Rescue Beagle Bad Behavior

Question
QUESTION: Hello, and I hope you can help! I am the happy owner of a beautiful beagle named Daisy. She is a rescue dog that is approximately 5 years old. She was a neglected dog often left alone for days, weeks on end with no food, water or companionship. She is a overall healthy happy beagle based off what I have read but I do have one major problem behavior with her. EATING. She eats non-stop it seems she is never full. This I can handle. She begs for food mercilessly no matter how much she has eaten in a day. This I can handle too. What I can NOT handle is that she will jump clear into the air and even bite me and my kids to snatch food from our hands. I have tried so hard with treats and positive reinforcement to train her not to do this but she is very stubborn to learning this. I am hoping you can please help me and tell me how to prevent her from this food snatching, specially because she has gone as far as to bite the kids to get the food from their hands! Hate to crate her or put her outside every time we eat =( Trying to prevent that.

ANSWER: Hi thanks for writing and for adopting Daisy, what a lucky girl!

What is happening is called resource guarding and for good reason as you know, because she was so starved. First off, regardless of how much she begs you cannot give in, and especially not give her any human food. It is not healthy for her and will greatly shorten her life. Beagles live to eat and this one has even more motivation to do so, in her mind it is the last meal she will have for a long time.

Best bet with her would be to feed her three small meals a day so she has the feeling of food in her belly most of the day. I don't know how much she weighs but the average beagle should be getting about 1 cup to 1 1/4 cup (for a larger, taller one ) a day, yes, thats it, this must be divided amongst those meals. Right before bed you could give her a biscuit (unless she has problems with going in the house) What you are going to have to teach her is that praise and play are just as good as food, she was starved for those as well from what you say but dogs have very simple one track minds and for her this is the only way she gets a positive fulfillment. Believe it or not she doesnt want to feel like this and craves feeling secure and balanced.

Sounds like you are doing all the right things but you must work on the sit command until she has it perfect. The sit command is the basis for all training and obedience. NEVER feed her without her sitting first, she must learn to work for her food. You are the Alpha and you set the rules. Once this is perfected work on "OFF" which is letting go of anything in her mouth. This then gets combined with "take it" which is the command that it is ok to take this from my hand. So... you would start with Daisy Sit, have a treat in your hand and each time she lunges for it say NO, OFF, and then sit again, do this a million times if that is what it takes. You will eventually see her getting better at it. Never give her the treat without her in the perfect sit and not lunging towards you and then when you allow her to have it you say "take it", if she tries to bite your fingers then pull it back and start over. This is a long process Tara but it does work, it is obviously not something your kids should be doing and for now I would not allow anyone but you to feed her ANYTHING. the alpha needs to be established first. Eventually when it is under better control the kids can try one by one with you supervising it so she will learn the pack ranking and that she is at the bottom of the list (where she must be).

For now until you get this under control she does need to be removed from the room when you eat. That doesnt mean she has to be crated or put outside unless that it is the only option, she can just be shut in another room. Once the biting part has been eliminated then you begin to train her to go lay in a certain spot while you all eat and this too will take persistence, you may have to do it a million times in one setting but this is the training process, you make her sit, she gets up you immediately get her back to the spot and make her sit and over and over again. You cannot give in on any training exercise even once because if you do it has then reinforced the negative.

Under normal circumstances a training session should not be any longer than 10-20 minutes, dogs have short attention spans, but done as many times a day as you can squeeze in.

In addition, because you have taken in a dog with this history it is important that you do not allow your kids to walk around with food. It must be maintained in the kitchen or the dining room or where ever but a roaming kid with food is like setting a trap. She WILL try to capture whatever she can, this is not fair to her because it is instinctive and she is in survival mode when it comes to food.

I hope all of this is helpful, feel free to do follow ups with me anytime.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Wanted to give you a quick update! I have managed to train Daisy with your advice and help and I can not thank you enough. Here is what happened! First I decided that we needed to work on her eating habits since she knew how to sit! I have her now sitting while her food is being prepared and served and waiting until the command to take it is given! BEAUTIFUL! From there I decided I wanted her to be a part of the family all the time, and since everyone eats in the same spot everytime they eat I chose to let Daisy stay in the house but NOW when we are eating Daisy is not allowed to beg for food anymore! When I tell Daisy to go lay down she now leaves the area the family is eating in and goes and lays down in another room. Now don't get me wrong the true Beagle in Daisy comes out where ever she is rather she is waiting for her food or waiting for the family meals to finish she is indeed watching us and hoping for a scrap to fall but she has been so well behaved! I explained to my children exactly what you said about our food and her health and I now have children that are not willing to feed Daisy because they don't want to make her sick! PERFECT! We have had 2 snapping to grab food incidents but the behavior has come so much more under control. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Answer
This is so wonderful and I am sooooooo pleased to hear this, you have done a great job! Daisy more than anyone thanks you because she now feels more stable with someone in charge. Just remember to NEVER relax these rules, or it will return to the way it was before. Continue to work on the snapping incidents as they come up, most likely if they are still ocurring if you look back you will find that you humans did something wrong or didnt do something and this is why it happened. Congratulations and keep up the good work, feel free to contact me in the future with whatever you need.....

Have4Paws