My understanding from reading training articles is that you don't want to force the dog to bite. A dog usually growls before a bite. So many people discourage a growl that dogs will just bit out of nowhere. I mean, if the dog growls and you keep threatening it, his only recourse is to bite. (Many dogs will do an air bite/snap where they don't intend to actually bite you but it's a warning)
I say, if the dog growls, she did too much too fast and she needs to back off. The dog is doing what it's instinct is telling him - protecting his resource. That doesn't mean it's OK, but we can't reason with the dog. We need to teach him to trust us and learn that it's OK if we take his stuff.
There are a lot of books out there on resource guarding. |