Food Aggression Golden Retriever

Thanks for the email. We have to keep in mind that I haven’t met your dog or can ask the questions I would ask in a consultation but I can say I do run into this with Golden Retrievers from time to time and have over the last decade. Before that period, in my experience, it was virtually unheard of in the breed. There are various strategies that are often recommended that can help to a certain degree but I’ve found the dog’s improved behaviour is at best contextual as in, perhaps reduced aggression around their food but not so much with a bone or a “found” treasure and this is where unaware people are often caught off guard and bites occur. When I run into this problem with other breeds, where the problem is more of a learned behaviour problem rather than something in the breeding of the dog it is much easier to resolve. As to which it might be with your dog, I couldn’t say without more information.