Possessive aggression with bed

[Songbird857]

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum. I have a wonderful 2.5 year old Cairn. Normally, she is the sweetest dog

We recently bought her a little bed for the living room. (She sleeps at night in a crate in my daughter's room.)  At first, she just tried to chew it and tear it apart.  We successfully trained her to sit in it (and not tear it to bits). We were pleased when she started napping in the bed, we were happy that she had a little spot of her own. Well, now she is so possessive of the bed that she growls and quivers, and her ears go back if anyone approaches her while she is in the bed!!  Last night I put the bed in my daughter's room to see if she wanted to sleep in it at night (not my daughter, the dog...  )  

Well, this morning, she wouldn't get out of the bed to go potty (it was NOON...) I even tried getting her to come to me with some banana. No luck. She was not getting out of that bed. I reached under the bed and pulled it away from her so she had no choice. She was TOTALLY FINE after I took the bed from her (I put the bed away in a closet for now).  This baffled me, since she is normally the most lovey dog. I'd appreciate insight and advice from any experienced Cairn owners!

[hheldorfer]

Welcome to the forum!  Cairns are quirky creatures, as you have discovered.  They can become possessive of things - toys, beds, favorite spots, etc. - sometimes for no apparent reason.  Another thing is that (in my experience, anyway) they don't like change.  They don't want the furniture moved around and they don't like having their schedules adjusted.  This may seem a little wacky, but she may not have liked you moving the bed from the bedroom to your daughter's room and now she feels she has to protect it.  

I assume she didn't growl or snap at you when you pulled the bed away from her; if so, that's definitely a good thing.  Dogs like to have a spot of their own (or, in the case of Cairns, several spots of their own - sometimes the whole house ).  If she liked the bed in the living room I would have left it there.  Buffy, our Cairn, has two beds in the living room and she does NOT want them moved.  When we got new furniture and I had to move one of her beds from one side of the TV to the other, it rocked her world.

You'll undoubtedly get more (and quite possibly, better) insight from others on the forum.  I would just chalk it up to general Cairn weirdness. 

[Songbird857]

21 minutes ago, hheldorfer said:

I assume she didn't growl or snap at you when you pulled the bed away from her; if so, that's definitely a good thing.  

Thank you for responding! Actually, she did get snippy and growled - enough that I did not want to pick her up, which is why I reached under the bed (so if she did actually try to nip, she wouldn't make contact with me) to gently make her have to leave it. The instant the bed was out of reach for her, she changed back into her normal self! I picked her up with no issues and brought her upstairs to let her go outside.  She had been acting the same way when the bed was in the living room - I guess I thought that by letting her have it at night too might help...

  We've recently had some changes to our schedules around here, so that could be putting her off as well.  We would all definitely benefit from some more daily exercise  , so I'm thinking of bringing all of us to the dog park later this afternoon and let her get out some of her energy.

I'm so glad to have found this forum, I look forward to perusing the various topics and hopefully being of some help to someone at some point as well!

Edited May 31, 2016 by Songbird857

[lindasue]

Welcome to the forum and our world!  I agree with the above; Pegi (6 yrs.) doesn't like ANY changes at all.  She has a bed in our living room that we call "the womb" as she only sleeps in it when it's really cold out.  Most of the time she uses it to store toys in....and ignores it until one of my college aged daughters come in at night and say "time for bed".  At that point she growls, runs for the bed, picks up a toy and jumps in my lap.  When the girls sit down she goes over and gives them kisses, leaving me with a toy! 

[pkcrossley]

um hm. i think we have all seen this (though 2.5 years is a bit late to start if you haven't seen this before). particularly the reversion to normal after the beloved object is out of reach (or obviated by something she wants more).

i would say that the way you respond depends on what you think is going on. if you think she has just claimed possession of the bed and possessiveness is not indicated in any of her other behaviors, you could get her to trade the bed for something --a walk, a playtime, a treat, maybe even a come-sit performance.

on the other hand, a lot of cairns will not fall for this stuff (or any other kind of operant conditioning). when my cairn tried to intimidate me for any reason (stink eye, bared teeth, growl or grumble), i immediately took action. i think it creates all kinds of secondary problems if the cairn thinks it can intimidate anybody. in your case i'm impressed that she would let you reach under the bed and pull it. my cairn, when he was in that mood, would not have allowed that. to deal with it i kept him in a harness and short leash when he was a puppy (i mean, for weeks he dragged around a short leash). any funny business, up up and away to a time-out room (usually a laundry room or bathroom, something cairn proof). my cairn did not waste his time on things that did not work (but only after he had been 100 percent convinced they would not work). 

so, possibly your cairn will get over the obsession with the bed and smooth out to her normal self, in which case it is probably best to not make a big deal about it. or, she could start building all kinds of new subclauses to her new policy, in which case you will have to decide how to deal with it. some on this forum know how to do a roll-over thing that is cool but i would not have been able to pull it off. i often used simple shunning to reinforce my rejection of nasty behavior. a couple of times my guy let out a full-on frenzy when he did not get his way, and in those instances i used a pair of woodstove gloves to pick him up and take him away to time-out.

after age 4 we did not have problems. but a nice new toy or bed would be a likely trigger to bring out the this-is-mine-back-off-this-means-you attitude that is special to cairns. 

Edited May 31, 2016 by pkcrossley

[Dempsy's Mom]

To funny.  No bed possession here as they have several throughout the house.  I just counted 6.  I wonder what she would do if she had another bed?  Hmmm - two beds?  What about 3?  Poor little thing wouldn't know which one to claim as her security bed.  Sounds like Buffy has both her bed covered with security cameras.  

[Idaho Cairns]

I agree with Helene, Cairns can be quirky and possessive of prerogatives they establish on their own.  Not sure how I would handle your situation with the bed but we deal directly and immediately with any possession/aggression behavior with our dogs--actually with one of our dogs--our youngest Bonnie.
We take the object, usually a toy, away from her with a firm "NO!", direct eye contact and a determined stare.  We have found that our dogs are very good at reading our posturing--particularly our eyes and a lot can be learned and controlled with just eye contact and voice commands.
I think I might, in your situation, be curious to see if I could "take control" of that bed from the dog.  Let her use it conditionally with your verbal permission--sort of practice getting her to get up and move on your command--if having her on the bed is important to you.  The bed might be a vehicle to a valuable training routine--getting her to respond to your commands.  No rough stuff--with Cairns that simply isn't necessary--just making the human authority dominant and squelching that challenging behavior with ears, the growls, and the eyes is what is important.
Don't worry about breaking the spirit--really hard to do with Cairns, just re-channel that stubborn quality into obedience.  Make her stubborn to please you and your family members.

[Songbird857]

Thank you all for such great responses - I love having a place to ask about Ella - they sure are wonderful dogs! We did, in fact, go to the dog park last night.  Ella was a bit reserved, as she has never been to a dog park. She did fine though, and we will definitely go back. There was even another Cairn there

 

Edited June 1, 2016 by Songbird857