jealous if any other dog come near to me

[Pudding]

Bob seams to get very jealous of other dogs if they come near me
he is fine with them if they do not want to say hello to me
but as soon as they come over to me he growels at them to get away

at the moment i live with my Mum and Dad and they have 2 dogs
he will even tell them off if they come near me

what can i do to stop this, any one got any ideas

[Becky and Wilson]

I'll be interested in the replies to this as Paisley has started to get very jealous of other dogs coming to say hello, especially puppies and especially if I want to say hello to them!  She never does this with Humans though.

[Karma]

We had this with Honey when she hit adolescence, but I'm not sure I can really advise as I'm not entirely sure how we managed to overcome it... 

What we did was stop taking treats out with us for a while (made recall training and loose lead walking really difficult) as this made us less of a special object.  We also kept our distance from other dogs for a while... if they approached us we didn't fuss them or speak to them at all.  We praised Honey for all positive interactions with dogs - at first even just being near a dog without reacting and gradually positioning us closer to dogs...
We walked in tandem with some willing dog owners and their dogs, so that her warning the other dog off didn't succeed in getting rid of it... And whenever it was safe to do so, any growl or snap to another dog meant that we walked away from Honey, so she didn't gain our undivided attention from it.
At the same time we ensured we were generally more consistent with her (some areas had slipped to be honest  ) and applied the Nothing In Life Is Free philosophy, so she didn't get fuss/play/food unless she earned it. 

Once we got through the guarding we found we had a dog who had lost all her confidence, so I don't know if the guarding behaviour was a mask for that, and we are still working on improving her reactions in some situations, but we can now greet and fuss dogs we meet, as long as we don't make too big a deal of it... (and they aren't rude, i.e. jumping up!). 

Honey was DEFINATELY worse with puppies (I think unwittingly we are more enthusiastic about meeting puppies and it makes the situation more stressful for the other dog)...  and she will still guard us from other dogs in her own home (sorry, Jarvis!  ) - in this situation I would definately suggest that all dogs lose your attention if there is any quarreling.... just remove yourself from all of them at the first sign of growling... he'll quickly learn it's counterproductive... (likewise praise tolerant behaviour, so he knows that's what you want him to do!).

So much of dog training relies on creating a strong bond between dog and owner, so I guess it's to be expected that some dogs find it hard to share the most important person in their lives...

I don't know what did actually work, and can't guarantee that any of it will work for anyone else.
All I can add is that, if we had not seen a major improvement in this behaviour in the 2 weeks it took to get it under control, we would have been straight to a behaviourist, as it is, unfortunately, a very self-rewarding behaviour and could easily have escalated...  I had the contact details and price list for a local behaviourist all ready to make the call!! 


Editted to add - if you do need to go down the behaviourist route, make sure you find a suitably qualified one who uses positive methods - this kind of behaviour is one of the prime targets of rattle bottle/water pistol modification, which could end up escalating the behaviour into a serious dog-agression issue! 

Jean Donaldson's book "Fight" covers resource guarding between dogs (including human's as the resource) if you can get hold of a copy...

[brownsugar]

Hello,
You posted about Bob guarding you against other dogs: our Toby has started to do the same. Because I wanted some pointers on how to handle this, I got a written advice from an APDT-registered behavioural therapist in my country (Holland). 

A short outline of her advice for Toby:
This guarding behaviour is different from the normal guarding of possessions. Here Toby takes the initiative, like he’s the leader of our pack (Note: reading this I thought: o, no: Dominance Theory! But it gets better.) It’s up to us to show him, by positive means, that he doesn’t have to defend or protect us.
A wrong response would be to grumble at him. If you can’t prevent the behaviour, walking away from the situation is a better reaction than to just let it happen.

How can you best stop this guarding behaviour?  For this you need other dog owners with their dogs to help you. You train in increasingly difficult steps. Start easy. The steps:
Step 1. Have Toby do a “sit”.
Step 2. Another person approaches you with a dog, but keeps a distance large enough for the dag to stay calm.
Step 3. Reward Toby for not reacting.
Repeat this procedure a number of times in different sessions.
Step 4. As before, but now the person with the dog comes a bit closer.
Step 5. Reward Toby for calm behaviour. You can start the rewarding when the dog is coming towards you, IF Toby stays calm. Better to reward too soon and to continue rewarding than to wait too long.
Continue this procedure and build up step by step.
It is important to do several trainings sessions on the same level before moving to a more difficult level. (Note: I presume she means successful sessions.)
Keep the sessions frequent and short (5-max.10 min.) and practise with different dogs.

A great advantage of this procedure is that the dog doesn’t form negative associations with other dogs.

We haven’t tried it yet, as Toby has been on his best behaviour.
I would be interested to hear if someone else has tried something like this, and how it worked out? Or perhaps an entirely different way of handling it?

Would like to know how you get on with Bob (and BTW he looks adorable!).