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Hi Riv,
I've had similar problems with two young long-term male foster dogs and my 9 year old male standard poodle. My standard and the two fosters are all high-drive dogs, which is hard enough to deal with. In the first situation, after living peacefully in my home for 9 months, a fight broke out between my standard and the foster dog over a toy. They each got in a couple of bites before I dumped a bowl of water on them to shock them out of their tizzy, but no blood was drawn. Nevertheless, after that there was growling, nose-poking and assertive behavior from both dogs that didn't go away. It seemed as if every day I had to avert a fight. I was forced to keep them apart unless supervised. I finally got them to tolerate each other again by going back to basic training. I started with "sit" and "leave it" so I could reliably distract them when there was tension between them. I worked with them separately to teach them not to leap at a piece of food dropped on the floor, but to sit quietly until I gave them the cue to move. And finally, I tried to reward them when they were doing ANYTHING together. It took a few weeks to restore peace but it did work.
That dog moved on after almost two years with me. Then I got a two year old, untrained and unsocialized male standard foster dog that is very "in your face" with my other dogs. It was difficult from the beginning with him. We had one minor skirmish because the youngster doesn't understand the "enough is enough" signals the older dogs give him. There was constant growling, staring and tension when the new foster was around. So, I started the basic training thing again, this time with a clicker. It's been three weeks and I'm seeing a big change. My poor dogs are probably wondering why they have to keep reviewing their "sit" and "leave it" skills, but the foster dog is benefiting by seeing the other dogs participate in the training too. It's very much like NILIF inasmuch as the dogs need to get along with each other and obey me in order to gain what they want, which is attention and rewards. It seems as if making them focus on me helps them forget their own rivalry. I was concerned that they would be so focused on the reward that they would be distracted and forget the training, but so far that hasn't happened.
I'm wondering if similar tactics might work for you.
It's a scary problem to have, particularly with large, strong dogs. Best of luck.
Since my last post, the dogs had a bad fight. The younger ended up with the older ones's muzzle completely in her mouth. It was very scary. We were already right next to them when the fight broke out, so we were right on top of it, but it was very hard to break up. My older dog ended up with a large gash under her eye, holes in her upper lip and a hole on her cheek. The younger one didn't have a scratch .
The worst part was that my husband's hands ended up in the middle of it and he got badly hurt. We spend yesterday in the ER with him on an antibiotic IV. Tomorrow we go back and see the progress. Hopefully he's out of the woods and he'll be okay. We feel like idiots for this happening.
The dogs have not been in contact since the fight. I'm crating-and-rotating. The younger one desperately wants to make up, but the older one is having no part of it. In fact, I can see clearly now that the older one is the one provoking the fights. The younger is simply responding to the dare.
I still don't know what it's all about, although it's obviously about hierarchy in some way. Why now though? Why in the world is my 9 year old starting fights at her age? is it her last Hurrah? Does she want to give it one last good try before giving up her crown?
As I read all your posts, they all ring true. These are just dogs being dogs and sometimes they just decide not to like each other anymore .
My husband and I are talking about some major changes to the way we've been doing things. We're going to work with the dogs and see if we can gain better control so this doesn't happen again. Either that or I'm sending them to live with Leorah .
YIKES Riveree - I am SO sorry to hear your girls had another fight - and even sorrier that your husband was injured in the process. Have him take good care of those bites - they can go nasty in a hurry.....but you don't need me to tell you that I'm sure.
Good luck going forward - and as the days pass, you should find that rotating the girls gets easier and more normal. There may even be times that you can walk them on lead together around your neighborhood without any issues - but this may be your 'new approach' with the separation, if you are going to keep both dogs.
Knowing what triggered this is almost impossible for us humans to understand....if we did - we could make a HUGE difference for so many dog aggressive dogs.....
Love your girls as you always have - continue YOUR relationship with them individually, as you always have.....it's THEIR relationship that has changed.....and so now - you are a TWO dog, single dog home
From what I have witnessed, pits "do not" forget and once they have fought the other dog they are living with there is always the danger of this happening again. It seems you may just have to keep them totally seperated from each other at all times. I agree with Rottnboys post. Good luck and keep us posted.
One other thing to consider: My oldest dog (going on 18!!) has always had the sweetest disposition, but suddenly he became short-tempered and snappish. He had a vet check up and the vet thought that he might be uncomfortable with the cold weather and old bones. A low dose of Metacam worked wonders in bringing him back to the tolerant and loving dog he's always been.
Is it possible that your older dog has something medical going on that may have contributed to her uncharacteristic behavior? Might be worth checking out if you haven't already done so.
I'm now out completely out of ideas.
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Either that or I'm sending them to live with Leorah .
Oh, and while I'd love to have more dogs, I think I'm at my statutory limit!!
Thanks to everyone who posted on this thread...much appreciated!
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Originally Posted by dogpaw
Check out the boook The Dog Listener by Jan Fennell.
Will check it out, thanks for the suggestion Dogpaw !
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Originally Posted by Rottnboys
YIKES Riveree - I am SO sorry to hear your girls had another fight - and even sorrier that your husband was injured in the process. Have him take good care of those bites - they can go nasty in a hurry.....but you don't need me to tell you that I'm sure.
Good luck going forward - and as the days pass, you should find that rotating the girls gets easier and more normal. There may even be times that you can walk them on lead together around your neighborhood without any issues - but this may be your 'new approach' with the separation, if you are going to keep both dogs.
Knowing what triggered this is almost impossible for us humans to understand....if we did - we could make a HUGE difference for so many dog aggressive dogs.....
Love your girls as you always have - continue YOUR relationship with them individually, as you always have.....it's THEIR relationship that has changed.....and so now - you are a TWO dog, single dog home
Thanks Rottn . Yes, the bites got bad . After the ER, things got better for about 1/2 a day and then declined again. By the time we saw our own GP, the infection was back up. We knocked it back though and it's under control now...took 6 days before we were out of the woods with it .
The dogs are ready to kill each other. We are keeping them completely separate right now - I even laid a blanket over one gate so they can't catch a glimpse of each other . They are sight aggressive, as I'm sure you are well aware.
Sigh...ah well...we had 2 good years. Now I join you in the world of "crate-and-rotate" .
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Originally Posted by Alaskapat528
From what I have witnessed, pits "do not" forget and once they have fought the other dog they are living with there is always the danger of this happening again. It seems you may just have to keep them totally seperated from each other at all times. I agree with Rottnboys post. Good luck and keep us posted.
Yeah, seems like at least one of them is holding a grudge. I'm sort of past the point of being heartbroken about it and accepting that they just may not want to be together anymore. We're working out the logistics of how to rearrange our house to accommodate them both...ugh!
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Originally Posted by leorah
One other thing to consider: My oldest dog (going on 18!!) has always had the sweetest disposition, but suddenly he became short-tempered and snappish. He had a vet check up and the vet thought that he might be uncomfortable with the cold weather and old bones. A low dose of Metacam worked wonders in bringing him back to the tolerant and loving dog he's always been.
Is it possible that your older dog has something medical going on that may have contributed to her uncharacteristic behavior? Might be worth checking out if you haven't already done so.
I'm now out completely out of ideas.
Oh, and while I'd love to have more dogs, I think I'm at my statutory limit!!
Absolutely a possibility. They get regular check-ups, but we're going to bring my older dog in soon for another check as soon as I have a day off (husband would bring her in, but alas, he can't drive since his hands are messed up! ). Something does seem different about her and we've noticed she's drinking more water than usual. My vet always remarks about her high pain threshold - she truly seems to feel nothing - so she's a tough one to figure out. Metacam is awesome stuff. When my male dog had cancer, it was the only thing that relaxed him in those final weeks.
So what color fur suits your furniture better? Brown or black? It's your choice. I can box up one of these dogs and overnight her to you...really, it's no problem .
Oh, in case I didn't mention it earlier, we did take the injured dog to the vet first thing the following morning and she's been on antibiotics and she's healing well.
It was my husband whose treatment we delayed...oops!
Yeah, the vet kind of reprimanded us for bringing the dog in for treatment before my husband so we sought treatment for him later that day .
Last edited by riveree; 02-04-2010 at 09:51 PM..
Reason: sp
Robhu's story was interesting, and I do wonder about that. (And I do believe in that full moon stuff, too!)
Sometimes it is hard to account for such certain behaviors. Even as a youngster, our (now passed away) Elwood would take an unfathomable dislike to some dogs, but ingratiate himself with dogs I was sure he'd detest.
Health can definitely change personality. I've seen that several times.
Sometimes it seems like this sort of same-sex thing happens more with females, but I remember a horror story that an Akita owner told me about a father and son pair he had; they were fine for the longest time, but then suddenly began clashing.
The dogs are ready to kill each other. We are keeping them completely separate right now - I even laid a blanket over one gate so they can't catch a glimpse of each other . They are sight aggressive, as I'm sure you are well aware.
Yep - same at our house - I will say that in time, that 'sight' reaction seems to get a bit better - or it has at our house. We actually 'double' gate the areas where we have ours separated - so the two gates are about 2' apart - where that they can't even get close enough to nose through the gate at one another - because initially, that desire to get to one another would not have been held back by a flimsy baby gate
We had to cover the gates initially too.....
Glad to hear your husband is on the road to wellness - dog bites to humans are just nasty boogers......I got nailed in my forearm years ago - and that bite swelled up my arm so badly it looked like I was wagging a football inside my forearm.....and we'd have done the vet first too at our house
Settle in....and I'm glad you've gotten past being heartbroken....the best to you and your girls going forward. We're a couple of years or more into our current set-up....and I ask them all the time if they are going to be energizer bunnies on me, just to see if I can keep this up for lots more years to come!
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Thanks to everyone who posted on this thread...much appreciated!
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