Treat aggresive towards cats?

[Skatiem]

Peanut is 4 months old now. It seems like she has just started this scary behavior towards our cats. Whenever she has a special treat (bone, kong, etc) she growls and snaps at the cats if they come near her. She doesn't do this with her normal food. We never let her eat alone, and we put our hands in her food bowl while she eats so she gets used to us being there. She's never been mean to us. We also let the cats sniff at her food when she gets it, and that doen't seem to be a problem. And she never snaps at us or other dogs with her treats, it's only the cats. She acts submissive to other dogs, and when she is playing with the cats (they usually get along really well, and they play all the time) she lays down like she's submissive to them, so I don't think she has the dominant alpha thing going on. I have no idea where this behavior came from, and I was looking for some advice on how to correct it. For the time being we've decided to not let her have any special treats, but we're afraid of what this behavior could lead to. Thanks a lot!

[gmacleod]

I think it is very wise to be cautious about that sort of behaviour. Rather than stopping to give any special treats though, you might want to think about giving them in her crate or somewhere like that.

However, what you have there is a guarding behaviour. It is a good thing that she is not guarding resources against you. But not so good that she is guarding like that against your cats. They are, after all, of a size that she could do them some serious damage were the behaviour to escalate. IMO that is something you need to address, and now is the best time to start.

An excellent resource for you would be Jean Donaldson's "Mine! A guide to resource guarding in dogs (http://www.dogwise.com/itemdetails.cfm?ID=DTB740)"

And here are a few links to online articles that may also help you out quite a lot:
Teaching Dogs It's Okay to Share (http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/2525/posses.htm)by Ian Dunbar, Ph.D., MRCVS
Help for object guarding (http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2002b/objectguarding.htm) by Therese McClain
Resource guarding (http://www.napoleon.org.uk/training/thingguard.htm)
Guarding and Showing Aggression Over Resources (http://www.paw-rescue.org/PAW/PETTIPS/DogTip_ResourceGuarding.html)