Weird Eating Habit with Biting

I have a 6 month old shiba inu who sometimes scarves down his food and attacks my partner or I (who ever he sees first) after he eats or before he finishes his last bit of kibble.

I have no sure why he does this. I have a resource guarding book and have found that the cases describing resource guarding does not fit in with my case. Either way, we have tried to train him not to do this by putting him on a leash (for our safety) and throwing treats his way while approaching him. Also throwing treats into his bowl.

He has mastered that somewhat, and lately we have been feeding him off the leash. This is when the trouble starts. If we feed him by himself (we go to a separate room), he is fine. But if we are in the same room as him, he will come find us after he is done eating and start biting our jeans sometimes bruising and cutting into skin and pull and yelp. When he does this, we grab him and put him in time out.

I have also tried eating before he does and this has not stopped him from scarfing down his food when he sees it and trying to find us after he is done to attack!

I am not sure if it's the fact that he doesn't know who's alpha or he's just guarding his food. And I don't know what I can do about it!

The book is by Jean Donaldson (recommended by our puppy class trainer) and she asks to do incremental steps to finally be able to lift up the bowl and place it down with treats. We find this too dangerous to attempt with a leash and without since he displays signs that he would come attack us first without any warning.

I really would like some input and help on this issue.

He is getting neutered this week but I feel this will not be solved by just neutering.

Let me preface my answer by saying that its what we did with our dog and I'm sure that there are others who will say what we did is wrong. But, we now have the best behaved dog and I don't regret it one bit!

That said, let me tell you about our experience. Budi did the same things only instead of trying to attack everyone in the house, he almost always singled out my youngest son (then 10). We had him neutered too, but did that more out of responsible pet ownership, not for testosterone control. But that's an added benefit. I doubt that at 6 months you will see much difference just by the neutering alone right away. However, over time there is a difference. The big thing that worked to get Budi to stop charging us after eating was that we would flip him on his side and lay on him while he did his Shiba scream and all. Yes, this can be dangerous and you may get bit again, but if you constantly overpower him this way, he WILL learn that his behavior is totally unacceptable. The trick is that you CANNOT be afraid of him while doing this! If you grab his collar on the side of his neck to pin him, his ability to bite is greatly inhibited. Think about how a dog pack works in the wild. Would an alpha accept being charged by a beta? Heck no! He'd put him in his place in no time flat! That or lose his alpha status. If you have any other pets in the house, you want to make sure they can't get to you two while you're doing this or they will help whomever they see as the alpha. Our cat did this. LOL! My husband had Budi pinned down and he was doing his Shiba scream. Well the cat came running out and started tugging on my husband's shorts to try to protect him from the dog and then went after the dog. I had to get the cat out of there. It was hilarious! They are pack animals and since Shibas are such a primitive breed you have to remember this. Oh, if you do this the other big thing is that you cannot let him up until he has TOTALLY surrendered. He'll probably be drueling and may even have urinated (a sign of submission). Basically, you need to be able to get up and have him still keep a 'stay'.

Yes this is drastic, but it worked for us. Budi is the most loving and sweet dog now (he's 4 years old). He still protects the house, yard, us, etc but I can do just about anything to him (except a bath, lol). Now Keena's a little $h!t but she doesn't get near as out of control as he did and is still young (1 year). I hope that once she matures (1.5 years approx) that she'll settle down too.

Good luck and let us know how things go!
Mitzy :)

By the way, he's a cute pup! How gorgeous! :)