# 14 week old puppy biting and resource guarding



## Ncdimick (Jul 19, 2017)

I have been reading this forum almost daily and it has been very informative. 

My fiance and I have a 14 week old puppy "Kip" and of course he has been a handful. The two biggest worries we have right now are the constant and sometimes "snappy" biting and some resource guarding.

We are currently going to puppy classes and they are teaching us how to deal with these issues and we are teaching using positive reinforcement training , but we had some questions for everyone here.

For biting, how long does it last? Everyone seems to say they grow out of it, but can anyone give a timeline? 

We also see some resource guarding with Kip. This doesn't happen with his food or toys, but only when he grabs something he shouldn't have. If he grabs mulch, a rock, or some plastic wrapper while outside and starts chewing on it, he wont let us get close. If we do get close and try to grab it out, he snaps at us and bites hard. We have been trying to now exchange treats for the item(as suggested by our puppy trainer), but I'm not sure if its getting better. Has anyone experienced this kind of resource guarding and what did you do that worked? Thanks!


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## Laxdog (Aug 15, 2017)

We have a 12 week old with the exact same issues. This past week he has gotten much worse in terms of the resource guarding. If he picks something up now he bolts and tries to hide or get distance between us and then does his little ferocious growl and does hard bites at any hands that go near his face. 

In terms of getting bad things out of his mouth we had been doing the typical grab his collar or leash so he can't run and pry open his mouth to retrieve the item. Initially this worked great and he's just give stuff up but now he bites back. After getting bit hard we started looking online and have been doing the positive reinforcement that you mentioned. We say drop it and present a treat and then make an exchange without holding him or any kind of physical force. 

So far it's worked great! We use a variety of treats depending on the value he has assigned to them and what he has in his mouth. It is quite annoying because we must always be carrying them on us particularly his high value cooked ground beef for certain objects like socks or small trash outside. 

We both fear this will encourage him to steal and get into trouble in order to get treats so we also frequently do this with his toys, sticks, etc to get it through his head that it is the act of dropping, not getting something of value that he is rewarded for. So far it has worked well and we have been able to transition to intermittent reinforcement with less valuable things to him with success.

In terms of just nipping and play biting in general ours isn't so bad in that department that we think it's anything outside of normal behavior. But we typically say no biting, redirect by giving him a toy to bite instead, and a few seconds of ignoring before we play with him and the toy. In the instances where this doesn't work it's usually because he is over tired or over excited. So we usually pick him up and put him in his crate with toys and chews for a few minutes to calm down. We usually praise him while carrying him and putting him in his crate and avoid scolding for the biting in these cases. We just tell him he needs a time out.


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## kmcguiggan (Jul 26, 2017)

Hi! I have a 5 month old vizsla and we are now running into the same issue. There have been 3 separate times over a 3 month span that he has guarded either his bully stick or human food. I ran into an issue yesterday where he went through the trash and found pizza. we don't want him eating human food so I went over to him and tried to get the pizza out of his mouth. he was growling and very irritated. I tried doing a trade off and grabbed his favorite treats and placed them in front of him but he would not trade. if i even put the treat near him he would growl louder and appeared like he would try to bite if I am closer. After about 10 minutes of trying to get him to calm down and get the pizza out of his mouth i resorted to putting on a kitchen stove glove and grabbed the pizza out of his mouth. he didnt try to bite but he was growling very loudly and was very angry. right after this happened he acted completely normal and laid on the couch and fell asleep right away. other than these 3 instances he has been an amazing dog. we exercise him 3 times a day, going for walks, running off leash, and going to dog parks. at night he is extremely cudddly and will just lay with us and snuggle. The 3 instances where he has guarded has definetly made me nervous. I don't know if this is normal for a puppy growing up but I would love to hear some suggestions with helping this situation. I do not want him to become more aggressive as he gets older and certainly don't want to put others in danger.


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