Possessive dog

vicx

Judi wrote: »

and all mine wants to do is hump my leg. Noone elses but mine. She soon gets the message when she gets shoved off though. Not only is she not species specific, shes obviously not gender specific either. Have you ever tried crossing a road with a dog wrapped round your leg? Its embaressing to say the least! She does it mainly when someone gets 'too close' to me.:o

That made me laugh - I am pleased my dogs don't hump legs or anything for that matter My possessive dog would hump his bed but thankfully nothing else

System

i read somewhere that its a dominance issue. Hubby puts his arm around me and the dog wraps herself round my leg. I can tell when her claws need cutting as she brings blood lol.

i wish she wouldnt do it and she always gets pushed away, you'd think at the age of 7 she'd get the message.

Wicky84

I have a 2 year old CKCS who is exactly the same with rawhide. We had a few instances where he would snap at my husband if he tried to take it away so we've stopped giving him rawhide all together now. He's been fine ever since. Not sure what it is about that stuff but they certainly don't want to give it up!

krlyr

If a kid starting to guard his snazzy new game console from his siblings, would you deem it dominant behaviour and think he was trying to take over the whole household? While I'm not one to 'baby' my dogs, I feel that children's behaviour and dog's behaviour can be quite comparable. Your dog has discovered a love for rawhide, it's a high value treat and he has started to guard this resource. I don't believe it's him being dominant - a dominant wolf, in their pack dynamics, does not boss others around and bully them out of resources anyway, they are respected in their position and automatically are the first to eat and so on.

Jean Donaldson does a book on resource guarding called "Mine!: A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs" which may be worth a read
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mine-Practical-Guide-Resource-Guarding/dp/0970562942

I second a vet check, any sudden behavioural change can have a medical cause, and I agree with seeing if a behaviourist is covered on your insurance too. Find a behaviourist that uses modern, fair methods on http://www.apbc.org.uk

I agree with stopping the rawhide too. I know many people have had good success with Stagbars for dogs that find food chews too high value to leave down, the dogs still enjoy the Stagbars but they're not quite valuable enough to fight over.
Rawhide is a bit iffy anyway in terms of being a bit of a choking hazard (dogs are prone to swallowing large chunks of it which can get lodged in the throat or cause problems further down the digestive system) and some sources of rawhide are less than savoury, e.g. bleaching it for the white colour or using other nasty chemicals in the production process. I prefer to give natural chews like pizzle, ox tail, cows ears, etc. - Zooplus is a good place to stock up.