Hi,
I'm new. I have a 5 month of male sibe, Meeko. I recently started transitioning to the raw diet about a couple weeks ago. Before that I was feeding him Nutro Ultra something and then eventually transitioned that to Blue Buffalo duck since he didn't really care for the Nutro junk. Then I started reading about the raw diet and decided to give a shot. Ever since I started the raw diet, I can't get near him while he's eating and when I do he starts growling and guards his dish. As soon as he's done, he's completely back to normal like nothing ever happened. I wasn't sure if this was normal or not so I did a quick google search and came across some sites that say no, feeding your dog a raw diet won't cause them to be aggressive and it's because your dog doesn't trust you, blah blah blah. Specifically this link, http://rawfed.com/myths/aggressive.html. Just doesn't make sense. I've had him since he was about 6 weeks old, has already been to training and does everything I tell him. Sit, stay, heel, by heel, come, off, leave it, drop, settle. He was never like this with the kibble. I could do anything to him while he was eating that. Lately, what I've been doing is standing next to him with the food dish, have him sit like normal, put the dish down with my hand on his back and then slowly and gently pet him while he's eating. Sometimes he does growl when I do this. I started doing this to see if it would show him that I'm not going to take his food away or anything like that so that he stops guarding. Just wondered if that's the right thing to do, if I should be doing something else or just not doing anything at all and leave him be? Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

When you hover (and pat him) while he's eating, he may do guard resources. After all food is a valuable resource. And raw meat is a good one at that!

In Facebook, there's a group RawFeeding which has documents on how to "trade-up" with your dog. Kind of like building trust that if you take his food away, he'll get something really nice in return. So he doesn't guard it with his life.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/261761471359/

Just want to chime in here,

If your dog starts guarding, it is a good practice to make it wait for it's meal, attempt a sit/stay for 20-40 seconds while the food is down, then release the dog to enjoy its meal. The message you want your dog to receive is, "This is my (owners) food, I will allow you to eat it, if you behave well"

I also used the body blocking technique to get between the dog and it's food, and once it was clear, I would pick up the meal for a minute or so, then put the dog into sit/stay again and make it wait for the second half of its meal.

Doing this allowed me to show the dog that although I was taking the meal away from it, I was also going to give it back, and guarding it was pointless. Now Granted, this took a little while to get through to the dog, but over a couple of weeks she expected me to take the meal, and give it back, and the guarding stopped completely.

If nothing else works, give it a try and see how it goes, I don't like the "trading up" technique, because to my mind its rewarding bad behaviour. But "to each, their own" as my gran used to say. If something works for you, keep doing it.

Laters
V

Just for anyone interested... There has been research to suggest that enforcing waiting for meals (such as suggested above with 20-40 seconds) with a dog that has already displayed food aggression/guarding can actually make it worse. Just food for thought.

How old is Meeko? I started my little guy off on raw right from the breeder at 9 weeks. He had some issues with guarding at first too. He was so little, it was actually a little amusing, his posturing and growling. Anyway, he's now 12 weeks and has no issues at all, I can take anything out of his mouth. It was an inadvertent fix for me. He was small when I first gave him the raw chicken and he couldn't exactly figure out how to hold it and eat it, so I ended up holding it for him while he ate. He would growl when I took it, then the light bulb would go off when I held it for him. I think this had a similar effect as hand feeding kibble would. This calmed him down about having me close and having my hands close to hims and his mouth while he ate. I agree that making him wait will make it worse. I also taught him "off" which means to spit out what's in his mouth. I started with treats and toys, and when he let go, he got it right back. So to him, he gets back whatever he wants 99% of the time, so he's not too worried about letting something go, plus he usually gets an extra treat. Also, I'm not sure i would want someone to pet/touch me when eating either... Imagine sitting down to your favorite dinner and having whoever bought dinner stroking your back or giving you a massage while you eat, weird right? He shouldn't growl when you do touch him while eating, and I understand why you need to be able to do that, but maybe start slow with the hand feeding and working up to it. Good luck!

My dogs get slightly hesitant at first when it comes to raw, but I can easily get into their bowls and one time Delilah choked (i'm an idiot and decided to cut up a turkey neck and it was too small) and she was perfectly fine with me grabbing it out of her throat/mouth. I've held quarters and necks for Cato when he was little too.