How to Teach Your Dog that You Suck Packworks / M.

Schmidt 4/17

I. How it’s Done

1) Like many lessons taught to dogs, teaching a dog that you suck can be accomplished
using food. However, teaching a dog to think something about a person is a fundamentally
different task than teaching a dog to do a physical act of some sort. For one thing, food is
given to a dog when it is taught to do a physical act, like sit; but food is taken from a dog to
teach it that people suck. Also, it is obvious when a dog learns to sit; but it is not
necessarily easy to see when a dog has learned something about a person - that they suck,
for example.

2) If you wish to take food from your dog and not have the dog think you suck, then you
need to know how to determine whether your dog thinks you suck. In this case, the act of
food guarding can be used to confirm that you officially suck according to your dog. A dog
guarding from a person is a clear indication of distrust - and a sign that the dog wants the
person to go away and stay away. So, food guarding supplies the needed confirmation, but
now the problem becomes how to determine whether your dog is guarding.

3) Professional pet dog behaviorists and trainers claim it is easy/straightforward to

determine whether a dog is guarding, but they are wrong. Not only are these behaviorists
and trainers wrong about this, they are wrong in the wrong/dangerous direction because
they determine (and instruct others to determine) that dogs are not guarding, when they
are guarding. In fact, these professionals are so misguided about how and why dogs guard,
that the training exercises they recommend to address food guarding actually work in
reverse - they teach a dog to guard and teach it that the person conducting the exercise
sucks. These unintended results will be achieved whether the recommended training
approach is so-called Pure Positive, or the opposite extreme. Either will work fine for
teaching your dog that you suck. Interesting.

II. Training Dogs to Guard Without Really Trying

1) One way to train a dog to guard its food (and teach it that you suck), is to follow the
advice of professional pet dog behaviorists and trainers and teach the dog to trade its food
for something it desires more; for example, tastier food. In the human world, this is the type
of trade a person might make when attempting to get a better horse or car.

2) Another way to train your dog to guard its food (and teach it that you suck), is to follow
the advice of a different group of professional pet dog trainers and teach the dog that it will
be hurt (shocked, pronged, kicked, etc.) if it does not relinquish its food. In the human
world, this is the type of trade a person might make during an armed robbery.

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3) With regards to efforts aimed at curing or preventing food guarding, professional pet dog
trainers are divided into two distinct camps based on the different misunderstandings they
perpetuate about dogs and guarding. The behaviorists and trainers of the Positive camp use
tasty treats to conduct food trades as described above in Section II.1, while the trainers of
the Dominance camp use shock and prong collars to conduct food trades as described in
Section II.2. Both these camps of professional trainers teach dogs to guard while claiming to
do the opposite.

4) The explanations and examples in this article are focused on the act of taking (or trading
for) a dog’s food; but generally, with regards to teaching a dog that you suck, the same
points apply to any resource the dog values, and the same points apply to any handler
action that interrupts the dog while it is engaged with the resource. This includes efforts to
handle the resource or give the dog something additional - even something it prefers.

As will be explained, a true/competent leader, as determined by nature, can have no reason

to need or want a resource held by a dependent, lower-rank member of its pack. Being a
dependent, it is natural for a dog to need what a pack leader has and provides, not the
other way around. But, because a person has no real need to take back a resource they have
given to a dog, a handler can appear leader-like to a dog, without “acting” at all - by always
being, and appearing to be, above needing or wanting anything the dog has. Thus, given
the circumstances, a handler must work to convince their dog that they suck, but this can
be done quite easily with the assistance of a professional behaviorists or trainer.

III. Creating and Using Bad Science

1) A dog is a dependent – it needs to eat, and it needs a person to give it something to eat.
Simply feeding a dog, without playing games with its food, allows the act of providing
sustenance to play a natural role in the formation of a trusting relationship between the
dog and its person. To a dog, the special person who feeds it in this straightforward manner
is a reliable and pure provider - a superior hunter who always has food when the dog is
hungry and has caught nothing on its own. In human terms, the special person is a
responsible parent or a competent leader. An interesting question then, is: why do so many
people suppose they have some innate right to take food from a dog - and why do they choose
to exercise this imagined right?

2) People do not take food from a dog because they want the dog’s food; people take food
from a dog to teach the dog something – a lesson of some sort.

3) Trainers from the Positive camp take food from a dog because they hope to teach the dog
that people are fair and will pay a good price for the dog’s food, not steal it. These trainers
ignore or do not recognize the fact that ensuring one receives a fair trade for one’s most
valued possession, is guarding; in fact, it is a more complex and stressful version of
guarding than is straightforward “no way” guarding. Thus, a dog being trained to trade food

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is being trained to guard intensely. This unintended result can be made more obvious by
witnessing, or thinking about the possibility of, a refused trade offer.

4) Meanwhile, trainers from the Dominance camp take food from a dog for a different
purpose - to induce guarding. These trainers intentionally induce a dog to guard so that
they can teach the dog it will be hurt for doing so – shocked, pronged, kicked, etc. if it
makes any attempt to prevent the loss of its food.

5) Both the Positive and Dominance training approaches teach a dog that people are
interested in its food; thus, both approaches produce and reinforce the primary motivation
that fuels food guarding.

6) Pet dog trainers are informed by behaviorists that food guarding is scientifically
classified as a natural behavior for a dog. However, the proposition that food guarding is
natural is not a science-based proposition; rather, by itself, it is a nonsense proposition - like
stating that it is natural for a person to guard their dinner, or it is natural for a dog to eat.

In fact, guarding is not natural absent uncertainty/distrust, and eating is not natural
absent hunger. Unless existential conditions are attached to the “natural” classification, it
makes no sense to link the concepts of natural and guarding, and it is inappropriate to do
so beyond stating that it is natural for any person or any animal to be concerned about
losing a valuable possession. If this proposition is scientific, then it must be admitted that
the level of the science is not high enough for the proposition to have any value with
regards to training a dog.

7) To presume simply that food guarding is natural, is to presuppose a dog instinctively

knows that food needs to be guarded, even in a scenario that includes only the dog and the
provider of the food. This is an unscientific proposition fabricated by behaviorists which
functions to hide the fundamental cause of guarding.

When food guarding is inappropriately classified as “natural”, both the

fundamental reason for the guarding and the natural path around it are hidden -
obfuscated.

While it is true that a dog has natural characteristics that combine to motivate it to guard
under certain circumstances, it is incorrect and unscientific to propose simply that it is
natural for a dog to guard (anything). Anyone who thinks it is unimportant to distinguish
between characteristics and behaviors when applying the “natural” label, should
understand why they are wrong to think so here. If one believes the unscientific idea that
guarding is “natural”, then one decides to set up guarding scenarios and attempt to teach
the dog not to guard, as professional pet dog behaviorists and trainers recommend. In doing
this, one satisfies the fundamental requirement for food guarding, and one motivates the
dog to guard or reinforces an existing motivation to guard.

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8) The fundamental requirement for food guarding is a condition needed for food guarding
which can also be the only condition needed. This requirement is so obvious that
behaviorists presuppose the condition is unavoidable when they classify food guarding as
natural. The fundamental requirement for food guarding is not an expectation that
someone will steal its food; rather, it is simply that someone is interested in its food.
Nothing more is needed to induce guarding in some cases; for example, with proper
representatives of breeds created to guard and protect.

A dog does not guard a resource from a person if the dog believes the individual has no
interest in the resource. This is not an arguable point, and one should not suppose that the
fundamental cause of food guarding is unavoidable because behaviorists have lazily and
incorrectly attributed the cause to nature.

9) Guarding can be legitimately classified as natural, if a critical existential condition is

attached to the “natural” classification. It is natural for a dog to guard its food, if the dog
believes that someone is interested in its food. Thus, any a training exercise or other scenario
that has a person showing interest in a dog’s food, motivates the dog to guard its food. On
the other hand, a dog cannot have a drive to guard, natural or not, if it perceives no interest
in its possession. The concept of guarding does not apply if this fundamental requirement
for guarding has not been satisfied.

10) The natural approach to avoiding food guarding is to teach the dog that people have no
interest whatsoever in its food. When taking this natural path around food guarding, one
teaches their dog a natural truth - that its handler has no need or reason to want its food.
However, if all thought about food guarding starts from the fundamentally incorrect idea
that dogs are preprogrammed by nature to guard their food, this natural path around
guarding is hidden by a bogus belief that the dog will instinctively guard its food unless it is
trained not to guard.

Instead of revealing a natural path to success that requires no professional assistance

whatsoever, behaviorists have inappropriately bonded together the concepts of natural and
guarding and used the resulting unscientific concoction to generate a commercial market
for what is purported to be scientifically-based training needed to prevent food guarding.
This training is, in fact, fundamentally unscientific, and it is ill-advised because it sets up
and reinforces the fundamental cause of food guarding by teaching dogs that people are
interested in their food.

11) Maybe behaviorists press the point that food guarding is natural only to support their
position that dogs should be trained not to guard their food; but the collateral damage from
this inappropriate classification extends beyond the ill-advised food trading/handling
exercises they promote. Unfortunately, the idea that food guarding is natural has been used
by the Dominance camp to create even worse training exercises based on mistaken ideas
about the role played by physical dominance.

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12) If access to food in a pack is determined, or even influenced, by guarding as the
behaviorists suggest by classifying the behavior as natural, the leader and controller of the
pack’s food under such competitive conditions would be the best guard and/or the best thief
in the pack - and the pack hierarchy would be determined either by physical dominance, or
via other interactions which would always be selfish/adversarial in nature. This view of
pack life does not reflect natural realities. The science of today informs us that the leader of
a well-functioning, natural pack is the best hunter and provider of food and security to the
pack, not a selfish guard or thief.

13) It is not surprising that nature constructs a pack on a foundation of trust and
cooperation versus distrust and physical confrontation. In nature, food guarding is not a
natural occurrence between a dependent member of a pack and the pack leader; in fact, it
never occurs. Handlers who hope to emulate a well-functioning, natural pack should
understand and think about this reality, instead of the unscientific and deceptive idea that
guarding food is natural.

14) A pack is essentially a family - a collective containing some individuals who are
dependent on more experienced and capable individuals. Thanks to nature, the most
capable male and female providers in a pack/family are strongly motivated to feed and
protect the dependent members. Under these circumstances, it is not reasonable to suppose
that a well-fed, dependent member of a pack/family, needs special instruction to teach it
that its guardian/parent will not steal its food. It is also not reasonable to suppose that a
dependent pack member will be impressed in any productive way, if it is needlessly
threatened and robbed by its guardian/parent.

IV. Anatomy of a Terrible Misunderstanding

1) There is a misunderstanding about dogs that has been floating around in the Cesspool of
Knowledge for years – floating, but not sinking to the bottom where it belongs because the
trainers of the Dominance camp rely on the misunderstanding to justify their approach to
training. The misunderstanding is that a dog will think that a person is a pack leader if
that person can intimidate or force the dog into acting submissive.

2) Thirty years ago, a dog trainer could be excused for advising a handler to force their dog
to submit and relinquish its food. Back then, a science-based justification from the study of
wolves could be claimed for such advice - claimed wrongly and destructively as some of us
who train working dogs thought all along, but at least not completely unreasonably given
the beliefs of the day. However, enough is enough. Scientific opinion regarding pack
dynamics/behavior has changed and the old misunderstandings supporting the dominance
approach to training were sent to the Cesspool of Knowledge long ago. Today it is known
that leadership status in a natural pack is not established through intimidation or physical

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conflict with pack mates; rather, a pack member becomes a pack leader by proving they are
the best provider of food and security to the pack.

3) Today there is no justification for a dog trainer pointing to nature when they advise a
handler to forcibly take food from their dog; today it is known that nothing of the sort
occurs in nature between the leader and a low-rank/dependent member of a pack. If
professional dog trainers could be charged with malpractice, any trainer advising an owner
to do this today would deserve the charge for the same reason that a medical doctor would
for using an outdated treatment protocol that is known to be counterproductive and have
fatal side effects.

4) A long time ago, a dog trainer somewhere took an observation about wolves and twisted
it around to produce one of the most widely disseminated and accepted wrong ideas about
dog training ever concocted. The idea is that a pack leader (the so-called Alpha) maintains
leadership status at the top of the pack hierarchy via the possession and guarding of food.

The mistake was made by focusing on an unimportant point while ignoring the important
point - by focusing on whom within a pack has first access to food, while ignoring the
matter of who provides the food to the pack in the first place. This mistake is easy to make
when observing wolves in captivity – wolves fed by humans.

In nature, a pack leader has first access to food because the leader is the pack’s best hunter,
perhaps even the only capable hunter within the pack at times. Thus, a pack leader has
first access to the pack’s food because that individual goes out and hunts the food, not
because they have Alpha status.

5) The mistaken idea that leadership status in a pack is linked to the taking and guarding
of food came from two observations; first: the so-called Alpha gets first access to a pack’s
food, and second: low-ranking members of a pack sometimes challenge each other over food,
but they never challenge the Alpha. If one considers only these factors, the mistaken idea
that leadership status in a pack is dependent on an ability to take food from packmates
might seem reasonable. This has been a terrible misunderstanding with regards to the fair
and humane treatment of dogs.

6) Science informs us that the leader-like pack member who was initially recognized and
labeled in the late 1970s as the physically dominant Alpha wolf, is simply a parent wolf
who employs the capabilities of the pack to provide sustenance and security for its
offspring. Today it is also known that the dependent offspring being sustained by the pack
are the members who were regarded in the old days as the low ranking/submissive wolves –
the individuals thought to be physically dominated into submission by the Alpha.

7) In a natural pack, individuals are positioned at the bottom end of the pack hierarchy
because they are dependents sustained by the superior hunting skills of the pack leader(s) -
not because they are unable to successfully guard their food. Food guarding requires a
belief that another individual is interested in taking one’s food, and a leader of a well-

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functioning pack in nature has no such interest in food it has provided to its offspring or to
other dependent/low-rank members of its pack.

If squabbling over food and guarding is occurring within a natural pack, the participants
will be dependent/low-rank members and the competition will likely be over food that has
been provided by the pack leader. Thus, a low-ranking member of a pack does not guard its
food from a pack leader, but this is because a leader never wants the food it has – a reason
which has nothing to do with dominance and submission. This is the simple, accurate view
of nature that should inform dog handlers with regards to food guarding.

8) If a low-rank/dependent member of a natural pack is concerned about an individual

stealing food, that individual will certainly not be the pack leader. Thus, if a dog knows
anything naturally about a pack member who might take its food, it would be that the
potential thief is also a dependent - an unskilled hunter unable to obtain food on its own
and therefore a fellow low-rank member of the pack – the opposite of a pack leader. In a
human family, the equivalent of this potential food thief would be an untrustworthy and
sometimes violent child – one who is monitored and loathed by its siblings for good reason.

9) A confrontation between pack mates over food reflects instability that brings some
degree of dysfunction to the operation of a natural pack. A conflict among low-ranking
members, who are dependents and not providers to the pack, creates little or no
dysfunction; but, instability at the top of the pack hierarchy creates intolerable dysfunction
for a pack in nature where survival requires cooperation among the pack’s hunters. In a
well-functioning pack, the pack hierarchy is stable at the top and physical dominance plays
no role in maintaining leadership status. A leader keeps their position at the top of the pack
hierarchy by keeping themselves healthy and keeping the pack fed and safe.

10) Dogs live with a reliable provider of food and they have no other means of obtaining the
food they need to survive; thus, in this respect, a dog relies on its person just as a low-rank
member of a pack in nature relies on the leader(s) of its pack. A dog guarding food from its
handler - the provider of the food - should therefore be considered dysfunctional, not
natural. This type of dysfunction is caused by a handler expressing unnatural interest in
the dog’s food – interest which leads the dog to become unnaturally concerned about having
the food taken back by the provider. By creating such concern and inducing the dog to
guard, a handler loses all credit for providing the food, while receiving no benefit in return.

11) If a handler inadvertently induces a dog to guard its food in this manner, the proper
corrective action is not to force the dog to relinquish its food - even though this is typically
what handlers and trainers who have misguided beliefs about dogs and guarding are
inclined to do. Dysfunctional guarding of this sort is caused by the handler’s unnatural
interest in the dog’s food and the proper corrective action is to convince the dog, over time,
that its handler has no such interest after all. There is no real need for a person to be
interested in food they have given to their dog, and this absence of necessity provides all the
advantage one needs to adequately address food guarding. a

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12) The example of a well-functioning, natural pack provides dog handlers with the natural
and ultimate solution to any guarding issue – the only unconditional solution that exists.
The concept of guarding has no application whatsoever if a dog believes there is no interest
whatsoever in what it possesses. Thus, whenever a handler feels some urge to take or play
games with their dog’s food, they can be certain that they have come up with a bad idea.
This reality creates a very simple training requirement for the handling of food – one that
does not require the assistance of a professional behaviorist or trainer to understand and
implement.

V. Guarding 101

1) Pet dog trainers are told by behaviorists that food guarding is determined by well-
defined, overt physical responses – beginning with accelerated eating and
progressing/escalating to freeze, then to growl, snarl, snap and finally, bite. In creating and
disseminating this definition of guarding, behaviorists who have no experience
intentionally training dogs to guard, have misinformed pet dog trainers and handlers about
guarding. It is incorrect and irresponsible to teach trainers and handlers to believe that a
dog is not guarding if it is not exhibiting one of these overt behaviors.

2) Guarding can be indicated by the overt behaviors identified by behaviorists, but a dog
can be guarding without exhibiting a physical response/behavior of any type. Thus, it is not
possible to demonstrate that a dog is not guarding, unless the dog is known to be sleeping.
A bank guard does not threaten or shoot every person that walks through the door, but this
lack of evidence does not indicate that the guard is not guarding. Likewise, if a dog is
guarding, this does not mean that it is freezing, growling, or biting - it means that the dog
is making judgements - using its mind, not its body. How a dog responds when it is
guarding, is a different matter than whether it is guarding.

3) The secret to training a discriminating guard dog (versus a so-called junkyard guard
dog), is to teach the dog that people are interested (in what it has) - not that all people are
thieves. If a dog believes the former, the only additional training it needs to initiate
guarding is to encounter a single thief. Once a dog believes: a) that people are interested in
its food, and b) that a person might be a thief - this combination of understanding and
experience forces the dog to begin judging people to establish that they are not the previous
thief, or perhaps a new thief. This act of judging is guarding and there is no physical
component to it.

4) Guarding is the mental act of a dog judging whether it needs to employ one or more of
the physical behaviors that define guarding for behaviorists; thus, the initiation of guarding
precedes any of the physical acts behaviorists use to determine whether a dog is guarding. If
a dog judges that it does not need to continue defending its food, this judgement occurs
because the dog is guarding, not because it isn’t. Thus, any training that encourages a dog

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to make this judgement trains the dog to guard by forcing it to make a judgement about
defending its food in the first place. Any such training is ill-conceived because it necessarily
teaches a dog that people are interested in its food. In fact, this is the fundamental lesson a
competent guard dog trainer would teach a dog if they were training it to guard its food.

5) The fact that guarding is a type of judging, versus a type of physical response, creates an
evaluation loophole that allows trainers to use the absence of overt/physical guarding
behaviors as evidence that a dog is not guarding, when the dog is guarding intensely.

6) Trainers from the Positive camp do not understand or admit that a dog is guarding
intensely during any trading exercise, because they evaluate a dog’s behavior by looking for
overt guarding actions per the erroneous definition of guarding put forth by behaviorists.
Also, by acting the role of a packmate interested in their dog’s food, a handler encourages
food guarding whether they intend to take the food or trade for it - and by doing either, the
handler presents themselves as a low-rank, dependent packmate, certainly not a pack
leader. Thus, there are two fatal problems with the Positive camp approach to food
guarding.

7) A pet dog trainer who has no experience training guard or protection dogs probably has
no business advising on the subject of food guarding regardless of whether they belong to
the Positive camp or the Dominance camp; but the training approach employed by
Dominance camp trainers is the more egregious of the two because it is based on critical
misunderstandings about leadership and physical dominance - misunderstandings that are
more damaging to a dog and a working relationship with a dog, than are the Positive camp’s
misunderstandings about the nature of trading. b

8) Forcing a dog to relinquish its food can only create or reinforce an understanding in the
dog that people will try to take its food - and this understanding can only inform the dog
that it was correct to guard the food in the first place. Thus, when a dog learns to relinquish
its food to avoid being hurt/shocked, the dog’s motivation to guard will necessarily be
reinforced regardless of how it responds to being hurt during a specific training incident or
how it regards the individual who threatens it during that incident.

9) The Dominance camp approach to food guarding removes the possibility that the dog will
exhibit an overt physical guarding response, simply by shocking, pronging or threatening
the dog as necessary to switch its motivation from defending a possession to defending
itself. To do this, the dog must be hurt or threatened to the degree necessary to: a) make the
dog lose interest in the possession it is defending, and b) make the dog choose the option of
disengagement and avoidance to defend itself - as opposed to a warning or fighting
response. When a dog transitions into self-defense mode, the dog’s goal changes to keeping
some minimum/safe distance between itself and the threatening individual. This scenario is
equivalent to one where a person gives a valuable possession to a thief because they believe
the thief will hurt them badly if they resist.

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10) A person who gives up a valued possession to a thief because they believe the thief will
hurt them if they resist - this person will probably become more concerned about protecting
their possessions in the future because of this experience, not less concerned. With the
Dominance camp approach to food guarding, a dog is taught that it will be hurt if it
responds with a physical guarding behavior, but a Dominance camp trainer claims that this
experience will somehow train a dog to become less concerned about having its food stolen
in the future.

11) This seemingly unreasonable expectation - that the experience of encountering a violent
thief will discourage a dog from guarding - is rooted in the previously discussed belief from
the Cesspool of Knowledge – the belief that a dog equates physical dominance with
leadership. Per this ill-conceived, dominance-based training theory, taking a dog’s food
teaches the dog that the dominant individual taking its food is a leader; thus, per the
theory, the dog stops guarding because it knows that guarding is inappropriate given the
assumed leadership status of the dominant food taker. This is the Dominance camp’s
theory, but given its roots in the Cesspool of Knowledge, one would be wise to consider the
possibility that this theory is groundless and incorrect from every angle.

12) Training for food guarding is a lucrative, heavily marketed product for the Dominance
camp because there is no way that a professional trainer can lose financially with the
dominance approach – even an inexperienced trainer who knows no more about guarding
than a typical client. A Dominance camp trainer simply adds more shock/pain as necessary
until the level is found that negates the dogs drive to keep its food. Owners do not
understand that a lack of overt guarding behaviors does not indicate a lack of guarding, so
a Dominance camp demonstration appears to show a successful training result - even
though the dog’s motivation to guard has been increased by inhumane and
counterproductive training.

13) A Dominance camp trainer, who gets a dog to relinquish its food by hurting or
threatening the dog, can make up any story they like to explain why the dog does not resist.
Typically, the story told is a fantasy tale about how the dominance approach teaches a dog
that the food taker is a leader - how this understanding makes the dog stop guarding. This
explanation works better for marketing the dominance approach than admitting that the
guarding demonstration is a deceptive product created by abusive training. People don’t
like the idea of illogically hurting or threatening an intelligent and social animal to punish
it for not trusting them.

14) Dominance camp trainers assume that a dog can be forced to accept that a person is a
leader even if that person is a taker versus a provider; in fact, because that person is a
taker. The Dominance camp is wrong about this, but there is a more sinister deception
being sold by this camp - the claim that their training approach will make a dog more
content.

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Handlers are told that conflicts over the dog’s food have occurred, or will occur in the
future, because the dog does not have a proper understanding of the pack hierarchy.
Handlers are told that forcing a dog to relinquish its food will teach the dog that the
handler is the pack leader. Handlers are told that the dog will be content once it learns its
place in the pack hierarchy in this manner. All this insight comes from the Cesspool of
Knowledge, and unfortunately for dogs, these floaters from yesteryear still sell when they
are repackaged with a shock collar and marketed effectively via the internet and social
media.

VI. A Sensible and Respectful Requirement

1) In the history of the world, a dog has never guarded food or any other possession from an
individual it believed had no interest in that possession. If a dog understood about its
handler what an equivalent low-rank/dependent member of a pack in nature understands
about the leader of its pack, the dog would understand simply that its handler provides it
with food from animals they have hunted; the idea that their handler might steal food from
them would never occur to the dog. There is no good reason for a handler to ever put such
an idea into their dog’s head.

2) The most that a handler can do with food to communicate leadership status and appear
leader-like to their dog, is to provide the food to the dog and show no interest in the food
afterwards. Motivation to guard food from its handler originates when a dog suspects that
the handler is interested in its food. Once this occurs, the handler’s position at the top of
the pack hierarchy is called into question because their status as a pure provider has been
called into question.

3) A dog that guards against its handler is not acting in a disobedient or aberrant manner,
it simply does not trust its handler. A dog does not want to guard its food; it must believe
that it needs to guard it - and a dog cannot rightly be blamed or punished for not trusting
its handler. A handler who experiences food guarding should not attempt to reverse the
reality that their dog does not trust them, by conducting food guarding exercises that teach
the dog its handler is incompetent, violent and untrustworthy.

4) The concern that a handler should be able to take food from their dog if they should ever
need to do so – this concern creates a valid expectation. On the other hand, the completely
different concern that a handler should be able to take food from their dog whenever they
want - this concern emanates from the belief floating in the Cesspool of Knowledge and it
does not create a valid expectation. While it is true that a handler can behave like an
untrustworthy, low rank packmate whenever they choose by challenging their dog over its
food, there are good reasons why a handler should not choose this option. On the other
hand, a real need to take a food-like object from a dog generates a reasonable requirement,

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but this type of need brings to light the difference between a training exercise and a
proofing exercise.

5) A proofing exercise is conducted only to prove something, not to teach/train a

behavior/response. The reason for this is that conducting a proofing exercise can UN-train
the desirable behavior/result being proofed. With regards to proofing for food guarding, the
only sensible purpose for taking a dog’s food without a real need to do so, would be to
demonstrate that the taker has established a proper/cooperative relationship with the dog.
Such a demonstration might be required for a certification of some type, or for some other
purpose, but there is no good reason to take food from a dog for training purposes.

The obvious problem here, is that repeatedly taking a dog’s food can only undermine the
relationship that is being proofed - even if the food is given back and promptly. This result
does not indicate a deficiency that needs to be addressed by more taking; it simply reflects
the reality that dogs are intelligent, social creatures, and that leadership status with a dog
is earned and maintained by being a leader, not by relying on some imaginary status one
assigns to oneself without consulting the dog.

6) As it happens, being leader-like is easier, more enjoyable and less stressful than being a
poser. This applies whether one poses as a dependent/competitive sibling to conduct food
trades with one’s dog, or one poses as an imagined dominant leader figure - an Alpha who
pathetically relies on a shock controller to protect oneself when feeding one’s dog.

Being a leader the natural way is easy because a natural leader does not concern
themselves with anything that a dependent, low-rank member of its pack may possess.
Perhaps the most inappropriate and unhelpful action a handler can take when starting
from such a naturally advantageous position, is to play games with their dog’s food as
advised by professional pet dog behaviorists and trainers. In a situation where the best
plan is to do nothing, it is a tribute to the powers of modern marketing that handlers are
willing to seek, accept, and pay for such terrible advice. Hooray for modern marketing; too
bad for dogs.

7) Finally, to answer the question put forth in Section III.1: people suppose they have some
innate right to take food from a dog, and they exercise the imagined right, because they
suck.

aAvoiding food guarding can be a challenge with guarding breeds; especially, for example, a
breed created for guarding stock without human supervision/interaction. But even with
these extreme guarding breeds, it is unhelpful to suppose that the dog was programed by
nature to guard, versus programed to be wary. Attempting to train this dog to not guard will
more than likely make the dog warier, thus more likely to guard.

The natural characteristic that motivates guarding breeds to guard is not an instinct to
guard; rather, it is the stress the dog experiences from being uncertain that motivates it to

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guard. The difference between a Golden Retriever and a guard dog is not that the former is
necessarily less uncertain than the latter; the difference is that the former does not care about
(is not stressed by) being uncertain.

For a guard dog, being uncertain means being stressed - and any outside interest in its food
creates uncertainty related to the food and stress which motivates the dog to guard. Another
natural characteristic of the guarding dog that should be considered, is its inability to
become certain from experience; a guard dog should not become less motivated to guard even
if it never engages a thief.

With this combination of natural characteristics, a dog should be expected to guard

whenever it believes there is interest in what it has. It was mentioned in Section III.8, that a
perceived interest in its possession can be the only condition needed for guarding, and this is
the case with extreme guarding breeds; no experience/training required. Anybody who
believes that this dog can be trained to not guard by having it trade food or accept treat
bribes, does not understand that the dog will be guarding while it is doing either.

b
It is fair to mention here that, in an increasing percentage of cases, members of the Positive
camp are administering mind-numbing drugs to dogs who have no character flaws - dogs
that behave 100% normally for their breed. In these cases, charlatan behaviorists evaluate
the dog according to completely artificial, unscientific, and all-around bogus behavioral
“thresholds” they make up themselves to suit their preference for training with treats. Thus,
instead of designing a training plan to suit the character of the dog, these behaviorists drug
the dog with increasing doses until it will take treats, or they give up and recommend that
the dog be euthanized or drugged permanently.

The so-called “patients” in these cases are normal dogs - dogs that can be trained without
difficulty using positive approaches other than treat training; for example, approaches used
to train dogs for various types of work. If these charlatans of the Positive camp have any idea
how to train a dog without relying on elaborate treats and drugs, it is interesting and
informative that they choose the immoral option of drugging completely normal/proper dogs
simply to suit their personal preference for training with treats.

PACKWORKS Gretchen Schumacher & Michael Schmidt

Western Washington State
Email: Cooperate@Packworks.org
FB: www.facebook.com/Packworks

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