"Food aggression" in rescue dogs

[s4sugar]

Funny how for the second time in two months I have a dog here for welfare labelled as "food aggressive" by previous owners.
Both were underweight and both let me take their food away on the second day here - after a few meals!

I do wish people would look for a cause before sticking a label on a dog. Starving/hungry is not the same as food aggressive.

 

[lexiedhb]

Poor things. I have never really understood the need to be able to take a dogs food away from it though. I mean you'd get a few choice words off me if you walked up and nicked my dinner when I was not finished!

 

[Dobiegirl]

Its funny that, Ive never found the need to remove my dogs food or bone its theirs, but modern thinking is you should be able to do that. If my dogs have something they have skanked I do not have a problem removing it. Yesterday was an exception they caught a young wood pigeon which was a bit slow geting off the ground and Diesel caught it mid flight. It was killed and devoured in seconds

 

[s4sugar]

There should be no need to take away a dogs meal but we need to know what would happen if, for example, a child approached a feeding dog and it is always a good idea to teach a dog to let go of something that shouldn't be in it's mouth.

I use a broom to move the feed bowl slightly -just by a few inches. The usual reaction is for the dog's nose to follow the bowl. Rarely does this give rise to a growl. let alone a snap.
After this I give a feed then take up the empty bowl & put it down again after a few minutes with something tempting (a smear of sardine or similar) so that tipping the bowl won't cause a spill and pull the bowl away with a pole. After this I use my hand & I give a treat as a swap.

 

[CAYLA]

It annoys me more when they lablel the dogs food aggressive "because they warn/snap at other dogs for going near.trying to eat their food" when asked if they have gone for a human=answer..... "I don't know" ok....so a dog guarding/protecting its food from another makes it "aggressive"

 

[Spudlet]

It's handy to be able to stick your hand into the bowl if you need to do something like add medication (I can tend to forget so I taught Henry about this!) but generally I tend to go with leaving him in peace with his meal. I taught him that hands going to the bowl was a good thing by making sure that I always added something amazingly yummy and by not doing it very often at all.

It is one of the 'dominate your dog like Ms Whiplash' techniques, 'take the food away so your dog sees who's boss!'. Oooor they just get really paranoid about you nicking their bowl all the damn time...

 

[CorvusCorax]

I do need to be able to take stuff off my dog and out of his mouth but a lot of people just steam on in there and take the food or approach the bowl and wonder why they get growled at...