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Training - Possession with Toys
Although I am covering my possession with toys in this article, sometimes resolving toy possession can help with possession with other things..

What is toy possession? Toy possession is an extreme compulsion to grab and hold a toy or other object that can get that intense that you become aggressive due to your focus on the toy or object. 

Even to the point of growling or biting to get it.
It may not be restricted to a specific toy. It could be any toy or object.

This could stem from being poorly trained or socialised at an early age. Where you never actually learned how to share or about give and take.

Sometimes toy possession is so intense that professional behaviourists are needed to reduce the obsession and some extreme cases, reducing injury to other animals a or humans.
This is something that is important to get resolved as soon as possible there may be a time your human needs to get you drop something without question, regardless of what it is.

What can be done to reduce toy possession?
First of all, your human must feel they can try this technique without the fear of being nipped or harmed.
If they do not feel they can, they must seek professional behaviourist help.

Your human can start the process of reducing the obsession by ‘swapping’ the toy.
The first few times your human tries this, they should ensure your excitement level is kept as low as possible and as brief as possible.
Your human needs to get some toys and either stand, sit on a chair or sit on the floor (depending on how obsessed you are and what distance they need to work safely).

Note: If you immediately try to get all of the toys and show too much obsession, your human must stop the training session and either try again later or seek professional help.

They need to give or throw you a toy to start the training.

They then say ‘give’ or whatever training word they want to use. You of course will ignore them.
They then gently throw a second toy towards you a toy repeating ’give’ at the same time. You should hopefully drop the toy you were holding and now have the new toy.

It is very important that your human does not try to retrieve the first toy you were holding.
Your human then gets a third toy and gives the ’give’ command.
Eventually you will get to the stage of dropping the toy you are holding as soon as you see the new toy.

It is normal to be surrounded by toys in the early training sessions.
This can be played as a game to try and create a relaxed atmosphere, but your human needs to remember that this is an important negative behaviour and to avoid any risk of injury, they must remain vigilant until you no longer have a toy possession.

At the end of every training session you must be given a very tasty treat so that you associate the training as a good experience.

As the obsession gets reduced your human should try to get to the stage of touching the toy you are holding, and with the ‘give’ command, give you another toy to ’swap’.
The eventual goal is for your human to be able to ask you to drop something or be able to take something out of your mouth without any conflict or resistance.

Obsession with other animals around may take longer to train, so vigilance and further training sessions may be required.