrot, then give him his food back. As for the bones, try a trading game with him. Offer him something higher value than the bone, and trade with him. He'll eventually learn that he gets good things in return. Main thing is be consistent. I wasn't, and the problem came back, now I have to deal with while he has adult teeth, and a stronger jaw. It may take a long time, but just keep at it every day.

Well I can't help with the resource guarding because I haven't had that problem.

As for the being overly mouthy and jumping, have you tried yelping instead of saying no. With Saphire everytime her teeth would touch skin we would yelp and say no teeth. If she contined we stopped play. Now we just have to say no teeth when she gets excited and forgets.

As for the cat, DO NOT LET YOUR PUP CHASE THE CAT EVER!! The second this behavior starts you need to stop it by any and all means necessary. Husky's have a high prey drive and once they fixate and start the chase all bets are off.

The next thing is to make sure the cat has an easy access escape route in every room of the house. You can do this with baby gates, cat trees, etc. For example, in our house we have a baby gate at the top of the basement stairs (high enough off the ground that the cat can easily slip under the gate) and at the end of the hallway before the bedrooms. This allows the cats to get to the basement and the bedrooms to get away (Both are places we don't want Saphire hanging out without supervision). We also have a cat tree in the living room and near the cabinets in the kitchen (our cats like to sit on top of my upper kitchen cabinets and watch us when we are cooking and it keeps them off the counters) that the cats can climb to escape the dog. This way our cats never have to run to get away from the dog which makes them a whole lot less fun to chase.

Then you need to establish that the cat is part of your pack and is higher up in the pack than the dog. (I know how people feel about pack mentality training but dogs are pack animals and this is really important.) This doesn't mean that you have to be mean or forcefull. Little things like feeding the cat first, petting the cat first, defending the cat, etc. We also work on training Saphire to ignore the cats on a daily basis by giving her treats if she keeps her focus on one of us while the other one loves up on the cats.

Cats and Husky's can reside safely in the same home IF you take the right precautions. My last word of advice is to never leave them together unattened ever.

I gave the worst advice about the cat situation. Haha sorry about that.

When he gets a little older, we should set up a play date if you'd like!

katiesham wrote:

When he gets a little older, we should set up a play date if you'd like!

I'd love that! We absolutely can't wait for him to be able to get out. It's killing us. Haha.


As far as yelping, we did try it. He just starting barking and jumping more. Like he thought it was a game. We'll try it again though and couple it with ignoring him.
We don't let him chase the cat. Since the cat is larger, the dog doesn't seem to be that into playing with him. Yesterday, the cat came out of the bathroom to explore. Alki walked towards him and just sat and looked at him. I think he may be realizing that the cat is not a toy or food. I just want to do everything I can while he's young. Thank you so much for all the tips.

CatDen wrote:

Yesterday, the cat came out of the bathroom to explore. Alki walked towards him and just sat and looked at him. I think he may be realizing that the cat is not a toy or food.

This is great to hear. Its important for them to interact some to allow them to get comfortable around each other.

As for realizing that the "cat is not a toy", Saphire is still trying to figure out that our cats are not really playmates. She was trying to get Macy, our smallest cat, to play with the ball last night. It was really cute but I had to break it up because Saphire is much bigger than Macy and she plays too rough.

I think they would get along if the dog wouldn't run after him or bark at him. But the cat seems to start that. Haha. He'll walk towards the dog and if the dog moves at all, he bolts and usually ends up hurting us. Haha. They're both so curious but the cat just seems to make things worse. -.-

Well. We've been hand feeding him for a week now and no change. If anything, it got worse. He found a dog treat at my parents house. We tried to get it away from him and he not Caitlyn. He actually broke skin and drew blood. Ugh.

What methods are you implementing with him? Are you just holding the food while he eats? Or are you making him do commands ect. ect. How much are you feeding him at any given time? Is he getting enough food for his size/activity level/age?

It does take some time to work through- it isn't a quick fix. And I would try to limit any and all treats/bones to only those you personally give him. And if he finds one I would just try to not intervene as much as possible so you aren't taking 1 step forward and then 2 back when there's an altercation about you trying to take something from him.

We make him sit and we make him look at us before we give him food. We will only hold bones for him to eat (and he'll still growl while you're holding it). He won't eat a lot of food while we're holding it. He'll eat a few handfuls and then refuse to eat anymore out if our hand. We've tried mixing soft food with the kibble so he'll eat more, but same thing happens. It's almost like he can only stand eating out of our hand for so long before he quits. He also has started growling when you pick him up (when he's not even eating). It's just so frustrating because we seem to be getting nowhere.

We've been hand feeding and holding his treats and it's actually gotten worse. Today, Caitlyn was holding a treat and he was eating it. He let her pet him and things seemed to be going fine. Then, she was just sitting there and he went after her. I'm not talking a little nip or just a growl. I'm talking, stopped chewing on his bone and started chewing on her. He hit down on her hand and now she's bleeding. What the hell do we do now? We're doing everything we should and we've been doing it consistently. But if you could have seen him...he looked vicious.

My puppy is going through the same thing. She is 12 weeks old now and will "go after" us after we've stopped playing with her. We just get up and leave the room so she knows we're not playing anymore.

My trainer told me dogs don't listen to the word "no" because we use it for everything they do wrong. Instead we've came up with other words...like "stop" "ouch" "no more".....

I have a 5 year old that Khloe loves tormenting. She will jump on my daughter and grab at her fingers, sleeves, pants, and start pulling on her. She doesn't listen to her when she tells her to stop because we think Khloe knows she's small like her and that she's playing. But when I or my BF step in, she'll back off.

One thing you gotta understand is that he is still a puppy, and a HUSKY puppy at that. It's not like training a golden retriever....Huskie's have attitude. You have to have patience with him, or if it's too much maybe have him in a puppy training class...we did and it helped.

I know. We're fine with his nipping and jumping when he wants to play. This is completely different. This is "I think you're going to take my food and I'll jump you before that happens". He doesn't just nip, he sinks his teeth in.

We're currently looking into a class for him, but because of his age, a lot of trainers are saying he's too young.

Was he growling and baring is teeth? Or did he just start chewing on her hand?

I have no idea really though. Hoping someone else will be able to help!

He was just chewing his bone, she was holding it with her right hand. He just stopped, and made that noise that dogs do when they're attacking something. Like a snarl, growl, high pitched noise. In a split second, he was on her lap, with his teeth sunk into her hand. It all just happened so fast. But it was: him chewing quietly and then he was literally attacking her. It wasn't just him chewing on her hand or trying to play. He was attacking her. I'm just glad he's still small.

I had a food aggressive greyhound that thought she could intimidate me and my kids into not even being in the room when she ate. I made every single member of the family feed her, one piece of kibble at a time, both meals! We took turns. It takes a lot longer to feed that way but they soon get the idea that they are not the boss over humans. She was like that with bones too. She tried to bite me when I went to take her bone, she only did it over rawhide type bones, so I never gave her another one! It took some time feeding her kibble by kibble but it finally worked. In a few weeks I could take her food away while she was eating and not so much as a whimper out of her!

This is a case for NILF, nothing in life is free. Your pup is still young, and you want to nip it in the bud (no pun intended lol) before it gets worse.

For now I would not give him bones. Start with the food. Piece by literal piece, and mix it up, one day its you, next day your gf. Make sure you are giving him exercise, even if its just in your house.

My lab was a puppy biter, and it ain't fun being used as a chew toy. We would just say "no bite" get up and walk away from her, she did learn, and boy was she stubborn, (still is lol) that acting like a fool wasn't going to get her a playmate, or chewmate as it were.

Good luck, its hard to be consistent but its what you need to be.

We've been hand feeding, and noticed a BIG difference when he's eating his kibble. He was fine with treats for a few days too. As I said, we would always hold the treat while he chewed on it. Last night we gave him one and he let us pet him as much as we wanted...not even a peep! Caitlyn was feeding him the same kind of treat and he was letting her pet him for a while, then he just snapped. We'll try the piece of kibble by kibble and for now, we're halting all bones. Thank you for the advice! We're willing to try ANYTHING!

You know I think the best advice anyone can give you is to just keep with it. They are smart dogs and he will learn what's expected, providing you are teaching it.

I sure hope so. I can't have him around children if he doesn't quit.

Are you both hand feeding him? It's important that both you and Caitlyn do that as well as being hands on with treats and bones. He needs to know that both of you are equally in charge of meal time.

We do. During his feelings, we both hand feed him. He just bit Caitlyn again. We put some food in his bowl because he was doing so well. We were petting him while we set it down. He was fine for about 5 seconds and then jumped at we hand and bit her, drawing blood. He didn't even growl. Just struck. So. Back at square one.