Category: Top Dog

I have a 5 month old male olde english sheepdog x poodle mix (sheepadoodle). behavior wise he’s quite wonderful, he’s been easy to train and eager to please, very food motivated. when we feed him we usually are doing other tasks either in the same room or in a different room, point being we don’t interact with him as he eats. when he’s chewed on stuff in the past i would occasionally pet him but quite rarely. today, he was working on a chew and our older senior dog was walking by him (walked past him didn’t interact or look at him) and he growled at her. my partner and i were raised an eyebrow and thought it was unlike him. just to test the waters we gave it a few mins of him calmly chewing, walked past him and he had no reaction and continued chewing happily and relaxed. great. we decided to up it to see where his boundaries were, i walked by him and reached down to scratch his head and he started to growl at me!!! i immediately stopped and left him alone and didn’t react leaving him to finish his chew time.

Is this normal behavior? I understand dogs do resource guarding but I’ve never owned a dog that growls at me in any capacity — i also recognize that resource guarding can get worse and to address it early. What do we do? Thank you!

hi everyone, i have a 10 week old doodle puppy named honey. yesterday i noticed she goes into these fits (the zoomies i guess?) where she just runs around like crazy and charges at people, biting their ankles and/or their pant legs. i don’t mind the running but the biting concerns me because it feels aggressive almost ? i’ve also never had a dog before so im completely new to all this. i also don’t want her to get all worked up since its just before her bed time and know she should chill out during this time, but instead she’s running around like crazy. how can i help her? what should i do?

Leaving my puppy for the first time and I’m nervous! My brother and stepdad who he loves will be with him but they’ve never had to take care of him, or even a dog before! I’m leaving note I’m just afraid he’s gonna feel abandoned and lost 🙁 he’s my shadow and we once spent a weekend apart and he was ~ok~ but apparently kept looking for me. Any suggestions on how to make this easier for him??

I’m getting desperate. I have a 4 mo old golden who is really good at drop it for everything except small things outside (rocks, acorns, and MULCH. Especially the mulch). She’ll drop anything that sticks out of her mouth like sticks and leaves with no problem. Her leave it is also really good, but she is still able to sneak some things that I don’t always see in time to tell her to leave it. I don’t want to constantly take things out of her mouth out of fear that she’ll learn to resource guard, but then she was pooping and throwing up mulch. I’ve tried increasing the value of the reward for dropping it to no avail. I’ve tried trading for high value stuff, but she’s not interested (which is crazy because she is so food motivated). I even tried offering a bigger better piece of mulch that I know she would end up dropping bc of its size, but nope. We’ve gone through treats, stinky freeze dried meats, turkey tendon, chicken. I’ve tried throwing something yummy up ahead for her to “find it” in hopes she’ll drop the mulch. She’s really good at “yes work” and so far it’s pulled her attention from anything and she always gets a treat. I’ve tried that too and she’ll give me her attention, but won’t drop the mulch for a treat. Ive placed some mulch along our walk and even inside to practice as much as we can and at it’s gone no where. Is there anything different I can try that someone has success with? I’m considering a muzzle.

Has anybody dealt with a resource guarding issue? My dachshund puppy (6months) has been getting very aggressive lately whenever we try to get something out of her mouth she starts growling, at first it was only growling but now she bites us and she doesn’t seem to care.

I’m getting really concerned with this behavior u have tried this week to Use the drop command , she kind of know it but today she really wanted a tree ornament and didn’t want to give it up, I tried giving her treat for it she didn’t care for that. And growled and she started biting.

I would appreciate any tips and recommendations because I want to correct this behavior and don’t want her to get aggressive with other people and dogs or towards us. She’s the sweetest but whenever this type of situations happen she scares me lol.

My 14 week old mini goldendoodle today decided that her kibble is poison 😅 if I weren’t a little worried it’s abnormal it would honestly be funny 😂

She hasn’t been eating meals on her own today (she’s not the most food driven as it is) and when she does that I’ll sometimes hand feed her a piece or two to get her started. So today when I’ve been doing this she lunges and barks at the kibble as though it’s an enemy, puts it in her mouth and spits it out, eventually eats one piece then does it again. When she eats that one piece it’s almost like she’s chewing on one side of her mouth. Eventually she has gone to the bowl and eaten a bit more on her own/a bit more normally. I’ve been soaking the kibble and by the time she gets around to eating it it’s fully bloated and soft but she’s still acting like this.

I’m assuming this must be teething related but searching this subreddit I haven’t seen a ton of other people post about this type of thing specifically…anyone else experience this type of behavior with a teething pup? If so how long did it last? Or is she too young for this to be teething?