I always flinch a little when people start to discuss dogs’ emotions. What’s coming? Relevant, evidence-based observations or woo? I’ve removed some words from my own vocabulary when talking about dogs because of this. Even though my relationships with my dogs are primary and important, I hesitate to talk about “bonds” or “trust” anymore. It sounds so…I don’t know…West Coast. (I can say that because I’m from California.)
I believe that the people who are out there focusing on magical energy and bonds and leadership and trust and all those other things we can’t describe concretely are doing dogs (and competent positive reinforcement trainers) a real disservice. Because emotions—the dogs’ emotions—do have a place in training. We can’t see them, but we can often see their results. Emotions and internal states have a place in behavior science. They drive observable behavior.
A couple of weeks ago I published a post: “Body Language Study: Fear and What Else?”. It featured the short video clip embedded below. (You can watch the video now if you didn’t already.) In the post I solicited comments about Summer’s behavior. I noted that I saw fear and caution and something else, and asked folks what all they saw.
I got a great response, with people seeing both the stuff I was angling for, and also a whole other category of behavior that I had not noticed.
Predation
What I saw but didn’t mention, and was trying to find out whether others saw it, was predation. Plenty of other people did. Deena Lavine, Melinda Schneider, Meghan Smith, and Susan Hatzen all mentioned prey drive in the comments, and others did on Facebook.
I wasn’t sure how obvious it would be to those who haven’t seen Summer’s behavior over time. She is a serious predator. And she has a special interest in reptiles, including turtles, toads, and snakes.
What was notable to me in the interaction in the video was that she kept re-approaching the area where the reptile was. Fear often results in distance-increasing or escape behavior. This is often flight, although a cornered animal will sometimes freeze or attack a threat in self-preservation. (Dr. Susan Friedman classifies this type of attack as escape behavior as well, because the goal is to remove the threat.) In the clip, Summer was obviously nervous about the lizard that she sensed in the hose reel area, but she was also exhibiting distance-decreasing behavior repeatedly. She had ample opportunity to get away from the reptile. Instead, she returned again and again.
I noted the most basic of analyses: she kept moving her body, carefully, back towards the hose reel and what was hiding inside it. Then she would jump back when she thought the “thing” might be interested in having a go at her.
Slender glass lizard
I think she thought the lizard was a snake. It certainly looked like one–glass lizards have no legs. Perhaps it smelled like one too, because before she ever seemed to get a good look at it, she was exhibiting the same behavior she does when she thinks there is a snake present.
I have witnessed it plenty of times before. When she thinks there is a snake in the grass, she will approach with great care, ready to jump backwards at a second’s notice. She obviously learned the hard way that snakes strike, but with snakes as well she still keeps returning. When she used to go to doggie day care, they told me that she had cornered a large snake once. I have never seen her do that at home and would actively intervene if I did. But I have seen that cautious approach when she thinks there is something hidden in the grass. She does something similar with stinging insects, which she also has a hard time leaving alone. She really wants to kill them, though she has been stung in the attempt before.
Some viewers mentioned that Summer was curious, and I absolutely agree with that. But I’ll go a step further, both from her behavior and what I know of her history. She wanted to investigate and kill the lizard.
If you’d like to see Summer’s reptile obsession, check out the video “Summer and the Turtle,” where she tries to bite and claw her way through a chain length fence to get a terrapin on the other side. Or this blog post: Summer’s Turtle Diary, which features a video where she digs her way under two fences over the course of several days in order to get to a terrapin on the other side. (Sorry about the terminology mashup. I regularly misuse the word turtle to mean shelled reptiles on land, but technically what I am discussing are terrapins. Turtles are aquatic.)
Resource Guarding
What I missed in my original examination of the video, but agree absolutely was there, now that others have mentioned it, was resource guarding. When Summer grabs the Styrofoam container and lifts it out and backs up, she is not trying to get away from the reptile. Nor was she doing what a human might do: moving something and backing up to see the results. Upon consideration, I think she pretty clearly believes she has the reptile in the Styrofoam, and is likely trying to get the whole thing away from Clara, the other dog. (If I leave the snake theory aside for a moment, she may even think the Styrofoam-with-reptile-odor-inside is a new and weird type of turtle!)
Many people mentioned the angle of her body with regard to Clara, and the direction of her glance. She thinks she has the prize and is getting it away. She didn’t know there was a hole in the bottom of the container.
Ellen Barry asked in the comments whether my dogs regularly guard things from each other. Oh yeah! They do, but generally at a very low level. It is what I would classify as normal resource guarding, and they work things out without violence. My movie “Resource Guarding in Slow Motion” shows many such interactions between my dogs. In most interactions between those Clara and Summer, Clara keeps or wins the access to the resource. But she knows when to back off. Clara acts like a big lug a lot of the time but her sense of dog social cues is very finely tuned. In the last interaction in the resource guarding movie she wisely allows Summer to keep a toy with only a small but significant glance from Summer, and she generally stays well away when Summer is guarding a reptile or other varmint. I think she knows Summer is willing to go well beyond a dirty look to keep such a thing. Clara, with all her pushy behavior, is actually quite a peaceable dog.
Summer, not so much. Below is an old photo of her giving Cricket a very hard look–while pushing into her space–for coming too close while Summer is after a turtle. This is from the Summer and the Turtle video I mentioned above, at 0:30. See that very dirty look?
Summer says, “My turtle!”
Clara can read that type of look very well. So when Summer said, “MY critter,” Clara wisely stayed away. Ironic that she was the one who got the closeup of the lizard. (And she startled too, did you see!) But lucky for the lizard that it was Clara!
Summer in typical predator mode
Thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on the video. I’m so glad that others are interested in this stuff. Oh, and to Meghan, who noticed Summer’s low tail set in the video. Yes, I noticed that too and it was definitely atypical. Usually Summer’s tail is curled up over her back like a husky’s when she is aroused and going after something. My best theory is that the fear and caution were keeping it down in the lizard interaction.
More comments are welcome! What do you see? What have we missed?
What is it with me and contests/quizzes, anyway? The Curse of Knowledge got me again!
Because of the way I made a guessing game out of two pictures of my dogs, I may have led people to believe that resource guarding is not very serious. I may have even implied that as long as you can take the item away from the dog, all is well.
In my previous post, I wrote:
One of these dogs didn’t want to give up her item, but still, she did so without incident.
This made it appear that I may approve of walking up and taking things away from dogs who are giving fair warning. I absolutely do not recommend that, nor do I do it (anymore). But I used to, before I knew any better, and I should have explained the context of the “bad old days.” In my zeal to make the guessing game fun, I left out the backstories, and I shouldn’t have.
As mrsbehavior, one of my commenters, said, “Just because you can take something away from a dog doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.” Absolutely, and I didn’t mean to imply that this was so.
What is Resource Guarding?
Here is a definition from Jean Donaldson, from her book about the subject, “Mine!”:
Dogs behaving aggressively when in possession of (and sometimes to gain possession of) food, toys, bones, their owners, their resting spots and crates.
Although it is a very natural behavior–would could be more survival enhancing than being willing to protect valuable stuff?–it can be an extremely problematic one for a pet.
Jean Donaldson classifies most resource guarding as ritualized aggression, where dogs resolve conflict with threatening behaviors short of physical aggression. Dogs are actually pretty amazing at this, but they are also quite capable of causing great harm.
Some of the signs of resource guarding that Jean Donaldson lists are freezing up, a hard stare, eating faster, growling, snarling, snapping, and biting. There is no level of resource guarding against a human that should be ignored.
See the bottom section for resources for treating and preventing resource guarding. In the meantime, here are the answers to the previous post.
Cricket Was Resource Guarding
Cricket and her chewie
In my previous post about resource guarding, Cricket, the rat terrier with big ears, was the resource guarder.
The photo of Cricket with her rawhide chewie is from 2005, before I learned anything about training. I didn’t know resource guarding was that bad a problem, since she would give warning snaps but not bite, and I certainly didn’t know there was anything one could do about it. Some evenings I would separate Cricket and my other rat terrier, Gabriel, and give them each a chewie. If they weren’t done with them when I was ready to go to bed, I would take them away. Clearly, Cricket didn’t appreciate it. I would never do it that way now (see below: My Dogs at Home).
The commenters who picked Cricket named lots of “tells.” I really liked Ingrid’s observation comparing the two photos: I was a lot closer to Summer! That’s a great observation. Even if all things were equal and those were both resource guarding responses, just the fact that I was farther away from Cricket and getting that response speaks volumes. Cricket has three points of contact with the rawhide: both paws are clutching it and she has it in her mouth. Even though she has the rawhide in her mouth, she is managing to push her commissure (corner of mouth) forward, a typically aggressive response. Her little body is tense, down to her back toes. Her ears are back a little from their natural carriage. With her, that was roughly equivalent of a horse putting its ears back. Somewhere between dubious and “watch out!” Then there’s the whale eye, a result of keeping her mouth on the prize but checking up on me. Here are some side by side photos of Cricket comparing her body language and ear carriage in different situations.
Cricket inviting play
Cricket wants something
Cricket resource guarding
Summer was Playing a Game
Summer and her bone
The photo of Summer, the sable/brown dog with the big plastic bone, showed play. We have a game where I pretend to try to get her bone. Either of us may start it.
In the case of this photo, she had started the game. I had been walking across the room and she looked over at me, pounced on the bone with a little growl, and looked again. So I played along and pretended I would get her bone. The photo is a video still, and quite typical of how fierce she was acting.
Others have done a good job of analyzing her body language. It’s actually hard to see much of her body, but she was not hunched over the bone. Her muzzle was not pointed at it. Her whiskers are relaxed (you can compare with the other photo below). Notice that it is her bottom teeth that were showing. She was not lifting her lip or snarling. She was vocalizing at the time, this funny high-pitched hooting whine that she does in play, which is why her mouth is that shape, quite similar to when she howls. But I know she looks fearsome, especially to someone who doesn’t have the context of her general personality and behavior. Here is that photo compared with another photo of Summer, where she is actually snarling (also in play, believe it or not). The one with the bone is starting to look a little better, isn’t it?
Summer and her bone
Summer snarling in play
Some people took the direct eye contact and lifted muzzle in the bone photo as very threatening, and let me tell you, if I met a dog I didn’t know who was doing that, I would do my best to get out of the situation!
I showed these pictures to some friends before I ever posted them, because I myself had a hard time telling the difference between the resource guarding and play signs, even though I know the dogs and the situations. So in the end, although we can observe and analyze away, perhaps the main lesson is that resource guarding and play can look very similar. And we should take care!
Think how many games that dogs play with each other are about guarding places and objects. “King of the couch,” “You can’t have it,” even “Tug.” All sorts of things. My game with Summer was not all that different from playing tug with her. Any game can escalate, but with a clear rule structure they can be a lot of fun.
There is another thing I learned from the photos: one of the reasons Summer looks so convincingly fearsome is that she has a very mobile and expressive face. I have shown lots of pictures of her before, including in my ill-fated contest. She is very expressive. And Cricket, bless her heart, was not. She had those inscrutable terrier eyes and didn’t have near the breadth of facial expression Summer has. So when putting the pictures side by side, Summer’s certainly looked dramatic.
My Dogs at Home
I currently have three dogs, none of whom resource guards anything against me. Partly they came out of the box that way; none of them is particularly “guardy” with humans. But the other part is that I have been doing prophylactic and maintenance work with all of them to keep it that way.
In the rare situation that I take something away from one of my dogs, their reaction is, “Great! What do I get?” I have a huge “bank account” with all of them. I have classically conditioned walking toward them, reaching toward them, touching what they have, or even just looking at them when they have something, to predict great things. (The links below describe this process.)
But if your dog exhibits any of the above behaviors–from either picture–when in possession of something, you should take some steps to get some help about it.
Jean Donaldson’s book Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs has written protocols with every step split out. (It is geared toward trainers, but it quite clear and readable for anyone. The trick is that trainers are probably better at recognizing the subtle behaviors tied with tension in the dog than the rest of us are.)
Finally, here is a video that shows a professional trainer dealing with resource guarding and food aggression. It’s not a how-to video, but shows the general methodology, and some of the more subtle signs of resource guarding: Resource Guarding/Food Aggression.
Conclusion
I was feeling bad for a while, since there is not a clear cut answer to this “quiz.” I wished that I could say, with authority and certainty, that if you saw “A, B, and C” happening with a certain dog you should worry, but that if you saw “X, Y, and Z” you didn’t need to. But life isn’t like that. In retrospect, I think it is a good lesson that both of these pictures show behaviors that are worrisome, even if one dog is playing. As reader Jennifer said,
This is a wonderful exercise. I certainly would not risk my own flesh, or the comfort of either of those dogs to test my hypothesis, since really both pictures could be resource guarding.
Exactly.
Coming Up:
Invisible Cues
How Skilled are You at Ignoring? (Extinction Part 2)
More Training Errors: Cautionary Tales (I seem to have an abundance of these)
Here’s a little body language fun: Who is seriously resource guarding? And what is the other dog doing?
I showed these pictures to two of my skilled observer friends to compare, and they came up with some great observations. Much better than my own, and these are my dogs!
Just the other day I told a friend that I would never have a contest on my FaceBook page or here on the blog. It’s always presented as one of the number one ways to get people to Like, read, or visit your site. It seemed so tacky and pandering to do that just to get readers. I always figured that if I wanted readers (and I do, I do!), it was my job to be interesting, informative, or at least entertaining.
I still think that, but then something happened. I’ve been collecting photos of Summer’s face in different situations for a while, since she is so very expressive. I made them all into a gallery, and made a list of all the descriptions of the situations. I thought I’d ask readers if they could match them up.
Oops, it’s a contest! So I decided to go with it. So put on your observer hat and get ready to apply what you know!
Rules are below. The three top scorers (see rules below) will get their choice of either a print copy (not e-book) of Alexandra Horowitz’ “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know” or Grey Stafford’s “Zoomility,” mailed directly to them from DogWise.
Photos
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Descriptions
Here are the descriptions for the photos, in random order.
First time she saw a TV
In costume
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) (see comments for clarification)
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) (see comments for clarification)
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) (see comments for clarification)
Found a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) (see comments for clarification)
Found a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) (see comments for clarification)
After a varmint hunt
Sitting uncomfortably close to another dog
Has been fussed at
Late in day at agility trial
At the agility field
Watching petals float through the air
My mom has her arm around her
Playing with Zani
Playing with Zani
Guarding a Nylabone
Being held in my arms
During a thunderstorm
During a thunderstorm
Home from vet after serious illness
Asking to train
Doing agility sequence
Just a photoshoot in the back yard
On a road trip in hot weather
Waiting to check the back yard
Immediately after fence fight with new neighbor dog
On a fun outing
On a fun outing
At the fairgrounds on her mat at a dog show
Being petted
Don’t be daunted that there are so many! Give it a try even if you can guess only a few. If it’s so hard, it could be that someone who only gets half of them right could win.
How to Enter
To enter the contest, copy the above list into an email and put the number of the photo next to each description. Title the email “Contest Entry.” Email it to the name of this blog @att.net. Got that? eileenanddogs at the domain name in the previous sentence. Please include your name in your email. If you have trouble with the email address, send me a message using the sidebar of the blog. I will acknowledge all entries, so if you don’t get an email back from me within 24 hours, try it again.
Rules
Please enter only once. (In the event that I have made some kind of error that affects your choice and it is discovered after you have entered, you may amend your entry pertaining to that issue.)
For the exact same descriptions that apply to multiple photos (mostly having to do with varmints), it doesn’t matter in what order you attach the photo numbers to the descriptions.
Please do not submit your entry in the comments section of the blog (I will unpublish it if anybody forgets).
It’s OK to have discussions of the photos with each other in the blog comments, or on my FaceBook page, or anywhere. Just don’t post your list.
Check back in the comments and/or my FaceBook page in case I need to make any interim announcements. I will make the announcements both places.
The three winners will be the people who get all 31 right the fastest. Or failing anyone getting all 31 right the winners will be determined by who got the most right, and in the case of a tie, who got that number right first.
If you want to guess just for the glory of it and don’t want a prize, please say “decline prize” in your entry email.
If you don’t want your name announced if you win, please say so in your entry email.
I will notify winners by email as well as by announcing on the blog. At that time I’ll ask privately for your mailing address.
Deadline is 12:00 midnight on Thursday, January 31st, 2013, at Central Standard Time (Central Standard Time is GMT minus 6 hours).
I will announce the winners during the first weekend of February and publish the answers. I’ll publish the uncropped photos, with some commentary, sometime after that.
Before completing it, I showed the movie featured in this post to two different training buddies and both responded with questions. Is it really resource guarding if the dogs don’t escalate to violence or obvious threats? How come the “winner” in the interaction is throwing stress signals right along with the other dog? I thought we were talking about aggression; how do we know this particular interaction is resource guarding? Isn’t Clara just giving play invitations sometimes? I don’t know the answers. I think these are great questions and also inevitable when we are trying to discuss dog communication and body language in real life.
What the interactions in the movie have in common is that they all show two dogs who appear to want the same thing. The dogs communicate rapidly with body language, and one dog keeps control of the thing. There is usually a definite assertion of ownership by the guarding dog, but both dogs may also exhibit other types of body language.
Defining Resource Guarding
Jean Donaldson defines resource guarding in her excellent book, “Mine!”, as
Dogs behaving aggressively when in possession of (and sometimes to gain possession of) food, toys, bones, their owners, their resting spots and crates.
She goes on to describe ritualized aggression, where an animal behaves in truncated versions of more serious or violent behaviors. The truncated versions allow animals including humans to indicate intent but avoid bloodshed. Some of the behaviors that Donaldson categorizes under that include:
…hard stares, growling, snarling, snapping and biting without maiming force…
She describes these ritualized aggressive behaviors as:
…the “legal” conflict resolution behaviors in dog society.
Donaldson’s book is a how-to manual on dealing with dogs who resource guard items from humans. She uses protocols of desensitization and counter conditioning to change the dog’s emotional response to a human approaching when the dog has a valued item. She makes the point that guarding is a natural behavior tied to survival, and common among dogs in a group.
Also, I highly recommend the FaceBook Group: Observation skills for training dogs. This group is great for anyone who wants to hone their observation skills. Members post videos, their own or others found online, and the behaviors in the videos are described and discussed. The group has a very smart guideline: the participants are asked to practice using descriptive words to describe observed behaviors and THEN (emphasis mine) attempt to interpret the behaviors they see. We humans tend to skip right to what we think the motivations of the behavior are, rather than first observing and describing what is happening. This is a great place to learn about both. I got some nice comments and encouragement there for an early draft of my movie.
Guarding against Humans
I am fortunate that none of my dogs currently resource guards items from me. This is a combination of luck with Summer and Zani, and deliberate training with Clara. Because of her feral history, Clara has abundant, strong survival behaviors. (Translation: she is very pushy.) So I made a special effort to head off potential resource guarding against me when she was a baby. This is a good idea with any puppy or new dog.
Notice I said my dogs don’t currently resource guard against me. Here’s a photo from many years ago of Cricket with a rawhide chewy. Enough said.
Cricket is ready to defend her rawhide chewy
Is it Resource Guarding or a “Discussion”?
My movie shows my dogs having “discussions” about objects and places they want to have control of. The resource guarding behaviors are mostly on the very low end of ritualized aggression, which to me is a very good thing. They are working things out without coming very close to harming each other.
In addition to the hard stares, growling, and snapping that Donaldson mentions, my dogs perform several other more subtle behaviors that I would also classify as resource guarding and these are shown in the movie. They include moving forward into the other dog’s space, standing with a stiff, straight stance, muzzle feint (my name for a mouth closed muzzle punch without contact), and even intrusive sniffing and licking.
I agree with my friends that there is a lot of different stuff going on in the movie. Clara rarely looks very stressed. At times her guarding behaviors resemble (and could be) invitations to play. In Summer’s “successful” guarding of her toy in the last interaction, she darts a furtive glance and a lip lick towards Clara, who seems to be considering stealing her toy. This does not seem to be very assertive behavior. Perhaps Summer lucked out that time, but still, the outcome of the interaction was that she got to keep her toy.
What else do you see?
Final Note
I am fortunate at the low level of aggression my dogs show. I don’t mean to minimize the real dangers that resource guarding behaviors can pose, and of course I don’t encourage them. These clips were taken over several years. I take habitual precautions: supervising heavily when valued toys are available, intervening when someone (ahem Clara) is being a jerk, and separating all four of my dogs completely when I am not home.
Resource guarding can be a very serious problem. I hope if any of you have a dog who has started guarding things from you, you can get access to an experienced trainer or behaviorist.
