"Tara O." wrote in message ...
Its called possession-aggression. Do *not* use force with the dog unless
you want to provoke the dog into biting you and then having it put to sleep
for doing so.

It's usually called resource guarding in the literature. There's a
lot of research on the hierarchy dogs use on who they can guard
resources from, the level of guarding behavior used, the distances and
actions that trigger guarding behavior, etc. It can really get fairly
complex when you look at all the variables. All of which means that
the OP should probably not take advice from his friend who suggested
he slap the dog :-) As well as that anyone competent would not
suggest that he can solve the problem by just taking advice given
online by people who haven't seen the dog in action :-) :-)

Lynn K.