My dog growls at new dog over food. How can I feed them together?

Question

I have a male dog who is not food aggressive when he is with my husband and me. We can take things out of his bowl or grab things out of his mouth, no problem. We recently introduced a new dog into the household and while prepping their food in an attempt to feed them together (after feeding them separately for 10 days), my male dog growled at the new dog. I figured that was a bad sign and decided to feed them separately. I would like to eventually feed them together. How can this be achieved? Pet's info: Dog | German Shepherd | Male | neutered | 70 lbs

Jennifer Summerfield, DVM CPDT-KA · Accepted Answer

Hi there. It's actually quite normal for dogs to want to protect their food from other dogs - as you've observed, this is not correlated with an increased risk of resource guarding towards humans. Having dogs eat side by side is somewhat unnatural, and many dogs aren't comfortable with this. If either dog shows any signs of guarding, I would recommend simply feeding them separately long-term. There is no benefit to going through a long training process to try and make them eat together, and this will likely be stressful for both dogs. Just feed them in separate rooms or crates, and let them back together when they're both finished eating.

My dog growls at new dog over food. How can I feed them together?

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