Hi,
As the title says I recently adopted my pup from the SPCA so her temperament/lineage and all are unbeknownst to me. They say german shepherd but we see traits of belgian malinois in her. My bf and I got her almost a month ago, she has never shown signs of aggression to either me or my boyfriend and from the get we had our hands near her food or petting her or being around her so she associates us in a positive manner with her food as she is EXTREMELY food motivated.
She got a mandated spay from the SPCA and was on recovery for two weeks so we slacked off with the food often times just holding the bowl or just letting her eat is as is.
Last week however I reached my hand near her bowl as I remembered we should still be reinforcing that people + food is ok. She growled at me. I messed up and took her bowl away. Realizing I shouldn’t have done that I put it back after having her sit and work for it. Then fed her by hand etc, dropping treats in her bowl to reinforce people + food is good and good things happen when humans are around food.
She has been fine since and we have been around her feeding so we were hoping it was just a fluke.
Well today we gave her a pig ear (high value treat i know) and i asked my bf to reach down as he’s been doing majority of her feeding lately to see if she would do anything and she growled and nipped at him.
I then started training her with the ear with dropping other high value treats around her to reinforce the same thing yadda yadda. She never growled or nipped at ME however she was completly stiff the whole time and very uncomfortable. I’m hoping that maybe we caught her off guard with reaching down and since she had never been given one was superrrrr protective over it.
She does have a tendency of walking away from us when medium value treats are given to her but does not growl or show discomfort if we are around her when she is given them.
How do I prevent this from escalating, she is going to be a huge dog and i’ve dealt with aggressive pets however they were all small. I am NOT about to deal with that with a soon to be 90 lb animal.
Please let me know what tricks worked best for you as I fear that I will be scared of a dog I am supposed to love.
Thank you 🙂
submitted by /u/slowfrs08
[link] [comments]