I was doing some digital organization and came across this piece I wrote about Bentley, our former foster. I believe I wrote this in response to someone that said I probably never experienced resource guarders or biters. I’ve made some minor updates.
Bentley came to us as a resource guarder, excessive barker, slightly reactive, and definitely didn’t like his body being handled. Short story of his past: His boundaries were pushed and nobody listened to his cues. I also think he has a skin allergy that is contributing to some of these feelings.
He was with his first Rhode Island foster for about seven months before he came to us. We had fostered for this rescue previously and they knew I was trainer that has experience with dogs like Bentley.
The first thing we did when he arrived was give him space to decompress. Yard time was limited due to his barking. No walks for five or so days. Thankfully he was low maintenance. Meals in a snuffle mat or frozen West Paw Toppl along with sniffing in the yard, leashed so we could bring him back inside when he became over-stimulated provided enrichment.
My yard is mostly various garden beds and potted plants. We have compost bins and sometimes piles of broken down pallets or plant trimmings. Lots of places for him to explore.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Bentley communicated when he didn’t like what was going on by growling. And Abby, my 16 year old Golden Retriever, is deaf. Whenever she walked past him he would growl. Our house isn’t huge and gates frustrated Abby. Eventually things started to calm down and everyone adjusted to the new routine.
Bentley responded well when called. So the first thing I started to do was reinforce him every single time he responded to his name. No matter what he was doing. If he was outside and came in when I called him, he received a higher value reward. If he didn’t respond I would eventually go out with the leash and bring him in that way. Sometimes he thought that meant going for a walk and after bringing him he would go sit by the front door. I didn’t want the leash to end up meaning something negative, so I thought of other ways to get him in. Sometimes I would squeak a toy – which always got his attention. But since he also guarded toys I would only do that when nobody else was home so he could play with the toy for a while.
Food was a different story. He would guard a kong with that last bit of peanut butter he couldn’t reach. I never got close enough for him to growl for getting to close to his food, but you could just tell by how stiff his body was that he wasn’t playing games. A few times he growled at Abby when she entered the kitchen while we were making dinner. After that he lost kitchen privileges while we were preparing food. He always ate his meals in another room behind a gate. He ate at the far end of the room. Furthest from house traffic (and so I could eventually work on being in the room with him and his food).
When he was done he would sit by the gate and wait. Usually he barked and eventually he realized sitting there quietly(ish) leads to reinforcement: either treats or if the gate was closed I would eventually open it. He would even lay at the open gate offering nice calm behavior. The results of reinforcing behavior you want to see!
When it was just the two of us we would work on recall around the objects he would guard. One day I called him from another room while he was chewing on a bone. I called him twice in about 20 seconds and when he finally poked his head around the corner I made sure to reward that with a heaping spoonful of whipped cream – his most favorite of all reinforcement. After finishing up he immediately started to growl and ran back to the other room. Grabbed his bone and sat there with it in his mouth. I had a feeling this tactic may have been used before. I didn’t want to ruin his love for whipped cream so I used it sparingly as a last resort.
As he became more comfortable he would sit by the gate even if there was something left in his kong. I also started to toss him higher value treats from the gate while he was eating. From there I worked up to opening the gate, then stepping into the room and eventually being able to approach him while eating. When he was visiting with us a few months after being adopted, my wife and I were able to sit at our dining room table and have dinner while he had his just a few feet away.
Bentley guarded the couch and I used similar tactics to get him more comfortable with sharing. Abby slept upstairs with us, so he was allowed to sleep there at night. In the morning he would come to the gate when he was ready to get up. Any other time there was a gate keeping him out so Abby could have access to it. Eventually Bentley got better at sharing with Abby.
This is completely anecdotal but I like to think this might be where he learned he could just walk away:
One day we slacked on management Abby snuck into the room and before I knew it jumped up on the couch with him. He immediately growled and Abby, oblivious because she didn’t even look at him, just curled up into a ball and went to sleep. He looked at me like I was going to do something (I was actually just about to call him away) and he got off the couch and went to lay on his blanket under the dining table. Since then he would still give a slight growl or show his teeth if he wasn’t comfortable with how close she was, but it wasn’t as intense and he always got up and made the decision to walk away.
Bentley barked at most of the sounds of the neighborhood. He struggled with voices on the other side of the fence and especially hearing my neighbor’s daughter outside. We live next to a small market and he was bothered by the movement he could see between the gaps in the fence. Inside he also reacted to voices and sometimes vehicles. The sound of the air conditioner helped muffle the majority of the triggers. I had read about a few different ways to deal with this type of barking (Thanks for Barking by Kiki Yablon), and decided to try something that some may seem counterintuitive: I marked and reinforced the barking.
First I introduced him to the clicker to mark behavior.
He knew how to sit and lie down on cue, so I started to reinforce those two behaviors with a click & treat. Then I started to mark when he came when I called him. I taught him a hand target to help him get used to hands near his face and how to settle on a mat. He learned fast. Initially I just used his kibble as we were mostly practicing indoors with low distractions. When I called him from outside he’d get a Charlee Bear, maybe a piece of cheese or Abby’s kibble. Every so often I’d surprise him with some whipped cream.
I wish I had a picture of his face the first time I clicked when barked. We were on the back deck when he heard something that made him bark. Prepared with my clicker and these Stella & Chewy’s treats that he goes crazy for, I immediately clicked the moment he barked. He turned around and was very confused.
I gave him his treat by placing it on the ground in front of him. The goal was to keep him from turning back towards whatever he heard. I was hoping he would look back to me so I could reinforce that. Eventually he figured that part out, but not this time. I was able to redirect his attention again and have him follow me inside. I thought it was a good first attempt. It didn’t take him long to look for me after he barked at something he heard. Eventually it became easier and easier to redirect and calm him down. The barking became less excessive. He even started to hang out with us in the backyard, occasionally woofing at something past the fence. If he got worked up we just brought him inside and he would go sleep on his bed. After some time he started going back inside on his own. The couch was more comfortable and the room was quieter.
It wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to reduce his barking. And it worked. Nothing is foolproof and no matter how much we work on something there is always going to be the chance something spooks us to the point we go over-threshold. And there were definitely times something set him off and made it difficult for him to calm down. He never became friends with the garbage truck. And that’s ok.
Eventually we got to the point that we could leave the windows open with minimal noise from him. There were a few times we forgot to shut the windows at night and he never barked at anything outside. But there were also times he heard something that spooked him, and one of us would go downstairs to check and comfort him. We never let him bark it out or cry it out.
When we first started walking him he would just pull and was reactive to people coming towards us. He also doesn’t like bicycles, at all. Stella and Chewys couldn’t even help refocus. Just pull, sniff, pee, poop. And bark. But that’s ok when you are just starting out.
One day he happened to look back at me while walking and I immediately marked that with an enthusiastic “good boy!” and offered him a treat ( his favorite Stella and Chewy of course), which he took! As we continued to walk he pulled less and started checking in more. We still stopped to sniff and pee on things – and when I said “let’s go” and turned to walk away he followed, and earned reinforcement. He was starting to figure out how things worked. Over time he became much less reactive. Checked in more and responded better when it was time to move on from the sniff spot. He almost always took treats. We switched him to a longer leash so he could access more areas to sniff. He even slowed his pace to match Abby instead of pulling like a sled dog.
Again, not everything was perfect. Still not the goal. He will stop and stare at that dog barking at him behind the fence. But now he’s not on his hind legs ready to throw down with the much bigger Doberman. He’s just looking and gathering information. Maybe he’ll woof. It’s ok if he does.
Back at home things continued to improve. We did hit a few speed bumps, like him lunging at me when I tried to clean his paws with a towel and couldn’t move out of the way fast enough when he started to growl, but recovered from those incidents pretty quickly. Bentley started to open up more. Turns out he was a lapdog and a couch cuddler. He liked to be chased and even allowed me to wrestle with him. Always on his terms. And when he was done he walked away. At night when he was ready for bed and we were still up watching tv, he would lay by the gate separating the room and grumble. Some mornings he didn’t move from the couch until almost 9am. He was finally being allowed to live it up in a home with others that respected his boundaries. And took full advantage of it!
None of the methods I used with Bentley involved any type of force or punishment that would cause unnecessary amounts of stress. I never had to yell at him. Never ever any physical corrections with something like a prong collar or shock collar. I’m pretty sure he would have taken my hand off if I tried to put anything around his neck. Don’t underestimate the teeth of Shih Tzu.
He didn’t have to work for his meals, unless it was in a snuffle mat or frozen Kong. What we did was set up the environment for his success. We did our best to not put him in a position where he would fail. Instead of scolding him for doing something, we taught him that we weren’t a threat. We taught him alternatives to growling and how to make good decisions. Like walking away.
We reinforced what we wanted him to continue to repeat. I didn’t put him in situations where he would be uncomfortable, like a crowded outdoor market. Instead we went to quiet parks where he could see the smaller groups of people and maybe other dogs from a distance, and get closer as he felt comfortable. Or just go in the opposite direction.
Bentley is definitely a special case. Not just because of his behavioral issues, but because he was just so damn cute and had a hilarious personality. Once you got to know him you could see the little old man inside. I’ll be completely honest I was immediately apprehensive when the rescue told me someone was interested in him. Secretly I really wanted to keep him. But our house is too small and Abby would have packed her things and moved in with her babysitter. But after meeting with them I was pretty confident that Bentley had found his new home. They completely understood who they were adopting, and we all made sure they were set up for success the day he went home.
