Last week, I wrote about a YouTube “teaser” for a television program, showing a 2-year-old Labrador retriever named Holly who was aggressive around her food. (If you missed the column, here's a link).

I watched the full TV episode to learn more about the situation. At 5 months, Holly started growling around her food bowl. We don't learn why she might have started growling, but I've helped many owners experiencing this behavior. Nearly all dogs start for the same reason — the owners were following recommendations from a “professional,” such as a breeder, rescue worker, trainer or veterinarian, advising them to get their puppy used to them being around her food. They're told to pet and talk to her while she eats, to stick their fingers in her dish and to move her bowl to teach her that they can. If she growls or objects, scold her and if she persists, remove her food.

Consider how you would react. You're eating a nice meal, and your waiter starts rubbing your back and talking to you. He sticks his fingers in your food and moves your dish. If you object, he yells at you and takes your plate. What would you do at the next course? Would it be reasonable to say, “Just put the plate down and leave me alone!”? That's what a dog is saying when she growls: “Leave me alone.”

Rather than leave their 5-month-old puppy alone, Holly's owners consulted a trainer, then a second and then a third — but none had eliminated her behavior, and in fact, it had gotten worse.

This reminded me of the worst case I ever dealt with. My client had consulted with three other behavioral trainers before she was referred to me. Each trainer gave different advice, each involving punishment, which served only to escalate the dog's aggression. By the time she called me, her dog felt so threatened around food that the dog would attack the woman the moment she put the bowl down. She literally had to push the food bowl toward her dog, rush away and close the door before her dog attacked her. Sound like a vicious, aggressive dog? Nope. Except when she was eating, Rosie was an otherwise sweet, fun-loving, 8-month-old golden retriever puppy! She became proactively aggressive to prevent the awful treatment the previous trainers had recommended. Her successful rehabilitation took more than six months.

Back to the TV show: We don't know what advice the owner had followed, except to spread Holly's food on the patio and let her eat it off the cement. The result was simply to create a larger area to protect.

To demonstrate her bad behavior, the owner approached her holding a broom handle as she was eating off the patio floor. Trying to eat and guard her food, she snarled and snapped at the stick. When he kept moving toward her, she grabbed it. The audience would, of course, imagine that rather than a broom handle, this might have been one of the owners, or even their 18-month-old son. Horrors! What a bad dog! “Fix” her!

I had two immediate thoughts when watching this show. First, it's the behavior of the people involved that needs to be “fixed.” Yes, Holly has an undesirable and even dangerous behavior, but stop pushing her until she bites! A dog does not have to engage in the undesirable behavior in order for a good trainer to help eliminate it. We often have clients who want to show us their dog's bad behavior. We don't need to see it — and in fact, we don't want to! Our goal is for the dog to never offer the unwanted behavior again. It is counterproductive for the dog to “show off” the undesirable behavior because each time the dog “practices” it, the behavior is strengthened. But for a TV program, showing Holly at her worst makes for dramatic footage.

My second thought was wondering why they put up with this for nearly a year and a half when they have a toddler, especially when Holly continued to get worse. I fear it might be that they were waiting to be on a TV program.

Sadly for Holly, her behavior had escalated to such an extent and had been reinforced so much that she could not be sufficiently rehabilitated to return to the home. We'll never know if a good trainer using a positive approach, rather than the TV trainer's threatening and domineering attitude, might have saved this relationship.

More on food bowl behavior next week.

Gail Fisher, author of “The Thinking Dog,” runs All Dogs Gym & Inn in Manchester. To suggest a topic, email gail@alldogsgym.com or write c/o All Dogs Gym & Inn, 505 Sheffield Road, Manchester, NH 03103. Past columns can be found on her website.