Training Philosophy
Puppies who resource guard tend to protect high-value items, such as meals, bones, and toys. This behavior can also extend to areas of the home that a puppy considers its own, like a favorite spot on the couch or the area where it is fed. Additionally, puppies may be particularly protective of certain family members, such as a child or spouse. Beyond the Dog is uniquely specialized to help you manage and address resource-guarding behaviors in puppies.
Resource guarding can affect your pets’ relationships in your home. Perhaps your puppy becomes territorial when your other dog chews on his bone or lays on his favorite blanket? This behavior can escalate, particularly as puppies get older.
Beyond the Dog Sarasota specializes in treating resource-guarding behaviors in puppies. Our team has successfully trained thousands of puppies over 20 years across six cities. Our team is led by our Co-founder and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Dr. Echterling-Savage, who utilizes scientific research when developing a training plan for your puppy. This is achieved through a combination of classical conditioning and positive reinforcement to teach specific behaviors to manage your puppy’s guarding behavior.
Training Programs
Our goal is to create a happy home environment by reducing and eliminating resource guarding while teaching your puppy essential obedience skills. We’ll help you manage situations where your puppy may have previously snapped at you when you took away their chew toy or retrieved a stolen sock. Additionally, we’ll address behaviors like growling, barking, or snapping at family members or other pets who approach while your puppy is:
Unfortunately, once resource guarding develops, it can be challenging for owners to avoid unintentionally reinforcing the behavior. Resource-guarding behaviors typically worsen without training and as dogs age. Many factors influence this behavior, including dog breed, genetics, early life experiences, other pets in the home, and exposure to aversive training techniques (including shock and prong collars).
Beyond the Dog specializes in treating resource guarding in puppies through function-based training, which combines our proprietary blend of classical counterconditioning and operant conditioning. Our training programs are influenced by scientific research, including a study by Lindsay Mehrkram, “Functional analysis and operant treatment of foot guarding in a pet dog,” demonstrating that behavior modification is the most effective treatment for resource guarding-related aggression. Behavior modification is a structured method for understanding and altering puppy behavior by applying operation conditioning and classical counterconditioning that encourages desirable behaviors and discourages undesirable behaviors. Dr Echterling-Savage further emphasizes the success of our program by stating, “The best way to eliminate puppy guarding is to recognize the early signs right away and seek professional help. Once the behavior has been identified, one of our Sarasota behavior consultants can easily treat the problem behavior.”
To best understand and treat your puppy’s resource guarding behaviors, we ask that you complete our “Indirect Assessment of Canine Behavior” before training begins. Our team, led by our co-founder and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Dr. Echterling-Savage, will evaluate this assessment to develop a personalized training plan to address your puppy’s specific challenges.
Your behavior consultant will then hold private sessions at your home to address resource-guarding issues and teach basic obedience and manners. In addition, our Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Dr. Echterling-Savage, will guide your behavior consultant to ensure that our training plan fully addresses your dog’s unique challenges and training goals. Each session is 1 hour long, and you will be required to attend the final session of each week. During this session, our behavior consultant will teach you how to reinforce your puppy’s learned behaviors and obedience commands. Follow-up sessions are scheduled after the training program has been completed to ensure continued success in managing your puppy’s resource guarding.
Several insurance companies, including Trupanion, will cover behavior modification training for puppy resource guarding when the program is led by a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist or a Board-Certified Veterinary Behaviorist. We recommend that you check with your insurance provider to see if they will cover puppy resource guarding training.
Our Puppy Resource Guarding Behavior Modification Package offers multiple virtual consultations with Dr. Echterling-Savage, our Co-founder and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist (CAAB). As one of the few Board Certified Behavior Analysts specializing in Applied Animal Behavior and among only about 50 CAABs nationwide, Dr. Echterling-Savage brings extensive knowledge to each session. Her extensive background, including hands-on training, mentoring of all Beyond the Dog’s behavior consultants, and published research on canine behavior, ensures she can provide expert guidance to help your puppy make a transformative improvement in their resource-guarding behavior.
During your virtual consultations, Dr. Echterling-Savage will assess your puppy’s resource-guarding behavior and develop a customized training plan that addresses your puppy’s problematic behaviors. Following the initial consultation, she will provide ongoing guidance, helping you with behavior scenarios that reinforce positive behavioral modification and ensure continued success. The Puppy Resource Guarding Behavior Modification Package costs $750, including multiple sessions and ongoing support.
Reach Out
We’ll get back to you in two wags of a dog’s tail!