This is the puppy training podcast episode number 19, resource guarding.

This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home.

And I'm here to help you every step of the way.

This is the puppy training podcast and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcast,

and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.

Hello, how was your week? You guys, I hope it was great. Today we are going to talk about

resource guarding. Now, it's kind of a scientific term, just a little bit, but what is it, and why do we want to talk about resource guarding. Now it's kind of a scientific term just a little bit,

but what is it and why do we want to talk about it? Basically, resource guarding is your puppy's

effort to protect the things that are most important to them. And puppies have a lot of things

that they think are important. Things like their toys or bones. It might be you or another person. It might be your bed or their bed or

their food bowl. Really, it's anything they feel like is theirs and they need to protect it. Then they

tend to do what we call resource guarding. It can be fairly dangerous. So it's really important that we're

aware of it and how to help our dogs not do it. So the beauty is we can do things

to help teach our dogs to share things and to not feel tense or threatened when we are around.

We train them to be excited when we are around and we help them see that there's really not a need

to be tense or to feel threatened when they have something. So knowing this, it's important to learn about our dog's body language.

That is their first way that they will communicate with us.

If I see my dog getting tense, I can then give him space and set up practice sessions

around the specific scenario to help my dog feel comfortable in that circumstance.

Without recognizing what my dog is telling me at the body language

level, they may growl, snap at the air, or even bite. And we don't want that. If you have an older dog

who already resource guards, you're welcome to reach out to me and we can formulate a plan for you

...