I don’t know how many times I’ve had people ask or tell me that raw feeding creates an aggressive dog. That the blood and meat make dogs vicious. Whoever believes this or experienced it, probably didn’t do some really simple training and focus work with their dogs. It’s highly important to train any dog, with any food to be easily handled or messed with while eating. This for sure doesn’t mean just grab food out of a dog’s mouth if it hasn’t been trained or conditioned to this kind of activity.
I’ve always started my dogs out with very controlled food wait and focus work. They’re not even allowed to touch the food, sniff it or anything until I give them the release….which is the cue word “OK!” with direct eye contact. So, I could be looking just to the left of their eyes and say ok, and they still wouldn’t be able to take their food. If they go for it before I release, I body block them and they don’t eat that day. Yep, pretty strict punishment but it’s very effective! Pushy dogs don’t get food!
Then for comfortable and easy management during meal times, I’ve trained a “drop it” that I just apply to their food. In the early stages of training this, I would feed them something boring like chicken and have something way better sitting aside, like beef heart. I’d ask for them to drop it, if they did they’d receive beef heart in return. Whatever you have to trade them should be better than what they’re eating. Once this skill is trained you don’t necessarily have to trade them when you ask them to drop it, they just do because it’s habit for them to listen.
Simple training and conditioning is all it takes to prevent food aggression!
