While resource guarding is not the easiest thing to deal with, the good news is that with simple measures, we can help de-escalate and prevent the behaviour from occurring. Here are just some ways in which we can ensure that our dogs not only feel secure, but also feel comfortable sharing their “resources” with us.

• Early Socialization: Socialization is the process of ensuring that our puppies feel calm, comfortable, and confident around new experiences- whether it is meeting new people or animals or being in new environments. Ensuring that a puppy is socialized the right way and at the right age can help make them feel less threatened by new stimuli.
  

• Ample resources: Ensuring that our puppies always have access to an abundance of resources, be it food, toys, play or resting area, will prevent the need for them to be insecure about it in the first place. This is especially vital in a multi-dog household. For instance, if you have two dogs at home, ensure that you have four of the same toy.
  

• Puppy proofing: Our puppies explore the surrounding by putting things in their mouth. As proactive pet parents, we need to keep a close eye on and remove things that may be harmful. But constantly snatching things out of their mouth may also lead to possessiveness. To prevent this, it is important to remove their access to harmful objects in the first place.
  

• Teaching them to share: It is ideal to introduce the art of sharing to our dogs from a very young age. This ensures that they learn that good things happen when they willingly share their resources with us. This can be done by offering them something of higher value in exchange when they are holding onto something of low value (that is not harmful to them) or even through games such as Fetch.
  

• Basic obedience training: Quite often, resource-guarding tendencies get aggravated simply because we end up chasing after or snatching things from their mouth. Working on basic obedience training through positive reinforcement ensures that our dogs learn to let go of items with simple cues.
  

As you can see, preventative and management techniques can greatly reduce resource-guarding tendencies, if caught in the early stages.