I see a lot of pups these days with food aggression issues, so thought I'd include here a little article I wrote in a forum I am a member of.

Most food related aggression is learned behaviour. For example, pups in a litter that are not given enough food, then usually become overly anxious to get to the food first, and this then reverts to aggression to try and get what they need as fast as they can. This is where most competition for food is developed. What can help is feeding all the pups in a litter separately or in much smaller groups of 2 or 3, with enough food.

You find that a lot of pups in the home that switch into this aggressive behaviour, become overly anxious when food is around. This is usually because as said previously a young pup had to fight its way into the litter to get its fill.. This develops overly anxious behaviour that is triggered when food is present. This anxious behaviour creates overly assertive behaviour, where the pup has to use whatever means possible to get its fill.

If we change this trigger from being overly anxious to get to its food, to going into a calm submissive state of mind, and then reward with its food, this anxiety, and therefore aggression, doesn't come to the surface, and therefore there is no perceived competition from the pups point of view.

I get a lot of success with pups that go over the top with aggressive behaviour around food, by teaching the owners how to get their pup into a calm submissive state before being rewarded with its feed. I also explain to the owners that their pup must learn that everything is owned by them, never the pup. This goes for everything, food, toys, anything that triggers a pup to claim, become anxious, assertive or aggressive. Always remembering when we reward a pup/dog, we are reinforcing a current state of mind. We want to reinforce a calm submissive state of mind in a young pup.

This aggressive behaviour around food in young pups can be (and should be) modified from the day we bring our pup home. Never treat it as being funny, seeing a young pup growl or show aggressive behaviour. It is so important we set the right foundation for our puppy as early as possible.

You find that most pups you see with this overly aggressive behaviour eat their meal as if it was the last meal they were ever going to get. Most don't even chew it properly but gulp it down as fast as they can to get the next piece into their mouth. This is usually due to the pup being triggered into this overly anxious state of mind by food. I am one that believes in most cases we can modify this trigger into a calmer state of mind.. We just need to be aware of it, and put the time into the pup at feed time, to get the pup to switch into a calmer state of mind before rewarding with food... Not that difficult really, just persistence.

In my opinion a dog/pup that goes into this overly anxious state of mind when food is present is highly stressed, and this is not fair on the pup or dog.

All drives are brought to the surface and strengthened by triggers. For example we can trigger prey drive by moving a toy around for it to chase.. the more we carry this out, the stronger the prey drive becomes. No different for resource guarding/food aggression. This is triggered by the presence of food, or certain types of food. We can modify this trigger to switch into a calm submissive state of mind, just as easily as triggering an overly anxious, assertive/ aggressive state of mind.