A tale of three slippers...and barking

We went on a short road trip with Bennie and visited both sets of parents. We've been working with him on guarding and he's been working on getting shoes and socks and parading them in front of us for a response.

I do the classic trained response to get my shoe back. Get a treat, walk over and try to take the shoe. Ideally I'll call him over for a treat, remind him to do a couple obedience things then approach the shoe reminding him to do an obedience thing we just practiced. Sometimes I treat bomb but that doesn't usually work because he's not ready to pay attention.

Fred tries the same thing but because he doesn't do the more formal training with Bennie, it doesn't always work and it turns into a keep away session.

Bennie spent his first 5 weeks with me at Dad's house. We got home after a day out and Dad said Bennie doesn't like when May isn't wearing her shoes  - he takes them outside for her. !?!?! Turns out for May he takes the shoe out and drops it for her to take! He sits for a treat but doesn't mind not getting one. Dad and May give Bennie treats all the time. I've got them down to pieces and fruit and small pieces of bread but clearly they've built up cred so treating right away isn't necessary.

I was checking out the app Dogo which I use for dog training. They have a new tab called USEFUL which includes resource guarding! We were given exercises to do by our behaviourist but I wish we had this 6 months ago when Bennie started exhibiting negative behaviour. I am going to start tossing a treat towards him whenever I ask him what he's doing and work toward being able to take stuff from him. High value items (aka kleenex) will be trained with the formal tether method.

While on the road trip we found out Bennie is quite sensitive to certain types of city noises. We were watching Two Weeks Notice when he got really anxious and wouldn't stop barking. Even cowered in a corner away from door to the back yard. He seemed better the next morning but we decided to cut the visit short. Dad called a couple days later to see if he was OK. By then we had figured out the noise sensitivity through desensitizing videos.

As a result of this trip we've decided Bennie will not go to YHX (2 people suggested we use a bark collar on him among other events.) He can stay at home and have a sitter while we're away for 2 nights. We'll keep our trips to YVR short as well and up the frequency. Dad's yard is all gravel, the houses are quite close together and there's highway noise as well as neighbour dogs that could provoke barking.