Preventing Resource Guarding

Here we start to teach an automatic sit with the food bowl. We hold the bowl up and when she sits we bring the bowl down. The second part of this exercise is then adding food to the bowl to prevent resource guarding. We want our dogs to feel comfortable and confident to eat while we are near by by adding a couple of biscuits to the bowl. I then start to move a step away and then back to her to add more food. This starts to pair a person approaching the bowl with good things as it means more food will come rather than the dog worrying their food will be taken away.Because I am using a metal bowl and doing this outside on the concrete it is quite noisy but again pairing the noise with tasty food helps pup become more confident around noisy things and helps prevent noise sensitivity.

Puppy Enrichment

Border Collies can be sensitive to noise so in this enrichment game we are working on both confidence with novel objects as well as some noise as well. Sparkles is so bold. I wouldn't normally tip all the bottles straight into the paddling pool. Although she does jump back a little she is soon straight back in their selecting her treasure. By sprinkling treats amongst the bottles it can encourage the pup to investigate and create a positive experience. Sparkles played with these bottles for an hour!