Bree is an 11 1/2 year-old, 4.2-pound micro mutt who once lived on the streets of Long Beach. She eventually wound up at Long Beach Animal Care Services, where she sat in a crowded cold cement kennel with no bed, no blanket, no toys, and one very sick basset hound with parvovirus. Every dog in that kennel was scheduled to be euthanized on Christmas Eve 2014. If it weren’t for Treasured Tails Canine Rescue, we wouldn’t have her.
She is equal parts unicorn, gremlin, and statistical improbability. A chihuahua, Lhasa Apso, and, inexplicably, full greyhound. Not Italian greyhound. Full greyhound. We had to DNA test her because nothing about her made sense. She weighs two ounces more than a bag of sugar and runs our house like Norman Schwarzkopf.
At first, she played nicely with our elderly chihuahua, Bhakti, who had heart failure, and our middle-aged Yorkie, Bodhi. There was a rhythm to the house. A quiet hierarchy. No drama. Then Bhakti died. Bree decided she was then “Queen Bee.” And over time, we lost the others too. Sadie. Then Bodhi. Then Sara. The house got quieter. The hierarchy disappeared.
And then, like many households that don’t learn their lesson, we got kittens (foster fails). Three of them. Bree is now the only dog in a house of cats.
When the environment becomes uncertain, the nervous system does not relax. It organizes. Something shifted. She began to “check” anyone new who entered her space. She patrolled the house with her 4-pound frame and an iron paw, enforcing rules no one else understood. She resource guarded me. The bed. The air around the bed. Possibly the concept of the bed.
We tried everything. CBD. Adaptil. Prozac. I even curated a “Pet Relax Mix” on Spotify that supposedly contained calming frequencies and subliminal messaging designed specifically for dogs. Nothing worked. At least, not in the way I wanted.
And then it hit me. The problem wasn’t that Bree’s brain was malfunctioning. The problem was that it was working perfectly.
The brain is not wired for happiness. It is wired for survival. Every second, it is scanning the environment. Is this safe? Is this mine? Could I lose it? For a 4-pound dog with no teeth, a history we can only guess at, and a deep attachment to her person, the answer is often: maybe not. So she does what any efficient nervous system would do. She protects.
Resource guarding is often described as dominance, control, or behavioral failure. It isn’t. It is fear of loss. Take something small, aging, and dependent. Give it something it values. Add unpredictability. You don’t get generosity. You get vigilance. Bree is not trying to control the household. She is trying to make it predictable.
And then comes the uncomfortable part. We are not that different.
In clinic, I see patients who guard just as fiercely. Not beds or laps, but diagnoses. Identities. Relationships. Beliefs. A diagnosis can become a lifeline. A relationship can feel like oxygen. A belief can become a boundary between safety and chaos. And when something threatens that, questions it, challenges it, complicates it, the nervous system reacts. Not because the person is irrational, but because the brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The human brain does not distinguish well between physical threat and emotional threat. It runs the same algorithm. Is this safe? Could I lose something? Should I defend? We call it anxiety. We call it reactivity. We call it difficult. But often, it is simply protection.
Fight or flight is not always dramatic. It doesn’t always look like panic. Sometimes it looks like irritability. Withdrawal. Control. Defensiveness. Tightening your grip just a little more when something feels uncertain. Bree growls. We send the nasty email. We shut down. We argue. We hold on. Different behaviors. Same system.
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And this is where we often get it wrong. When a nervous system is on high alert, we try to reason with it. We explain. We reassure. We challenge the thought. But a brain that feels unsafe does not respond to logic. It responds to safety.
Which means the work is often not top-down. It is bottom-up. Before insight comes regulation. Before cognitive reframing comes physiology. For humans, that can look like something deceptively simple: slowing the breath, lengthening the exhale, activating the vagus nerve, grounding through the body, engaging in somatic practices that signal to the nervous system that the threat has passed. Not because breathing exercises are a cure, but because they change the state the brain is operating from.
You cannot reason with a nervous system that is bracing for impact. You have to help it stand down first. For Bree, that means predictability. Structure. Not reinforcing the very behavior we are trying to change. For humans, it means learning how to create moments of internal safety in a world that often feels anything but.
Bree still believes she is in charge. She still growls when the kittens get too close to “her” bed. But I don’t see defiance anymore. I see a nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do, protect what matters. Underneath the growl is not control. It is a brain trying, in the only way it knows how, to feel safe.
Carrie Friedman is a dual board-certified psychiatric and family nurse practitioner and the founder of Brain Garden Psychiatry in California. She integrates evidence-based psychopharmacology with functional and integrative psychiatry, emphasizing root-cause approaches that connect neuro-nutrition and gut–brain science, metabolic psychiatry, immunology, endocrinology, and mind–body lifestyle medicine. Carrie’s clinical focus bridges conventional psychiatry with holistic strategies to support mental health through nutrition, physiology, and sustainable lifestyle interventions. Her professional writing explores topics such as functional medicine, autism, provider well-being, and medical ethics.
