This article is for informational purposes only and not a self-help guide. DO NOT try to resolve food aggression in dogs unless you are an experienced dog trainer. This is dangerous and can result in serious injury or even death. Please hire an experienced dog trainer to assist in this process. Besides myself, I only recommend Training without Conflict™ Certified Professional Dog Trainers for this work.
When I was a less experienced trainer, I thought of food aggression in dogs as an issue of poor pack hierarchy in the home. I know many dog trainers continue to believe this. Today I know better. I wasn’t completely wrong back then; my knowledge was just incomplete. Food aggression in dogs can certainly be a rank issue, but most of the time, it isn’t.
We generally distinguish two types of food aggression in dogs: a genetic predisposition or a learned behavior. The former is more common and has to be managed, and the latter is less common but can be resolved.
Before diving in, please understand that food-aggressive dogs are not automatically bad dogs. They are often great dogs aside from food aggression. This challenge is easily managed and not a reason to give up on your otherwise amazing dog.
Food Aggression in Dogs Due To Genetic Predisposition
The key indicator to determine if your dog’s food aggression is genetic is that it only shows aggressive guarding behaviors with food items and nothing else. If your dog also aggressively guards other resources, it’s most likely a learned behavior, which we will discuss later.
Pure food aggression in dogs is usually a genetic trait. Unfortunately, too many macho trainers who marvel at the greatness of their existence think they can fix anything. After a seemingly successful training program, they leave dog owners with a false sense of security. This can have injurious consequences for the family.
You can end up with a dog that fooled you into believing it was responding to the training approach, but then one day, the evolutionary instincts kick back in. The low growl starts again, and you’re back into fighting with your dog, maybe getting bit in the process. Winning a few battles with a dog over food items doesn’t change its instinctive evolutionary behaviors.
If the food aggression is mild, the right training could theoretically reliably suppress the aggressive behavior. However, it’s impossible to know if the dog truly changed, so management is still the better option.
When the intensity of the displayed food aggression is high enough for it to be a serious problem, we are almost certainly dealing with a genetic predisposition. Obviously, no amount of training can “fix” a dog’s genetics.
Not a Misbehavior
Genetic food aggression in dogs is also not misbehavior. From an evolutionary perspective, the guarding of food has a lot of benefits for a dog. It assures survival, results in more food, helps find better mates, and so on. It’s a strong instinctual disposition, not a pathological problem. Consequently, resolving such food aggression in dogs is usually impossible, and the strategy should be to manage it effectively to keep everybody safe.
In addition, it’s inherently unfair to dogs trying to change them because they were born with a strong genetic program to protect their food. You wouldn’t send a person to a training camp to change their eye color either. This is the same thing. It’s a genetic trait.
Accepting that genetic food aggression in dogs must be managed and can’t be changed will avoid frustration for all involved. Some people we know or live with also need special considerations. The same can be true for dogs. This is one such scenario.
Food Aggression in Dogs As a Learned Behavior
Dogs do what works. If a dog is a punk and likes to get its way, it may learn that aggressive behaviors get it what it wants. In such a case, aggression is a strategy, not a genetic predisposition. However, such a dog is usually guarding other items as well, not just food. Possessive, aggressive behavior over various things indicates that we are dealing with a more general resource-guarding issue. This is a learned behavior. We have a much better chance of resolving that than with pure food aggression in dogs.
Regardless, proper management may still be the safer option, depending on the circumstances and the people involved. This will be an individual decision. Just because we can, doesn’t necessarily mean we should. For some families, managing resource-guarding behaviors can be the better option. It all depends.
Training Can Change It
The good news is that with learned behavior, we can change it. Often, the learned behavior is driven by a poor hierarchical structure in the home. It is usually a rank issue. Dogs are pack-oriented animals, no matter how much some ignorant animal rights groups or uninformed veterinary organizations want to convince us otherwise. Maybe the study of ethology should become mandatory for people working with animals—but I digress. In the dog’s mind, it feels it’s in charge, and we have no right to interfere with its ownership claims. This is dangerous behavior and may manifest in more than just the guarding of food or toys (e.g., water, sofas, people, locations, and so on). It tends to branch out into more and more areas over time, making the problem greater.
But despite its apparent broader scope, this is quite straightforward to resolve and, in many aspects, a much better problem than genetic food aggression in dogs. It just must be dealt with appropriately through the correct training approach. Please don’t assume that the simplistic ideas of pack leadership floating around the internet and dog TV shows will address this properly. These ideas only scratch the solution’s surface, but there is more to it, as you will read in the training section for food aggression in dogs below.
Signs of Food Aggression in Dogs
Dogs with resource-guarding behaviors, especially food aggression, usually give clear warning signs and show that they are taking issue with what you are trying to do. Typical signs include:
- Low growl
- Showing teeth
- Stopping to eat
- Stiffening up
- Eating faster
- Trying to bite
If a dog with food aggression bites, the bite is typically quick and not a full attack. Its goal is to get you to back off and not start a full-blown war.
Dogs with food aggression usually also know that they shouldn’t bite you, but as the behavior is driven by instinct, they can’t stop themselves.
Side Note on Female Food Aggression in Dogs
A female dog will still feed her puppies, regurgitate food for them, and let them eat it. This is because it is an instinctive evolutionary behavior. Genetic food aggression in dogs is directed at third parties, not their offspring. Evolution favors behaviors that assure your genes’ survival, not jeopardizing them.
Management Plan for Food Aggression in Dogs
Regardless of the reason for the food aggression. Proper management will be part of the solution. In the case of a genetic predisposition, the management will be permanent. In the case of learned behavior, probably temporary until training is complete.
Managing genetic food aggression in dogs can be as simple as always keeping all food in the dog’s crate. Don’t bother it while eating; collect the empty food bowl after it is no longer in the crate. Below are a few more things to consider for proper management.
Other Management Considerations
- Put the dog in a crate when no one will bother it and let it enjoy its food or bone in peace.
- Don’t bother your dog while it’s eating. Respect its time to eat. Don’t even go near it; don’t use fake hands or things like that to mess with it. Leave your dog alone while eating.
- Trading out items you want to retrieve from your resource guarder for higher-value items can sometimes be part of a management strategy, but it doesn’t resolve anything. It depends on your dog if this is feasible or not.
- Hand-feeding (or feeding smaller portions incrementally) is not a good idea when dealing with food aggression in dogs. It can lead to a false sense of success. Often it will simply not work. But if it looks like it’s working initially, it usually fails later when the dog has had some time to become invested in the bone or food. While this approach would show your dog that you are providing food and not trying to take it away at that moment, it doesn’t generalize. If the dog believes you will be taking something away in another scenario, it will again respond the way nature tells it to when approached.
- Of course, we can suppress aggressive behavior through punishment at that moment. When done correctly, the dog will stop, and we think we succeeded. But the problem with food aggression in dogs is not to suppress it at that moment. The problem is preventing it from happening again in the future. And if the reason for the food aggression is the genetic makeup of your dog, this won’t work.
If you need more help, please hire an experienced dog trainer to help you devise a proper management plan.
Training for Resource Guarding
Several training components can help successfully manage genetic food aggression in dogs.
All outlined training components apply to both types of food aggression in dogs. For the genetic predisposition type, it won’t resolve it, but it will make management a lot easier and safer. For learned resource-guarding behaviors, the discussed training steps will resolve the issue when done correctly.
I am keeping this high level for a reason. As mentioned before, you should not attempt to resolve food aggression in dogs by yourself. For your safety, please hire an experienced dog trainer to help you.
Teach Concepts Outside Context
Generally, you want your dog to learn important concepts in completely unrelated situations. Instead of facing food aggression in dogs head-on, you want to present similar situations with a much lower level of stimulation and lesser importance of value. This will allow you to teach the concepts of what you need to accomplish. You move on to the problem areas only after the concepts are understood.
Build Trust, Establish Rules and Create Cooperation
To effectively influence a dog’s behavior, it must trust you. We don’t listen to people we don’t trust; why would a dog? Food aggression in dogs is an intense problem, so trust is paramount.
There has to be cooperation between you and your dog to work on anything. If your dog blows you off, that won’t go anywhere. This is done through the right motivation. Cooperation must benefit the dog. We don’t cooperate with other people unless we have a reason to. It is up to us to create the right motivation.
You must have understood rules of interaction. Your dog must understand what you accept and what you don’t. The parameters of your interactions have to be clear and predictable.
None of these things should be a surprise to anyone. This is no different for people. We handle things the same way. So does your dog.
Play is the Way!
Play is the best way to accomplish all of this in the fastest way possible. When we have fun together, we develop a good relationship. Subsequently, this allows us to set rules and shape the interaction as we need to. Play becomes a game by adding rules. Play is a free-for-all, but by adding rules, it becomes more structured without forfeiting any fun. A basketball game isn’t less exciting because you have to wait for the start signal before trying to catch the ball. Games are how we teach rules and cooperation in a fun, motivating way. It will help tremendously when working on food aggression in dogs.
For example, a game will allow you to teach your dog to let go of something when you say so without ruining the whole thing. Learning that concept will come in handy later when dealing with the resources your dog wants to guard. It will still be different from the real thing, but now your dog at least knows what it is supposed to do and what the penalty will be for breaking the rules. Predictability and clarity change things for the better. This is critical when dealing with food aggression in dogs.
Games allow us to teach the concept of giving something up and stepping away from it. Teaching it directly with a bone or food bowl creates too much pressure and conflict.
Obedience Training
Obedience training is also a must for resource guarding. This is less about the commands and more about establishing authority with the dog through the training process. Authority is important as, ethologically, the weaker animal will surrender resources to the stronger one. That goes back to the pack orientation and the resource guarding being a rank issue.
The commands are secondary, but helpful commands when dealing with food aggression in dogs are: out (drop it), back (walk a few steps backward), leave it, and come.
I hope this overview on food aggression in dogs helps you better understand what you are dealing with. But again, please hire an experienced dog trainer to assist in this process. I recommend Training without Conflict™ Certified Professional Dog Trainers for this work only.
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