What do you do if your pug almost bites you?

Viv has a bit of aggression in her, it only rears it's ugly head if she has tissue and I need to take it away from her.
We do a lot of trading, she pretty much will drop whatever she has if I say Viv do you want to trade, she in turn gives me whatever she has and I give her a tiny treat, but when it comes to any kind of tissue she refuses, this morning Rupert came trotting in with a huge hunk of tissue stuck to his mouth, it was darn cute, so I knew Viv was up to no good, when I went into the bathroom to find the contents of the garbage on the floor and her eating the tissues I swooped down to pick them up and take it out of her mouth she got very aggressive, she went to bite me, got all snarly and snapped at me, I pushed her away with my hand and she got even angrier, I was standing by this point and it looked like she was going after me so I put my foot up and she almost bit that.
I reprimanded her but she just looked at me like what? and walked away. How should I have handled the situation?

Donna--I've copied and pasted an article on resource guarding since that is essentially what Viv is doing. If a dog has a go at me while I'm trying to get something away--I usually glove up, stomp my foot quite close to where they are to distract them, grab what I'm trying to get away (not always successfully) and then I isolate the dog--either physically or emotionally or both.
My guess is that Viv KNOWS the tissue is a forbidden object which makes it even more valuable to her when she gets it. And some dogs just will not give up a high value item without a fight. Lola is that way--although much better. I just accept the fact that in some circumstances, I WILL get bitten if I absolutely need to get the object from her. So I glove up. And when she bites me--she pays the consequences of being ignored and left to sulk.
[size=21]
RESOURCE
GUARDING[/size]
This
puppy has something of high value that she doesn't want to lose.
Another
pup has come too close for comfort and she freezes, shifts her eyes and hovers
over her prize.
If the
other pup persists, she may escalate to a low growl, snarl or snap.
This is
normal dog behavior. As long as it remains a simple communication between dogs
and not a serious squabble, it's probably no problem at all. When a dog covets
an item or parades it for canine housemates to admire, it's part of how they
peacefully maintain their own order within the pack. Having, keeping and
sharing is what leaders do. Relinquishing and not challenging higher pack
members is what followers do.
If
your dog questions your leadership, please see the other articles on how
to be a good leader and plan to attend our Leadership
class, held monthly.
It is
a serious problem when a dog threatens to bite its owners when they try to take
something away.
Dogs must be willing to give up things they'd rather keep - like that rawhide
that has gotten too small or a turkey bone that has fallen on the floor. You,
the pack leader, own all items in the house and your dog should give them up
to you if asked. There are some dogs who make huge statements, taking a stolen
kleenex under the coffee table and daring anyone to come close. Possessive
aggression, commonly called resource guarding, can be a serious danger to your
family. Children are particularly vulnerable, whether they are children who
live in the home or who are visiting. The solution is to teach your dog that
people who approach when he has something of value are going to give him something
better, not steal his prized possession and leave him with nothing. You want
your dog to believe that giving valued resources to its humans is the greatest
thing ever.
Don't
pester, don't dare.
Just because you should be able to take things from your dog, doesn't mean you
should make it a point to repeatedly bother your dog while it is eating or march
over and take things just because you can. One of the worst things you can do
is practice challenging and stealing from your dog. You can annoy the nicest
dog into becoming ready for the next challenge and make matters much worse,
or even create a problem where there really wasn't one.
DOG
STAR DAILY - Dr.
Dunbar's IWOOFS RADIO - Resource Guarding
TEACH
A WILLING EXCHANGE

[size=9][Please note:
If you have ANY hesitation or concern that your dog might become aggressive
during this exercise, or if your dog has ever bitten anyone with a bite that
has broken the skin, please contact a professional to work WITH you and coach
you on this exercise. In following the suggestions given, you hereby agree that
Diamonds in the Ruff assumes no responsibility for your safety as you work with
your dog.][/size]
The
goal is not to teach your dog to "give it up or else" but to create
a relationship based on trust and respect where the dog will WANT to give you
what he has.
TRADE
UP!
[size=9]Always trade what
your dog has for something better.
When your dog has an appropriate item, ask to see what he has and then praise
and give it back so he doesn't think just because you are showing interest,
that you are planning to steal.[/size]
1.
Prepare two large items, one with peanut butter or cream cheese on it, and one
without. For safety, start with something your dog probably wouldn't want to
keep, like a wooden spoon or paint stir stick.
2.
Hide the doctored one behind your back and hold out the plain one one and let
him investigate it while you hold it. (Keep the item in your possession at all
times during the groundwork of this lesson.)
3.
Next, produce the "better" one AS you say "can I have
that?" and praise "thank you!" as he leaves item number one to
lick the stuff off item number two. While he is busy with item number two, dip
item number one in a bit of peanut butter and hold it behind your back.
4.
When he's about finished with the peanut butter on item #2, say "can I
have that?" RIGHT BEFORE you produce the newly-doctored item #1.
After a few repetitions of this, the phrase "can I have that?" will
come to predict "better item is coming" and he will remove his mouth
from the item he has when you say "can I have that?" before
you have to produce the doctored one.
5.
Change your physical orientation. Sitting, kneeling, standing. Leaning over
and looming is often a trigger for coveting. Remember at all times that your
goal is to NOT trigger a guarding response. If your dog goes still at any time,
go back two steps. Do not move to a more difficult level until your dog is relaxed,
unthreatened and willing at the previous step. When he hears the phrase "can
I have that?" he should look up with eager anticipation.
6.
Let go of the item briefly, say "can I have that?" and immediately
produce the doctored one. He should have no problem with your picking up the
first one or taking it as he lets go if you have worked long enough at the previous
level. IF YOUR DOG HAS PROBLEMS GO BACK A STEP, or two.
Increase
criteria gradually.
The above might happen over several days or several weeks. The goal is to avoid
bribing: "look what I have - wanna trade?" but instead teach the dog
to give you the item without seeing what you have to offer.

Future steps might include starting over at level one using two large rawhides
and going through ALL of the above steps, one by one, carefully watching for
any signs of reluctance. The biggest mistake most people make is to get into
a power struggle with their dogs. They end up practicing guarding intead of
practicing a willing exchange.

During the process you must use errorless management,
NEVER letting your dog have a chance to practice stealing, hoarding or guarding.


Teach
your dog to retrieve.
A dog who wants to have things in its mouth can easily learn to "bring
it here!" deliver to hand and trade for a treat. A dog with a good retrieve
can help clean the house or fetch that pen that rolled under your desk so you
don't have to crawl around on your hands and knees to go get it. Let your dog
help you!
Dogs love
jobs. Most stealing behavior is simply a way to get your attention. Grabbing
and running is an invitation to play. Teach your dog to play YOUR games!

If
your dog has a serious guarding issue or you are not comfortable or unsure that
you understand the above sequence completely, get professional help before you
start.

Great
article: "Help
for Object Guarding"

For more
information, read the book "Mine!"
by Jean Donaldson available through Dogwise.
This
handout may be reprinted in its entirety for distribution free of charge and
with full credit given:
CAROL A. BYRNES "DIAMONDS IN THE RUFF" Training for Dogs & Their People -
ditr_training @ hotmail.com - http://www.diamondsintheruff.com

I personally think that you did well to avoid a bite actually happening, and I guess I would have done pretty much the same as you, perhaps followed by a time out.

In future my own approach would be to try to avoid confrontations over tissues. If taking them away means you risking a bite I would not want to go there at all. If trading doesn't work, even for really super treats like chicken then I would try doing other things that may distract her attention. Perhaps running excitedly into another room, playing with Rupert, whatever you know she is interested in. If she has knocked the garbage over perhaps try dropping a laundry basket or towel over what is on the floor to stop her getting to it immediately so you can swipe it up. The odd bit of tissue won't kill her if she eats it but obviously if she has a huge hunk you have a problem.

Good luck. I had a really big bad reaction from Snifter once when I tried to take away a bully stick. No snapping but a really big "I mean business" growl. Now I give chicken treats when I want the bully sticks back. Toddy will always come for those and even if Snifter does not initially he soon gets jealous of Toddy and comes for his chicken.

ok well this sounds really weird but one day when me my boyfriend rich and honey were sitting on the couch watching tv rich went to take one of her toys away from her to throw it so she would go after it and she snipped at trich and he said what should i do and i said joking around b/c i didnt know what else to say but i said, bit her back....

well indeed he did and i said rich i was only kidding i didnt really mean to bit her back, and he goes OH!!....

well it worked he bit her back and she has never snipped at one of us again!! he didnt bit her hard to where she owuld yelp but hard enougb she she knew that he wasnt kidding around....

Kimchi bit me once when I was trying to take a bully stick away from her. She bit me - and hard too. I yelled at her, very loud. What's funny is I said "That is NOT acceptable!!!" (as if she understood what that meant. She seemed to get it and look really sheepish. She's never bit me again...yet.

Not Afraid wrote:Kimchi bit me once when I was trying to take a bully stick away from her. She bit me - and hard too. I yelled at her, very loud. What's funny is I said "That is NOT acceptable!!!" (as if she understood what that meant. She seemed to get it and look really sheepish. She's never bit me again...yet.

I had similar with a foster, she was a bit of a resource guarder and I had to work on that. One day she caught me off guard and nipped, I had visitors who thought it was terribly hilarious when I said to her, really loudly and icily "How dare you?" in an angry voice and then in a really happy voice 20 seconds later praised her for releasing the toy...They said it reminded them too much of a Miss Manners lesson and did I really think the dog spoke English? Well, derrr...
They weren't doggy people...

Thanks for the advice, it's not the first time she has done this. She no longer gets bully's because she gets very testy if I try to take them away when they get to small.
I did ignore her for a bit after, then my husband comes in to the room we were in to see her and she starts sheepishly wagging her tail at him. I wonder if she knew she was in trouble?
It's the one thing that really bothers me with her, she can be a bit hyper around people but she has never ever bitten anyone or has ever gotten aggressive with anyone except me.

It's a pretty natural dog response, Donna, to guard something they value and isn't, to my mind, an aggression issue. Dogs don't usually go from resource guarding to just biting without something to guard. Where it gets tougher is when the resource they are guarding is furniture or your lap--that's a tougher one to deal with.

Angela--I laughed at your comment. I have often said to my dogs (fosters and permanents) when they are doing something outrageous--"Are you OUT of your mind?" or "EXCUSE ME???" They all know it means they've pushed me too far.

northernwitch wrote:It's a pretty natural dog response, Donna, to guard something they value and isn't, to my mind, an aggression issue. Dogs don't usually go from resource guarding to just biting without something to guard. Where it gets tougher is when the resource they are guarding is furniture or your lap--that's a tougher one to deal with.

Angela--I laughed at your comment. I have often said to my dogs (fosters and permanents) when they are doing something outrageous--"Are you OUT of your mind?" or "EXCUSE ME???" They all know it means they've pushed me too far.

I did not know that, I just assumed that if you bite you were agressive. S

It is funny the things you say to them, I caught Rupert about to pee on the carpet the other day and I said to him Rupert I can see you, as I was standing on the stairs, he just looked at me like ut oh!

Donna wrote:
I did not know that, I just assumed that if you bite you were agressive. S

I guess it depends on how you define aggression. Biting is certainly an aggressive act, but resource guarding is, in my mind, less about aggression and more about protecting something of value and is a behaviour that is pretty instinctual in dogs. In my house, my only serious resource guarder is Lola--she will give me all kinds of warning that she is guarding the resource and if I persist in going for it--about 60% of the time, she will try to bite me. For Lola, this is a hard wired behaviour. We have never been able to curb her defense of an object--and she will defend furniture, my lap, etc. So I rarely give her anything that I know I'm going to have to take away quickly and she rarely will trade a high value item(bone, bully stick) for a treat. So I manage her behaviour by not giving stuff unless I know she's got some time to gnaw on it and she's not allowed on any furniture and only on my lap occasionally and gets promptly put on the floor for being snarky. For Lola--the growling, snarling, teeth baring is improvement as she used to bite first without any sound--Lola actually does have issues with aggression --but they are all predictable and I know her triggers.
Viv may be a bit hard wired for this as well. It can be a very hard behaviour to extinguish since it isn't really "left field" (as in out in left field) behaviour for dogs. I don't correct my dogs for snarking at each other if someone is trying to steal, but I do prefer them to let me take stuff from them. They all do, except Lola and even she is better, but will never be a dog that I can put my hand down to get a bone without a thought.
The behaviourist we use actually feels that the method of trying to train dogs not to be food guarders is dangerous and believes that putting your hand in their food or taking their food bowl away again and again is unfair to dogs and potentially sets them up to become silent guarders of resources. I hadn't thought about it that way until she asked me how my husband would respond if I put his plate down then snatched it away after he had a couple of bites and continued to do this throughout the meal. While I realize (and so does she) that dogs aren't people, it makes a good point about setting up dogs to live up to expectations that aren't always fair or reasonable.
You do have the right to expect not to get bitten and to not like it (who does?), but you may be at the point with Viv where you have to manage the behaviour and when you absolutely have to get something away from her, you glove up and prepare for the possible reaction.

Surprisingly, the only one of my pugs who has come close to biting while resource guarding is..Hooligan. He gets obsessed with bully sticks, so that is something we are very careful about giving. We do "trade" with him and it seems to work well, but the first time he snapped at us totally threw us off.

Thanks for the detailed answer, you have opened my eyes a bit.
By the time I can get to her with the tissue there is no time to glove up, since I have stopped giving her Bully's that seems to be the only other times she does it, odd I would not but Bully's and tissue in the same catagory, but for whatever reason Viv seems to!
I need to take the tempitation away from her and get a taller garbage can.
Thats interesting about the food, I was told to do that but what you said makes sense, I would get a bit snarly if someone messed with my food!

I have only been bit by Bella and that was when I was trying to take a chewy of some sort that had gotten too small out of her closed mouth. I actually pryed her jaws open to get it out, so I full expected to get bitten. My DH was at a loss about what to do....really....it's a pug....force her freaking mouth open!!!! We have had much bigger and stronger dogs and he didn't seem to be at a loss with them. He is such a whoosy! I think it was more of her trying to swallow it than it was really a bite. I can shove my whole hand down Odins huge mouth and he will just sit there like it's no big deal. Now they will snip at each other with high value stuff, but I have always been able to take it from them.

Yup, resource guarding is a pretty common behavior. This is how I explain it to folks who have dogs that resource guard. If someone came and snatched a dollar bill out of my hand, I'd think it was weird, but not freak out about it. But if I had a thousand dollars in my hand and someone came and snatched them away, I'd fight. When dogs bite over the chicken bones, toys, rawhide or in Viv's case, tissues, you're taking away their thousand dollar item and they're not real happy about it.

There's a book called "Mine" by Jean Donaldson that goes into great detail how to deal with resource guarding. I like it because it gives the owner a blow by blow account of what to do. I know you can get it at www.dogwise.com.

Lacey and Cornell are my two resource guarders. Lacey after 6 years hardly ever gets guardy over stuff anymore, she came from a pretty bad situation, but she's a pretty soft dog, but Cornell will take your arm off if you try to take something from him. He has other underlying aggression issues as well, and I think was a feral dog before he ended up at the shelter, but even he has gotten better in the 3 years that I've had him, he even dropped something in his mouth the other day when I used "that" tone of voice, I was surprised!

My dogs learn that hands coming at them are good things instead of threatening things, one thing that helped with Cornell was learning that not everything that falls on the floor is worth having. I randomly spray bitter apple on crackers and 'drop' them on the floor. ( I love the expression on his face when he bites into one of those crackers) so he's not just grabbing things because of the reward of getting tasty freebie and I think some dogs like doing it because of all the attention they get, and I've even had a few that will grab things because they know they'll get a treat.

As mentioned earlier, if you think she'll bite, get a behaviorist to help you out. It is a pretty common problem, I usually have at least one dog in my class that resource guards and rescues are more likely to guard because of their history.

Thanks for the tip on the book. It amazes me that a tissue is so valuable.
She is always picking up stuff from the floor that we trade, I starting saying to her you don't really want that you just want the trade.
She has not actually ever bitten me but has come very close, it will be nice to know what to do when it happens again, which I'm sure it will.

GREAT Thread!

Thanks for the article and additional details (Blanche and Pugasaurus)!!

Donna: this is my Captain's response when there is a bully stick or marrow bone... and I manage him like Blanche does Lola: only when I know he can be uninterrupted for a good length of time does he get one of these... and then we trade for something VERY high value, tossed away from the bully, which I put my (shod) foot on top of...

The Donaldson book is great, and takes more time and more hands than I have access to ... so I have failed my Captain in being unable to make that entire training series take place... We just do the best we can.