Thank you so much for all your advice! I had success this morning with the "trade up" for a treat method. Boomer willingly gave me the piece of paper he had in his mouth for a favorite treat. I am working with him daily on trading up. This will be great when we are on our walks and he finds a left over firecracker that I don't want him to swallow. I am also practicing the "nothing is for free" sit routine with him. I have to applaud my husband for doing this since we brought him home. Making him sit before any activity is making him concentrate better on the task at hand. Thanks again!!

Thank you very much for replying to my inquiry. I will look at these websites tonight.

I have been reading this forum for 4 months now and it has helped me tremendously in dealing with my boy, "Boomer" (we are from Oklahoma, home of the Boomer Sooners). I have finally decided to post a concern of mine and am hoping some of you can offer a little advice. I think that Boomer was "resource guarding" a water bottle cap that he had found today. When I took it away from him, he growled and tried to bite me and really got quite aggressive. It took me completely by surprise and my first instinct was to put him on his back and growl back at him louder. I tried to ignore him for a little while afterwards but he kept trying to sit or lay by me and make nice again. There are so many different ideas in this forum on how to address this issue, but I was hoping someone had dealt with this first hand and has found a training method that truly works. Boomer is otherwise a "typical" basenji. He is somewhat laid back as compared to others on this forum. He is crate trained during the day while we are at work and is walked every night. He is house trained and sleeps on the bed with us. From what I've read on this fourm, this behavior can be typical of "B's" but needs to be addressed. Your help would be greatly appreciated.