Hello and welcome to another Magnus and Scout video. In this video, I thought I'd talk about
resource guarding; this is a behaviour that you may have to deal with when you adopt a greyhound.
Resource guarding is when your dog is overly protective of something, this could be their beds,
their toys or more commonly at their food. Some greyhounds are not good at sharing
as they may have spent their early years on their own, or had to compete for things when they were
younger. Magnus was a big resource guarder when we first adopted him. Dogs that exhibit signs
of resource guarding have major F.O.M.O. fear of missing out. Resource guarding is when your dog
feels they're about to lose something and takes actions to keep it. Signs of resource guarding
can be subtle like a look, or a turn of ahead, or more apparent signs like bearing their teeth,
growling, lunging, barking, biting or even fighting. guarding resources is a natural
behaviour for dogs; however, resource guarding becomes a problem if your dog is willing to bite,
or fight to keep an item. This is especially worrisome in a home with young
children, or elderly family members, or if a dog is not predictable in what they decide to guard.
It will be your job to teach your dog there's no need to fear things being taken away and
there's no need to resource guard and when we take things away other things will come in their place.
One important step you can take when trying to prevent resource guarding is to let your dog eat
and chew in peace. If your dog guards their things or their food, set up a separate area where you
can eat in peace and block this off perhaps with a gate, or a door during meal times so that no one
can approach the dog and that they won't have the need to react. For magnus when we first got him,
he would eat his breakfast in his crate by himself, and we would get ready in the mornings
without interfering with him and he wouldn't feel threatened at all by us walking past his area;
because he had his own enclosed space. This is particularly important if you've got young
children or elderly parents in the home who might not understand that you can't pet your dog during
meal times if they have this resource guarding issue. So blocking off a separate feeding area
is important and is also very helpful. For Magnus and Scout, we feed them separately at breakfast.
Magnus eats his breakfast in the living room. Scout in the kitchen. That way neither
interferes with the other's food when they're eating it. For meal times, They eat together;
but, just for breakfast they eat it separately. For treats we keep them in the same room;
but anything with bones in it, we feed them in a separate area. That way there's no competition
and Magnus doesn't exhibit any resource guarding signs and you can let eat them in peace.
If your dog is eating a long-lasting treat, or a bone give these to them in their safe areas;
but ensure that everyone in your home knows that the dog is enjoying a treat.
That way, you can leave them be. If you need to take the item away from your dog, always remember
the rule to trade up. Always find a high value treat That your dog loves more than the thing
that he's guarding. Using things like chicken or hot dogs work well. Learn the distance at
which your dog begins to resource guard. Some dogs don't get possessive with an item until you're a
few feet away and then they'll get tense. Others you'll be in the same room and they get tense.
Throw the treats to them. Then eventually throw some away from them to get them to move. Then
once they're away from the actual item they are guarding you can pick it up and remove it safely.
This is not a long-term fix however; so working on things like "leave it training" is a great idea
to help break them off this resource guarding behaviour. Both drop it, and leave it training
cues are important skills for all dogs to learn. Especially those that struggle with resource
guarding. Drop it, means to let go of something that's already in their mouth or possession and
leave it, means to turn away from something that they're interested in. There's lots of different
types of leave it training out there. There's lots of videos online and YouTube where you can find
to learn different ways to do the leave it training. One that works for us, is to have a
treat in both hands. you have one hand behind your back with a treat in and then one hand on display.
You show the hand with the treat in it to the dog. they'll go for it. if they go towards it, you just
close your hand up and say leave it. keep doing this and whenever they back off from the hand you
give them a treat from the hand that's behind your back. Again you'll show the treat. if they go for
it close your hand up and say leave it as soon as they back off from the hand with the treat.
you give them a treat from the other hand. Eventually, you'll get to the stage where
you can have your hand open they'll go towards it and maybe back off and you give them a treat
and eventually get to the stage where you can leave your hand open and they won't go
for the treat at all and when they stay away from you give them a treat from their hand
Magnus picked this up really quickly and it's now really good and won't take
treats until you say "take it". Scout was a little bit slower taking this on; but,
she didn't have any issues with resource guarding. So it wasn't quite as essential for her. but now
both will wait until allowed to take things before they take the actual food. This also
applies to the evening meal. Make sure they wait and don't go for the food the bowls; until, we say
"take it". Working to overcome resource guarding is not a quick process; but ,it is worthwhile.
There's lots of videos and articles online that you can find which go into this in more detail,
not always greyhound specific; but you can learn a lot of tips and tricks from these which you can
use with your greyhound. the purpose of this video it to show that resource guarding is out
there. Just to be aware of it and to be cognizant of this if you are adopting a dog. That your dog
may have this behaviour and just basically watch out for it. That way you don't have any accidents
in the home, Hopefully this video was useful. If you've got any comments. Just add them down below
and I'll answer them as best I can. Thanks for watching and we'll see you again shortly