Charly is a 1.5 year old female English Springer Spaniel. She's a sweet dog and totally non-aggressive (never bitten or even snarled at anyone). Since I had several friends/family members with dogs with severe food guarding issues- I was diligent with training Charly around food as a pup. It's great- I can put my hand right in her food dish at anytime or take away a very delicious treat without any signs of food guarding. She'll even drop any food from her mouth on command.
HOWEVER, we recently got a cat and are currently pet-sitting a friend's dog. To my shock, Charly is EXTREMELY protective over her food around other animals. She full on attacked my friend's dog twice now when she was eating from her bowl (the dog was visibly shaken but uninjured). Charly has even snarled and snapped at the cat for just walking by while she was chewing on a treat (she and the cat are best of friends ordinarily).
Call me crazy, but I didn't even think of food guarding with other animals when I was training her as a puppy. Is there anyway to curb this behavior now? Or is this something we're just going to have to be super careful about? That, and never be able to adopt another dog into the family . I'm really very upset about this-- she's never exhibited ANY kind of aggressive behavior in the past.
Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Tami
HOWEVER, we recently got a cat and are currently pet-sitting a friend's dog. To my shock, Charly is EXTREMELY protective over her food around other animals. She full on attacked my friend's dog twice now when she was eating from her bowl (the dog was visibly shaken but uninjured). Charly has even snarled and snapped at the cat for just walking by while she was chewing on a treat (she and the cat are best of friends ordinarily).
Call me crazy, but I didn't even think of food guarding with other animals when I was training her as a puppy. Is there anyway to curb this behavior now? Or is this something we're just going to have to be super careful about? That, and never be able to adopt another dog into the family . I'm really very upset about this-- she's never exhibited ANY kind of aggressive behavior in the past.
Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Tami