So we have been doing a lot of work on Bodie's food aggression. I got some good advice from my last blog I wrote about my frustrations and I have done a bunch of research. Pretty much I believe that Bodie has severe food aggression because he lived with his litter too long in the shelter. When we adopted him he was still with his mom and his FIVE brothers in the same pen in the shelter. He was 5 or 6 months old, which is waay to old to be sharing and fighting for food with your siblings. Puppies naturally have food aggression when they are very little because it is the survival of the fittest. And if they are not seperated from their litter after a certain time or not fed enough at the shelter, I believe that aggression just gets worse. Another thing that I did wrong was seperate the dogs right away at feeding. Bodie has been eating outside by himself.. which made him think he is the dominant dog and made his aggression worse.
I started off being outside with Bodie when he hate, which made him nervous, but he ate and I talked to him and praised him the whole time. When he got confortable with that we introduced Bailey into the situation and we started feeding the dogs together. Soo far so good. I also started giving him a bunch of food so he will know that there is an endless supply, but he just ate a normal portion size and left the rest, so I just kept feeding him the normal amount.
When it came to feeding the dogs together I started with their bowls probably about 5 feet apart and I have been moving them closer together. Right now they are about 3 feet apart. I have supervised the whole thing and when Bodie is finished I praise him, pet him and give him biscuits and then we play. My idea is that if I make feeding time as fun and stress free as possible there will no longer be stress and issues with feeding. Fingers crossed this works, but so far so good and Bodie has not shown any aggression since the perviously mention instance. :) I even caught them snuggling the other day! :)
