# Won't let me clean up his vomit



## Luce (Jan 12, 2010)

My dog won't let me clean his vomit. He gets possessive of it, like it's food, and will growl and snap if anyone tries to come near it. He doesn't try to eat it though. He just guards it. It's weird. Like it's his vomit-baby. I've figured out the secret is to pretend someone's at the door and once he's distracted, shut the door to the vomit-room and clean it up. But I'm still curious about why he would want to guard his vomit. Any ideas? 

Cheers, Luce.


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## spotted nikes (Feb 7, 2008)

I'd start training him on resource guarding. It's a problem now that will only get worse if you don't correct it. There's lots of threads on this BB about it.


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## Nargle (Oct 1, 2007)

Does he act this way about food, toys, or favorite spots, too? 

One thing about resource guarding is that I recommend that you never punish your dog for things like growls, lifted lips and snapping in the air. That's communication, and if you teach him that he gets punished for giving you warning signals, he'll go straight to defensive mode (biting) without a warning. The reason why he's guarding his resources is because he feels like they're being threatened and he's afraid of losing them. He's insecure. You need to teach him that you're not a threat, and that good things come from you, you're not always there to take something away. Punishing causes more fear and insecurity, and that's the cause of the problem in the first place! (By punishing I mean doing things like physical corrections, yelling, startling him, etc. The best thing to do is go away from him and completely ignore him)

When I first adopted Basil, for a brief period he started to develop some resource guarding behavior with his favorite treats. This happened after several instances where Basil had tried to eat old chicken bones found in the parking lot on our walks. Each time my boyfriend would quickly grab the bones and pull them out of his mouth. This made Basil insecure, so our solution was to try to train Basil to trust us again with his food. Instead of taking things away from him, I would trade him what he's currently got for something of higher value. For instance, if I wanted to take his Nylabone from him, I would offer him a spoonful of peanut butter and take the Nylabone while he was busy licking. I stopped just taking things from him. Eventually I got to the point where he trusted me enough to take things from him without trading, and now he doesn't display any resource guarding behavior at all. But it took a lot of patience to get to that point, and understanding that if you push too far before he's ready, it's going to set you back. In regards to the puke situation, I would recommend offering a favorite toy or treat to distract him from the puke. Make sure it's very valuable, and get him excited about it and throw it to the other side of the room so that he doesn't get in the way of you cleaning up the puke. You may have to continue to get him into another room and shut the door until he trusts you more, and it doesn't hurt anything to do that. Just make sure you don't get in a "fight" with him over the puke.

Also, prevention is very important, so to avoid emergency situations like if your dog likes to steal from the trash and eat things that are dangerous, put it up and make sure he can't get to it! For instance, if your dog is wolfing down a chicken bone, it's going to be difficult to to try to trade him for it before he totally swallows it. So don't let him get to it in the first place. If you have to grab it out of his mouth it's going to cause drama. 

Another good practice is to train your dog the "leave it" command. You can start out by holding a treat in your hand, and if he sniffs it, close your hand into a fist and say "leave it." Once he takes his nose away, praise him and give him a treat from the other hand (never give him the treat that you ask him to leave alone, unless you first take it away and act like it's a new treat. Leave it means "never touch this, ever!" Not "leave it alone right now but I'll let you have it later"). You can eventually move the treat to the floor and have him leave it, and then switch to making him leave toys and more valuable treats. Once you've got his "leave it" really reliable, you can train him to leave his puke alone. 

One final thing I'd like to add, is, when it comes to defensive behavior, you want to teach your dog to make it obvious if you're doing something he's not okay with. Behaviors like growling are a good thing, because they let you know if you've crossed the line. Dogs don't just growl to boss you around for no reason, there's a reason behind each and every growl, and it's very wise to LISTEN to your dog when he's trying to communicate with you! You don't want to let things escalate into warning bites or even real bites, so always stop the confrontation at the growl. Whenever Basil growls at me (He's done so in the past because of his previous resource guarding behavior and because he was in pain) I would totally just stop interacting with him and leave the room. All I ever want him to have to do is growl if he needs space. If you stay and fight with him until he starts to snap at you or bite you, you're training him that growling doesn't get the message across and he has to make things clearer by getting physical. 

Good luck with training!


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## themrsb (Mar 17, 2014)

Hi! I know this is an old post, but I'm wondering if and how you resolved this issue, Luce? I am having a similar issue with my six month-old puppy. I posted a thread about it, and your thread came up when I googled  My puppy becomes aggressive when he vomits in his crate and it seems to escalating (growling, snapping, lunging at the crate door). He doesn't seem to be possessive of anything other than vomit, and because it's in his crate, it makes training challenging. Thanks!


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## Luce (Jan 12, 2010)

Hi, I wish I had some advice but I don't. We tried all sorts of training but Otis' behavior only got more erratic and more aggressive. We got in a dog psychologist, and did lots of tests with the vet to check for underlying conditions but in the end the vet and psychologist agreed that it was cocker rage syndrome. We managed to live with it until he was nearly 2 because I could usually tell when he was going to have a fit and I'd have time to get out of the room. His eyes would glaze over at he'd stare at an invisible spot. At that point I usually had about 30 seconds to a minute to get out of the room. But when he was around 2 the fits became so unpredictable that there were no warning signs. One day I was in the kitchen and he was lying peacefully on the floor while I cooked. I turned around to get something and he lunged at me. We had to have him put to sleep shortly after. Good luck finding a solution for your pup - at least if he's healthy and it's just a behavior problem there's probably a solution!


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## themrsb (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm so sorry, Luce!


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