Aggressiveness towardolder housemate dog

Question
I have a 10 month old Chow and I moved back home to my parents about 4 months ago where they have a 13 year old Golden Retriever. Yogi(the Chow) has always been friendly with the older dog (Champ). Today I brought him home a new bone and he was laying there chewing it he walked away and Champ took it. Yogi then started barking at him and "attacked him" to get the bone back. Now my mom physically scolded him and I now have him locked in my room with me  but I dont know how to prevent it from occuring again. Should I just take all the bones out of the house? I know his response was not the ideal one but he had just gotten the new bone and it was taken away from him I think Yogi has become the dominant dog in the house and my mom doesnt think so because he is younger.

I dont really know how o prevent it from recurring and I dont really know how to scold him for something like that without beingaggressive which I dont like being with him.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Morgan

Answer
This behavior is called resource guarding and it's pretty common.

Yogi is a teenager. He is at that age when he's going to start trying to establish his place in the pack and testing his limits to see if he can be the top dog. So it could be a dominance thing.

Dogs usually work out the dominance thing among themselves and it really doesn't matter which dog is dominant as long as they can agree on it. What matters is that neither of them decide they they are the pack leader. A human should be the pack leader and the dogs should all know that they are on the bottom.

To handle the problem right now, only give Yogi bones when he's in his crate.

For the long term, you need to establish pack leadership with the dogs, especially your sassy teenager.

When you feed him, make him sit and wait for his food until you tell him to get it. Put it down for 15 minutes, then put it away till the next feeding time. This tells him the food is yours and he only gets it when you say so, he doesn't get to choose. It's not his place to guard it, it's yours. Do the same with all his treats, make him do some obedience for every treat, sit/stay, down/stay or a trick. Also never feed him from the table. If you want to share something, make him wait till you're all done eating and then make him sit and wait while you put it in his bowl.

The pack leader gets all the best spots to sit, so the dogs don't get to be on the furniture or in bed with you. The pack leader enters doors first, so make him wait whenever you go through a door until you say it's okay to go through. Do this with stairs too.

Once he gets the message that he's not the boss, he'll realize that he doesn't get to be in charge of resources and will hopefully stop guarding them.

Sometimes dogs who were raised in puppy mills or other situations where they were overcrowded and had to compete with other dogs for food will become resource guarders regardless of the dominance situation. If this is the case with Yogi, he'll need a little bit more intensive "therapy". If you think this is the case, let me know and we'll get more involved, but try the pack leadership stuff first.