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Originally Posted by sarah_bella1050  I have been doing dominance training, having the girls and myself go through door before her and such. When the bone growling thing happened I stepped on her bone to show her my dominance and then had dd2 do the same at which she growled at, but with me right there I had dd2 hold her ground.
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What your puppy is doing is pretty typical behavior, and for living in a house with a rambunctious 3 year old who gets to step on her bones, I'm not surprised she's taken to resource guarding.
Your dog needs to learn to trust your daughter - your daughter isn't a threat. She won't keep the bone. You dog's belongings are not in jeopardy when your daughter is around.
You need to sit down and play some "trading games" with your puppy, do some positive reinforcement, and make her feel comfortable in her surroundings. This is a warning sign that she is feeling violated. Figure out what is triggering that for her and help her LEARN that she doesn't need to feel that way. You and your kids trampling her stuff in front of her is not teaching her a thing. Except that next she'll have to try harder next time.
The single biggest thing you can do to make your dog feel more secure is to give her a special place that is 100% off limits to children. No matter what. This is the place that she should be fed. She should not have to feel as though she needs to compete with your kids for her right to eat her food, or she WILL think she needs to guard it. Give her a space to call her own and have EVERYONE in the house respect that. Enforce it. If you don't, she'll feel obligated to do it for you and you'll have problems.
In the mean time, don't allow her to have toys or treats when the kids are around, and when you do give them to her, use it as an opportunity to teach her something. Trading is a great way to teach her a "leave it" or "give it" command. Sit down on the floor with her, offer her the bone. Let her get into chewing it and reach down with a handful of tasty treats in your hand and move toward the bone. Make sure the treats are WAY tastier than the bone (a microwaved hot dog works really well). When she forfeits the bone to check out the treats happily say "drop it" as you reward her with a tiny piece of the treat. Don't say the command and expect her to execute it. It will be a waste of time. She doesn't know what "drop it" means. Wait until she has already done what you want or, preferably, in the process (in this case, dropping the bone) and THEN say it. She will LEARN that giving up her bone doesn't result in disaster and that your hands closing in on her stuff is actually a good positive thing. She will happily give up a bone and do so without a peep if you condition her like this.
You want to help her feel safe and secure. Stepping on her stuff only reinforces her guarding behavior because she's not being shown an alternative.
As for the nipping, well, it's pretty common. The best way to prevent that is to not let your daughter attempt to pet the puppy. Kids and puppies are the same size. To the puppy your daughter is like another litter mate. Everything from the inflection of her voice to her size tells your puppy that your daughter is different from you, so while she may obey you to some degree, what she knows with you she doesn't associate to your daughter. You and your daughter are two totally different entities to your puppy.
Plus, kids tend to reward the bad behavior inadvertently which just perpetuates the problem. Attention is attention is attention. When your daughter gets nipped and 30 seconds later turns around and tries to pet the dog again, the dog is getting a pay off for nipping. For her, the nipping is likely a form of play. So she's getting rewarded with another initiation to play every time your daughter tries to pet her. So for the pup, she's REALLY enjoying the fact that your daughter is constantly engaging in this play behavior. To you it just looks like the dog is constantly trying to nip your daughter.
And I bet your daughter is probably trying to touch her on the top of the head, which is actually a no-no to dogs. They don't
like to have hands coming at the tops of their heads above their eyes. They are much more receptive to being approached from the side, toward the shoulder area.
Your puppy sounds like a normal puppy. The resource guarding is a tiny bit worrisome, but it sounds like it's probably being caused by chaos in her environment. The good news is, is that she's ONLY 3 months old and this totally manageable. However, a 3 year old and a puppy is a lot of work. Neither one has impulse control, so you're going to have to redirect, supervise, and redirect some more. You REALLY have to instill some boundaries for the 3 year old. Allowing a 3 year old to be a typical 3 year old toward a puppy is just not fair. And it's going to cause problems for the puppy, as you're already seeing, if you don't. (I have 6 month old puppy and a 4 year old myself, I really understand how hard it is.)
My rules (and yes, they are hard and fast rules... when it comes to kids and dogs you can't take the hands off, consentual, let them explore and figure it out on their own approach) are this:
1.) Absolutely no touching the dog on the head. Approach the dog with palms up, below eye level, and touch on the shoulders/chest.
2.) Absolutely no crouching down to eye level with the dog. No face-face. No "kissing" or nuzzling. No cuddling. No hugging. No grabbing. No pulling. No pushing. Basically, don't allow them to force themselves onto the dog, or force the dog into positions/places they don't willingly go on their own.
3.) Absolutely not allowed to take anything away from the dog, whether it be in front of the dog on the floor (seemingly not being used by the dog.. according to a child), or in the dog's mouth.
4.) No chasing the dog. No running from the dog when it chases you.
I have taught my daughter that when the puppy jumps/nips/chases she is to turn into a statue. We make a game of it. It's fun. She stands perfectly still, hands at her sides in fists (no loose fingers), and she is to keep turning away from the puppy. It's so tempting for them to run from the dog, or chase the dog, or yell at the dog, or swat at the dog. But all of this stuff just rewards the behavior. If the puppy jumps on a kid and all they do is freeze and stand still, it gets reeeeeeeally boring.
Your biggest challenge is going to be supervision. I suggest you tether the puppy to your waist (put her on a leash, tie it to your belt loops) and reward EVERYTHING that she does correctly. If YOU control when she plays, how she plays, what she plays with, when she eats, how long she eats, where she eats, etc, she's only going to succeed because you're setting her environment up so she can only do the right things.
In an ideal puppy-3 year old world, the puppy would NEVER have the opportunity to nip at or jump on your 3 year old. Ever. She'd either be tethered to you, crated, behind a gate, or asleep. Preferably crated or tethered to you. If she's tethered to you she can only do something if YOU allow it. You're not so much "dominating" her, as you are guiding and controlling the environment. If you set her up to succeed, the more she succeeds and LEARNS what it's like to please you, the more she is going to WANT to do it.
stupid mistake I know. My 3 year old has undiagnosed ADD, she is a handful I know I have to watch her carefully with the dog. She is not mean, she is just a dog lover. She wants to hold the dog, pet the dog, give her kisses. Well the dog keeps nipping at her every time she even tries to pet her. We thought she was just playing and that the growling was playful, but I'm starting to wonder. Tonight we gave the puppy a bone and dd2 touched and she growled at her. She is only 3 months old, I don't feel as though this is a good sign as far as temperment goes. I have been doing dominance training, having the girls and myself go through door before her and such. When the bone growling thing happened I stepped on her bone to show her my dominance and then had dd2 do the same at which she growled at, but with me right there I had dd2 hold her ground.
