I think the issue is you really are asking too much of him at this point with the physical touching while he's eating. I know you want him to be used to people manipulating him while he eats but pushing him to the point of biting over and over is only getting him stressed over and over again by constantly pushing him over his threshold.

I would strictly stick with hand feeding without bothering him making your presence as non-intrusive and positive as possible. Either have it be part of training and fun games, or simply just hand feeding.

I think something important to remember is that this can take weeks and months to correct. And I say this not having been in your shoes, but having done a decent amount of research on the topic. Him behaving well for a day or two doesn't really mean much in the long run. I would want to see progression for several weeks before I even let him have a treat or bone by himself.

arooroomom wrote:

I think the issue is you really are asking too much of him at this point with the physical touching while he's eating. I know you want him to be used to people manipulating him while he eats but pushing him to the point of biting over and over is only getting him stressed over and over again by constantly pushing him over his threshold.

I would strictly stick with hand feeding without bothering him making your presence as non-intrusive and positive as possible. Either have it be part of training and fun games, or simply just hand feeding.

We don't push him. While we are hand feeding him, we'd pet him. By the second day of hand feeding, he quit having any sort of reaction if we touched while while eating. He had done so well the past couple of weeks, that we decided to just try bowl feeding. I put it in the bowl, made him sit and look at me and then put his bowl down. I was petting him and so was Caitlyn with no problem. Then she pet his neck and he snapped and sunk his teeth in.

katiesham wrote:

I think something important to remember is that this can take weeks and months to correct. And I say this not having been in your shoes, but having done a decent amount of research on the topic. Him behaving well for a day or two doesn't really mean much in the long run. I would want to see progression for several weeks before I even let him have a treat or bone by himself.

We haven't let him have treats by himself. I think we just jumped ahead of the game with the food. We were just wanting so badly for SOMETHING to go right and since he'd been just find for a couple weeks, we thought it would be fine. We were just impatient about it. It had been such a bad day with him biting Caitlyn, that we though "Hey, he seems fine with this. Let's try it so it'll go well and we'll have SOMETHING good about today. Just impatience.

I have to agree with Kristina. It seems you are expecting too much from him too soon. It takes a long time to deal with food aggression. I still work on it daily with Lucian. He has no problem with me taking his bowl from him at all. It's touching him while he's eating. I can't have this problem, I have a 3 year old that doesn't understand the dangers of walking right up to him while he's eating. I simply touch him for a second, and if he doesn't growl he gets a piece of carrot. I also make him sit, and look at me before he gets the food. Once I've gotten him used to being handled by me with no reaction I will slowly introduce my daughter to feeding him. One thing at a time, and it can take a very long time for them to work through it.

I also agree that you are moving way too fast for him. He is only a baby, and most dogs are never okay with touching, no matter how much you work with them while they are eating. I think you need to take a step back, take a breather, and start at square one. You keep pushing him past his limit, eventually he will get to the point where the very first thing he does is strike because that is what he is conditioned to do.

It takes more then a week to work past issues like these. You can't have one good day and then say all is good and throw food back in the bowl. You need to hand feed for at least a month I would say, especially with all of the going back and forth between biting and not biting..you are giving him a lot of mixed signals. I would be biting too. Your presence is not seen as a good thing anymore. You need to make him think that your presence is a good thing again.

Quit having such high expectations. Yes he is a puppy, and most people think of puppies and live teddy bears, but that is not the case. This is a living, breathing, feeling creature and you need to remember that. Don't move so fast with him. Baby, baby steps. You need to put more time into it. This won't be fixed over night like it seems you are expecting.

I don't think there's any need to get hostile and talk down to her.

I understand the desire for him to succeed. It's hard to work on something like this and not be able to see improvements even after a few weeks of work. But I also understand the need for patience and I think you do too. You're doing things right, just keep working at it and give him some more time. I'm sure this will work out!

I did not think I was being "hostile" or "talking down". So I apologize if that is what you got from my post. Not my intention.

CatDen wrote:

arooroomom wrote:

I think the issue is you really are asking too much of him at this point with the physical touching while he's eating. I know you want him to be used to people manipulating him while he eats but pushing him to the point of biting over and over is only getting him stressed over and over again by constantly pushing him over his threshold.

I would strictly stick with hand feeding without bothering him making your presence as non-intrusive and positive as possible. Either have it be part of training and fun games, or simply just hand feeding.

We don't push him. While we are hand feeding him, we'd pet him. By the second day of hand feeding, he quit having any sort of reaction if we touched while while eating. He had done so well the past couple of weeks, that we decided to just try bowl feeding. I put it in the bowl, made him sit and look at me and then put his bowl down. I was petting him and so was Caitlyn with no problem. Then she pet his neck and he snapped and sunk his teeth in.

You're upping a lot of criteria by simply eliminating the hand feeding and putting it in a bowl. Dogs don't generalize very well. Bowl feeding is a "brand new" thing that doesn't necessarily have any "rules" attached to it. The fact that he snapped at you for petting him while eating out of that for the first time (since hand feeding) is really to be expected. When raising one form of criteria, you need to lower others and work back up. For example... If I am teaching a recall in the yard, I can't expect the dog to go outside of the yard and recall at that same level. Which is why you usually place them back on leash, lower criteria (such as distractions and space present) and train back up.

We didn't think we were pushing him because it was one time. It's not like we're testing him every day. I can understand that we shouldn't have tried it too soon-we were just anxious. We also reward him if he doesn't growl if we touch him while hand feeding him. If he's eating out of one of our hands, he doesn't mind being touched at all. We use treats if he doesn't growl/bite. We make him sit and do some tricks before eating, as well as look us in the eye. But when he bit her and she had the bone...she wasn't touching him. Her left hand was next to her. She had pet him while he was chewing on it, but had no problem. She had quit when he bit her.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't care about him having the food aggression. I would just give him a bone and not bother him. But we plan on starting a human family in the next few years and I have 5 nieces that are around a lot. I don't want them getting hurt.

We're not expecting it to be gone overnight. If we did, we would have quit already. We've been working with him every day. Today we made a bad choice. As I said, we've been really stressed this week with his UTI and we just thought he would be fine and that that would bring our spirits up a little. We're not giving up, we're going to continue to do what we've been doing.

arooroomom wrote:

CatDen wrote:

arooroomom wrote:

I think the issue is you really are asking too much of him at this point with the physical touching while he's eating. I know you want him to be used to people manipulating him while he eats but pushing him to the point of biting over and over is only getting him stressed over and over again by constantly pushing him over his threshold.

I would strictly stick with hand feeding without bothering him making your presence as non-intrusive and positive as possible. Either have it be part of training and fun games, or simply just hand feeding.

We don't push him. While we are hand feeding him, we'd pet him. By the second day of hand feeding, he quit having any sort of reaction if we touched while while eating. He had done so well the past couple of weeks, that we decided to just try bowl feeding. I put it in the bowl, made him sit and look at me and then put his bowl down. I was petting him and so was Caitlyn with no problem. Then she pet his neck and he snapped and sunk his teeth in.

You're upping a lot of criteria by simply eliminating the hand feeding and putting it in a bowl. Dogs don't generalize very well. Bowl feeding is a "brand new" thing that doesn't necessarily have any "rules" attached to it. The fact that he snapped at you for petting him while eating out of that for the first time (since hand feeding) is really to be expected. When raising one form of criteria, you need to lower others and work back up. For example... If I am teaching a recall in the yard, I can't expect the dog to go outside of the yard and recall at that same level. Which is why you usually place them back on leash, lower criteria (such as distractions and space present) and train back up.

That makes sense. I didn't think of it that way. I just thought, "He's now fine with our hands being on him and around his food while he's eating, so this should be the same". But I guess us standing in front of him while his food is back in his bowl, is a big change. So when the time does come, how do we work back up to having his food in his bowl? And when should we try to build back up?

I'm sure Kristina will follow up, because she usually does, with much better advice, but after several weeks of hand feeding, I'd build up to hand feeding him with your hand in the bowl, piece by piece. Then maybe work up to a few pieces at a time in the bowl, and then even eventually your hand in the bowl and THEN work on touching him.

After that I'd work on food in the bowl. Put it piece by piece at first and eventually build up to pieces at a time, and then all of the food. That will obviously be some time from now. And through these steps I would be hands on as he gets comfortable with each step.

This may not be the best advice, and I'm sure others who've had more experience with this can point out better ways, but that's how I would go about it!

If he snaps again through ANY of the steps, I'd start right back over a the beginning. It takes a long time, and it might feel like you aren't making at progress, but it'll pay off in the end when you can trust him enough to be able to take a bone away from him and things.

Don't lose hope! He's definitely worth it!

On my iPhone so bear with me... Finally dug this up:
https://www.itsahuskything.com/t5038-ohhh-finnick?highlight=Snow+finnick

Which outlines what I used with Odin.

I would begin hand feeding with the bowl present. A lot of times the bowl is really the issue. Have the bowl where it normally would be when feeding and hover your hand over it (within 8 inches of the center) and hand feed him that way. Try sitting with him- you're less overbearing that way. Do this until he's comfortable sticking his head into the bowl (meaning over time being your hand closer and closer to the bottom of the bowl- still hand feeding!) with your hand there. Keep your hand in the bowl but drop the kibble- initially just piece by piece. Do not at any point mess with his face. Slowly work up to dropping small handfulls into his bowl. Start tossing food into his bowl piece by piece. Remember at any point where you are asking more of him- push less in other departments.

Just because I have to say it- I don't think messing with a dog while eating is appropriate. If children are involved I feel the dog should always be crated while eating for the dogs own piece of mind and the child's safety. Either that or separated. There isn't a time where a dog NEEDS to eat with a toddler/baby walking around. Someone can always be separated.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the link! We usually have the bowl in our lap when feeding him. So I'll try your suggestion. As far as having the kids around. That would be fine, but I don't want him to never be able to have treats or bones unless he's crated and locked in another room. Or god forbid he find some food that dropped and he snapped at a child for just touching him while he had it. I also have an issue with dogs being aggressive in any aspect. I've always had dogs with no aggression towards me whatsoever, neither has Caitlyn. I just feel that if a dog has aggression over the food and it's not dealt with, it could grow into a different type of aggression. But that's just my opinion!

Resource guarding and agression are not the same. My female has resource guarding, she is in no way aggressive and loves children.

Resource guarding is fear based, not aggressive.

I agree with Kristina 100% my female has come leaps and bounds since getting help from her and knowledgeable others on this forum. Still, she is left alone with her food, because I gave it to her. If I gave it to her, she gets to finish it without me bothering her. She knows that. She doesn't get possessive aout treats...how could she? She eats them! Lol. Bones are give 1 - 2x a week for a few hours at a time. Then, instead of taking it from her I have her come nd sit and then we trade. I didn't start this way, but with the help of this forum it has been possible

I have a question... I think I carefully read all the posts so I hope I didn't miss it, but here's my question. I think I remember you saying a few times he has bitten (or gone after) Caitlin during the hand feeding or other times, has he gone after you as well in a non playful way? I might be way off in left field here, so I'm sorry if that's the case. I'm just wondering if it might be something related to her approach or body language. I'm sorry if I missed it in an earlier post...

He's not aggressive at all unless its with his food/treats. The only treats he's aggressive with are the ones that take him more than five seconds to eat. Haha. Thanks for all the help guys. We've started from square one and we're just going to be more patient.

Okay guys. So it has gotten absolutely NO better. If anything, it's gotten worse. We came to my parents house and Alki was running around like usual. Well, he started chewing on a napkin (just a regular, clean napkin). My dad started talking to him, using his name, and reached down to get the napkin. He reached up and bit my dad, HARD. He has holes from Alki's teeth on the top of his hand and the blood is still running down his hand. I picked him up and he bit me too, then he bit Caitlyn when she was near him. (These were NOT nibbles, playful bites, nips or a puppy thing). I know it takes time, but we really can't take time with this. He's actually biting people to the point of bleeding, just for coming near him while he's chewing on something as simple as a napkin! We have contacted every trainer that's in our area and finally set up a consultation...but it's on April 3rd. We also signed him up for doggy "boot camp" but that's in June. The growling, I could handle, but not biting like that. I mean, we almost have to either keep him away from everyone until the issue is resolved, or keep a muzzle on him when he's around them. We've been consistant in all we've been doing. Making him work for his food, hand feeding him and everything else! It's been over a month since we started and as I said, instead of better, it's gotten worse. What do we do?

I'm sorry things haven't gone well I haven't dealt with anything like this, so..just words of encouragement from me and Korra. Hope the trainer will be able to help kick the agression.

Thanks. It's just so disheartening. And with the trainer, I don't think we can actually start working with him until May/June. That's 2 months of dealing with him being like that. Ugh.

That's a long time to let this continue...
I feel that same way about mine and kids. Mine is still way scared of kids- boys especially. I eventually got her to take a treat (but back away immediately) the other day from a boy in her puppy class, after a minute or two of tossing treats by his feet. Hey--progress none the less! Try backing up another couple steps in his training and give it another go.
How is his drop it?
Also (sorry, I haven't read the fully thread) have you tried dropping treats for him when you're near (not touching him, or the object). From what I understand, your father got bit before he touched the napkin, right? Maybe that's where you need to work. I know that doesn't help if he has something dangerous in the meantime. Maybe you can keep a toy, one he LOVES, and get him to voluntarily switch/drop the object himself? Make it his idea, not yours. Sorry if you've tried all that..
And I said just words of encouragement? Hah, I can't resist a puppy problem. I don't know if there are any ideas to keep there, just thinking out loud, but..yes. I hope you can find something that works, May/June is so far..

He refuses to drop anything. He knows no and release. Well, release we're still working on. We've done the toy trading but even doing it for this long hasn't helped. It's just so strange. A napkin? Really? He never bites ME when I'm taking something from him. He might have growled once or twice, but it never progressed to him biting me. If he's chewing on something he's not supposed to have and I try to get it, 95% of the time he'll try to turn it into a game and get us to chase him. Usually we'll just pretend we don't care and a few minutes later, we'll go get him to release it. He has no issue with me taking things away from him though. Sometimes he will do a huffy growl when I pick him up after taking it away, but that's just because he's a spoiled brat. Haha. I've almost gotten to the point of thinking that he thinks I'm the Alpha and that's why he doesn't do these things to me. He minds me better than Caitlyn, always runs to me and never bites me. We don't know where to turn! He's the only trainer that's replied, that is willing to help a pup his age. Wow. Look at me blabbing again. Haha. We're just frustrated. I just imagine if that had been a stranger instead of my dad. The situation could have been much worse.

Korra did the "chase me" thing too. What I ended up doing was making it a game- with things fairly harmless (eg the napkin) I'd play with her, help her throw it and rip it and pet her, once she's had her fun and come back and forth to me a few times, then I take it, treat. That way, when she has something she can't have, and I call her she comes over, and then I take it and treat. If I did take it and treat with everything, she'd probably go right back to playing chase with it.
Is release different from drop? Or do you just use a different cue? Sorry if I'm being dense lol. We never did toy trading, but we never had gaurding issues either. What we did was grab the toy closer to her mouth so she couldn't shake and play tug of war. At that point, the toy becomes uninteresting. She could hold on and engage in a stare-off, or let go and get it back again. I'm not saying this is a good idea with him if he has agression over stuff, just sharing. We wanted her to know that, yes, you can have THIS toy back if you give it to me, and if you don't, well that's fine too, but no one's having any fun. After that, we'd hold the end of the toy and she'd drop. Drop it while NOT holding the object is a tough one. But if she's got a pebble in her mouth, no mrs. nice mommy. I just opened her mouth and took it out, of course she'd struggle to have her face back. I still gave the drop-it command, and eventually she gave up. Now, when she's got a rock or something, she'll drop it immediately. Sometimes she throws it with attitude, but it's not in her tummy causing problems, so I'd say that's a win.
Also, so she doesn't begin to have an issue with having her mouth/face grabbed, sometimes I'll open her mouth...and then wipe peanut butter all over it! Yum.
Now who's blabbing.
It could've been worse So, keep being creative since your consultation is a while off!

Haha. You're not being dense at all! Well, If I see him start to go for something and I say no, he ignores it (though he does get some attitude sometimes, haha). Of he's already got it, I usually grab it and say release. Usually he'll just open his mouth and let me take it. Sometimes he tries to pull and I say release and open his mouth, take it and then praise him when he DOES let it go. Well, it's weird because with us, especially me, he doesn't really growl/bite when we take something away. That's why it was so weird. This wasn't food, it was a napkin. He's torn up a lot of those and never ever had a problem with us taking them away! So for him to bite like that was bizarre. I've even had to grab him, open his mouth and dog around to get something he's chewing on and he won't even utter a peep. My dad did nothing wrong either! He was taking to him I'm a playful voice and thought he was going to play with Alki. Then that happened. It was so sad. We're trying but we just don't know where to turn! If we wait on the trainer, it'll be until may/ June until his actual training begins. We can't realistically deal with this for another 2-3 months. I just keep wondering what we're doing wrong. I know working on food guarding takes time, but I feel like this is different, more escalated. It's just not acceptable to not be able to take him around people or have to instruct every single person to not touch him when he's chewing on something. I don't want someone (including Caitlyn and myself), to have to risk being. Bitten to take something away. Haha. I'm just still reeling from the whole thing, so I'm chatty. Haha.

Haha, it's fine. I'm sure it was a huge shock, chat away.
He may be fine with you taking stuff, but you may need to recuit some family to help with his training, help him generalize it. So you taking things away is fine AND others taking things away is just fine too. At the same time, I know you don't want anyone, you, your girlfriend, your family or friends, to get hurt. Maybe just take it nice and slow. I'm not sure how you looked for trainers in the area, but there must be more, maybe ask some friends, a dog walker, groomer, a rescue, the breeder, etc. I have a shit ton of work due in less than an hour...f*ck haha. I hate this forum sometimes...I get so distracted. Good luck is all I can say!