Episode 29 - Teaching Puppies to Share: Dog-Dog Resource Guarding Prevention

2/26/2025

This episode’s question is about preventing dog-to-dog resource guarding:

“Can’t seem to find it in the video; what is the protocol to work against food aggression within the litter? We have been doing marrow bones and resource guard training with people, but a few puppies are showing aggression to the other puppies at meal times. Any info appreciated, thanks!”

In this episode I discuss:

Why protocols for dog-to-dog resource guarding are not as effective as protocols for dog-to-human resource guarding.
Five golden tips I have found helpful for preventing dog-to-dog resource guarding
Thoughts about dog-to-dog resource guarding and breeding programs

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

TRanscript - Episode 29

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast.

You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about resource guarding between dogs. So not resource guarding things from people, but dogs who’ll resource guard things from other dogs. And here's the question:

"I can't seem to find it in the video. What is the protocol to work against food aggression within the litter?

We've been doing marrow bones and resource guarding training with people, but a few of the puppies are showing aggression toward the other puppies at mealtimes. Any info appreciated? Thanks."

Okay. Me again. The reason she can't find it is it's not in there. I'm going to talk about why that is why I didn't include dog to dog resource guarding protocols in Puppy Culture.

And I'm also going to talk about some tips for preventing and managing resource guarding between dogs. So two reasons I did not include dog dog resource guarding in Puppy Culture. Number one dog to dog resource guarding probably has a much stronger genetic component than dog to human resource guarding. And the reason I think is pretty intuitive. We can tolerate a dog that, for instance, can't have a bone, share a bone with another dog, or has to eat separately from the other dogs.

But you know who's going to sign up for breeding a dog that you can't even go near its food dish when it's eating, or you can't take chew objects away from it, or it won't let you on the couch when you want to get on the couch. I think it's not most people's idea of the ideal temperament for a dog.

So the genetics of resource guarding against humans has been very heavily selected against by breeders in a way that dog to dog resource guarding has not been. Now, I know there's going to be a number of people listening to this thinking, well, but why don't breeders select against this dog to dog resource guarding? And I'm going to ask you to put a pin in that because I'm going to talk about it later.

But suffice it to say it's it's a much more complicated, algorithm than it would at first seem.

The second reason I haven't done dog to dog resource guarding protocols is you're working with two dogs. If you've ever done anti resource guarding protocols, you know how precise you have to be with your timing and how clear you have to be with your body language.

Jean Donaldson does an amazing job of explaining this in Puppy Culture. I demonstrate very clearly each step, how you have to hold the food a certain way behind your back so that you're presenting the correct picture, how you have to be crisp, one two, present this, and then this. There has to be a certain order of events for you to be creating the correct conditioned response, and not the incorrect conditioned response.

And before you even get to that point of doing exchanges, there has to be a whole counter conditioning and desensitization. And yes, with puppies, you can run through that very quickly, not do a lot of counter conditioning and desensitization, but at every juncture, let's just establish you do have to have really good timing and body language and be very, thoughtful about the way that you proceed with this.

So now you see, when you have the second dog as your trainer, why this could be a problem. You really can't control the second dog. So a lot of times that dog is going to be giving the wrong signal at the wrong time and making things worse instead of better. It is very difficult, not impossible, but very difficult to create positive, conditioned emotional responses when you're dealing with dog on dog resource guarding, because you've got this wild card of the second dog. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that.

But those are the two reasons why I didn't include it in Puppy Culture. Dog to dog resource guarding protocols are so dependent on the second dog and so dependent on genetics that it's not something, in my opinion, that is susceptible to a single set of universal protocols. There's a lot more nuance involved in it.

Okay. All that having been said, I do have five golden tips that I have found helpful over the years. First tip, now we're talking about puppies. Okay? I'm talking about a breeder who has a litter of puppies. Always make sure that there is way more of whatever food or bones or resource than the puppies could possibly eat or use.

So double the amount of meaty bones and there should always be food left in the dish. Absolutely genetic resource guarding from other dogs and from other people has nothing to do with the amount of resource. And this has been studied where they'll put a dog in, you know, a room with 100 boxes of milk bones, just milk bones everywhere and the dog will resource guard everything.

So with especially with adult dogs, the amount that you put in or give the dog doesn't influence. It's not a needs based thing. However, in my observation, there's some truth to the fact that puppies that feel deprivation very early in life that it can sort of trigger this genetic, the sleeping genetics of resource guarding against other people and other dogs.

So start with more resources than they could possibly use. At least you're checking that box off that you're not going to be inadvertently triggering resource guarding in your puppies.

Regarding location, guarding, particularly guarding of humans when you're holding one puppy in your lap, feed the ones that are not on your lap. This has not been as big a deal for me with my medium to large sized dogs, but Magda Chiarella, who breeds Norwich Terriers, has a whole protocol for this because any dog that is going to be a lap dog, or would be spending a lot of time on your lap or in your arms, they can definitely start resource guarding that space both from people and other dogs.

I just want to distinguish this from what we show in Puppy Culture, because what we show in Puppy Culture is a protocol that's designed to condition a feeling of expectant happiness when a person approaches, okay. A person approaches, they add treats to the equation, they go away, the puppy starts to feel yippy when the person approaches. This, feeding the other dogs on the floor and not the puppy on the lap is not creating a positive feeling about the dogs that are on the floor. But it's doing two things.

Number one, it's lowering the value of the lap and raising the value of the floor. Because now all this food stuff is happening on the floor, not the lap. So that's one thing.

Number two, it's maybe not creating a positive feeling about the dogs on the floor, but it's keeping the dogs on the floor from creating a negative feeling because they'll tend to stay more on the floor and not try and broach the the puppies space, the puppy that's on the person's lap, or in the puppies or the person's arms.

So it's an elegant solution to the problem of not being able to control the second dog and the messages that the second dog's giving. But that brings us to my third tip, which is more of a cautionary tale. I had a litter about ten years ago, and I tried using a manners minder, which is a remote treat dispenser, to create a, positive association for my puppies with having another dog walk past their crate.

We don't really have an issue so much with lap guarding, because our dogs are too big to fit in laps for the most part, but we do have some issues with dogs, guarding spaces like crates from other dogs. So this experiment had mixed results. There were nine puppies, and eight of the nine wound up with zero crate aggression, but one of them wound up running into any open crate and guarding it, if another dog walked into the room

And that dog has zero dog aggression and accepts even strange dogs into our house without hesitation, she just learned to guard the crate because every time a dog came around, there was food in the crate. So again, probably genetics play a very strong role here. And again, the big dogs wouldn't always cooperate.

Sometimes they'd turn around and look when they heard the manners mind or go off, or they'd even approach the crate as the as the puppy was getting, the treats so the wrong emotional response was created. I don't really have any advice for you, except probably it's not a good idea to try this, and it's just an illustration of how difficult it is when you're working with multiple dogs, because you're trying to control so many factors that you really can't control.

The fourth tip I'm going to share with you is something that a very wise breeder told me years ago, and she said that your dogs should always think that you will protect their interests, and if they truly believe that you will protect their interests, they will be much less likely to squabble amongst themselves. So pursuant to that, this is what I do.

I take my puppies out individually with my most solid big dog. So my whatever big dog I have in the house that is the least resource guardy, that's the dog I use for this exercise. The big dog gets a treat, then the puppy gets a treat. I count to two and I repeat. Big dog gets a treat. Little dog gets a treat. One, two. Big dog gets a treat. Little dog gets a treat. One, two.

The puppy develops a happy feeling about seeing the big dog get a treat, because he knows in two beats he's going to get a treat. Again, we go over the whole timing thing and how you hold your food and everything in Puppy Culture, so I'm not going to rehash all that here, but it's important that you get the order of events right, that it's one two big dog, then little dog.

It's not the same time, it's big dog, then little dog, then very important, when I'm done, when I want to end this session, I will take the last treat and I will throw it away across the room for the big dog. So the big dog will go away and find that treat. Meanwhile, a puppy under 12 weeks old, they just don't have the vision to see it being thrown so much at that age.

So the little dog, the puppy will stay with you and you can feed that puppy a treat while that big dog is across the room, getting that thrown treat. What does that do? It makes both animals feel that they got the last treat. If you don't do this, you run the risk of creating a negative association for the big dog.

You never want the big dog to think when he sees the puppy get a treat that his opportunity for treats is closed. So this prevents that happening.

And my final tip on this is that the most important thing I can tell you is to be realistic about your expectations. It's just not fair to expect dogs to share all the time.

In our house, we never put down a high value toy or bone when there's more than one dog in the room. We never feed two dogs in the same room, even if we think we could, we never do it. Lots of dogs can't share. One of my top two dogs ever for lack of dog aggression and incredible dog skills, was Zulu.

Zulu was my not just not dog aggressive. She was my neutral dog for seminars. I mean, literally a dog could fire off on her and she would just stand there. This dog, I mean, there was nothing I asked of her that she wouldn't do. She had excellent level agility titles. She did rally. She did swimming. She was a champion.

She was a ROM champion. Group placements. Best in specialty show. The best mother. Hands down I ever had. Unbelievable with her puppies. I could do any benched show and sit with her in my lap the entire day. And hundreds of people could come up and just molest this dog, just pat her all day long and she would sleep on her back in my lap.

Champion, ROM champion, brood bitch and Meredith's offspring. Grandmother. Great grandmother. Great great grandmother. Great great great grandmother of ROM champions every generation down. There is nothing this dog did not deliver for me. But you know what? She could not be fed in the same room as another dog. I think I owed her that modicum of respect to give her privacy when she ate.

So now let's talk about breeding programs and dog on dog resource guarding. If having dogs that never resource guard from each other is of deep importance to you as a breeder. You need to make that a top priority and select for it. As you can guess, I am in no way saying this should be your top priority. But I will say that resource guarding has a strong genetic component, so if you don't like it, you really should select against it.

The way it sorts out for me in my breeding program when it comes to dogs, resource guarding against other dogs is this. I have a breed that is notoriously difficult to run in packs, and I've done a fair amount of rescue. And I'll tell you, it's just much easier to place dogs that don't resource guard against other dogs.

So with no doubt, lack of resource guarding against other dogs is a virtue. But as a breeder for me, I look at this particular trait more as a virtue to be bred for then something necessarily to be selected against. So if I have a dog that can be fed with other dogs and never guards me or my possessions, or chew objects from any of the other dogs, that's more of an exceptional dog that I would want to breed for that trait.

I would want to breed that dog, even if that dog didn't have other virtues, that would be a virtue worth breeding for. In my opinion, in my breed. But I would not exclude an otherwise virtuous dog from my breeding program because they couldn't be fed with other dogs. To be clear here, what I'm talking about is resource guarding from other dogs.

Okay? It's not dog aggression. These are two completely separate things that spring from different genetic wells. And I'm not going to get into my position on dog aggression except to say it's very different for me. Dog aggression is very different for me than a dog that will resource guard from another dog.

So in sum I would say when it comes to anti resource guarding protocols for puppies, for very young puppies your best offense is a good defense.

Try and set things up early on so those puppies never feel the need to resource guard because it is genetically controlled to a large extent and some of it is beyond your control, but it is my observation that there is a segment of dogs that may be genetically could be predisposed to resource guard, but if it's not triggered by early life events, it will never emerge.

I don't think there's a particularly effective dog on dog resource guarding protocol out there. I do think it's something that's controlled a great deal by genetics, and that becomes a decision tree for you as a breeder. But you know, you can have an influence. And that's what I shared with you in this podcast.

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Well that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.