[ShamrockPoodle]

Toffee has earned his PhD in Resource Guarding—with a special emphasis on the well-worn and highly coveted headless bear toy!
Lol I have been through obedience training twice with Toffee. He was the perfect student and teacher’s pet...until the drop it/leave it lesson. He actually grabbed the object (chewy bone) -got away from the instructor-and ran around the classroom with a beautiful showy gait waving the bone and growling. The instructor wouldn’t let him pass the class—and offered a remedial session in drop it/leave it!
For now—we have to take a break from classes since little sister needs surgery—so I have awarded Toffee an honorary PhD. He will trade most items for a tasty liver treat—just not the bear lol

 

[cowpony]

If you have to be bad, be bad with style.

 

[Dogs4Life]

Well, he looks very handsome guarding his bear....

 

[ShamrockPoodle]

😂

 

[ShamrockPoodle]

He is quite the high drive little guy!!!

 

[Raindrops]

Haha! This reminds me of when we were working on ignoring distractions and the instructor tossed a floppy fabric toy near Misha and he lost his sh**. The whole class just watched him play extremely joyfully with this toy for like five minutes. He was fine with all other distractions. But he couldn't leave this one alone.

 

[ShamrockPoodle]

That totally sounds like Toffee 😂

 

[PeggyTheParti]

I love your storytelling, your attitude, and this adorable photo.

Our trainer tried to re-create one of Peggy's guarding episodes, and Peggy was like, "Me? Guard? Never!" Either she's outgrown it (unlikely) or she saw right through the charade.

 

[cowpony]

Snarky wasn't much interested in toys for their own sake. In his opinion the chief joy to be got from toys was in stealing one and then taunting Pogo with it. I was quite surprised, therefore, when one day he made a sudden lunge and came up clutching a baby rattle in his jaws. Fortunately the previous owner was nowhere in the vicinity, so Snarky was able to triumphantly march home with his prize. I still have it and let Galen play with it a few times.

 

[Carolinek]

Ha- leave it to a poodle to excel! Lily is a skilled resource guarder, and it can be over the top, we actually did a lot of work with her on this. It is now to the point where it is cute, and she does the same prancing around with the resource on display. She will give any resource up to her humans. However, this was only after much training, the shelter was going to euthanize her because of this behavior, which gives you an idea of the extent of it.

Gracie doesn’t resource guard, I think because she enjoys tugging and retrieving games too much and an integral part of that is actually giving up the toy.

 

[ShamrockPoodle]

Love your comments ❤. Toffee definitely wants to manage things himself-which can be quite challenging at times! Once you can convince him that what you want him to do is cool—then he totally owns it—but he kind of has to show off a bit!!!