Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

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isonychia
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Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by isonychia » Sun Jul 21, 2019 7:08 pm

Older brittany is 9 years

Younger Brittany is 1.5 years

The younger dog has started to segue from a submissive stance to the dominant dog and things are getting nasty. No blood as been drawn yet but I need to get this under control. In the field there is no issue, just in the home, camper, or when there are possession issues. I was desperate while camping and they got into it right over my lap and I gave them both long and high stimulation with ecollars. This seemed to work as they got in opposite sides of camper and would not look at each other. They have moments where they get along, sniff and lick each other. I think the younger dog is going through terrible twos. Now we have a zero growl policy. Originally I wanted them to work things out on their own, now I have taken on a new roll of not allowing anything to go on between them, it seems to be working but I don't want to mess this up and don't know if I may be creating more problems for myself down the road, like when I am not around and they are together. Any experienced help greatly appreciated.

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Re: Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by shags » Mon Jul 22, 2019 5:41 am

I feel for you, you have a tough situation there. It's very difficult to deal with.

I don't have a definitive answer to solve the problem once it has reached the point of fights, but...

I would never ever use an ecollar on a dog or dogs that are showing that kind of behavior. Because dogs don't think of the stim as a command from you, who should be the true leader, alpha, whatever you want to call it. Instead, they seem to think the stim is caused by the other dog and then it's a real fight. Even at a distance, say if they, or one of them, was growling or giving the side eye from across your camper, that stim can easily be redirected toward the target dog. I've seen this happen a couple of times over the years, once when used to try to break up a dog fight, the other time when used in field training when the trainer was trying to prevent one dog from bumping and playing with its bracemate. Both times bad went to worse in a hurry.

Instead, it's got to be your authority that rules. Learn to read your dogs and don't allow any of the behavior that leads to fights. IME that stuff is very subtle and starts before the growling, staring, side eyes, etc.

Long time ago I had a couple of males that were doing as yours are, and we wound up having to keep the dogs separated their whole lives. They just were never trustworthy out of our direct influence. Neutering didn't help. Letting them fight and sort it out only led to a bloodbath that would have ended with one or both of them dead. I did a lot of 'tough mama' stuff, it didn't affect them. Looking back I know that at that time I didn't handle things correctly; acting tough but lacking real confidence and authority was a joke.

More recently, when my young jagdterrier started in on our older setter, I got on her case with a sort of different mindset and things settled down right then. Scruffing and holding the aggressor down until she complied was what worked in this instance. Maybe it was just the individual dogs, i don't know. But I know I'm more savvy now than I was way back when, and am absolutely more in the Queen B mindset than I was with my long ago fighting males.

Best wishes for a good outcome. I hope someone responds with something that will work for you.

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roaniecowpony
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Re: Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by roaniecowpony » Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:31 am

My experience was similar to Shags. But in our case, one dog eventually showed a less dominant side and there was peace. I think there's trouble when the strength of the personalities are balanced. When one is "softer" than the other, things seem to be more peaceful.

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Re: Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by JONOV » Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:21 am

I don't have a great answer that works 100% of the time.

I will say that I don't expect neutering to do much. I've had a bunch of strange dogs in as fosters. I've had some dog fights. Most dogs have been somewhat "resource protective" of something, at least for a little while.

What's worked for me sounds really basic, but it has worked.

1) Make sure you're the only one that growls (metaphorically of course.) I've had to stand there at feeding time with meting out discipline with the empathy of a distaff captain bligh. But at the end I sent a dog on that could share a large community food bowl.

2) Deprive access to nonessentials that get guarded. If you growl while sitting on the couch, no more couch privleges. Growl to protect a bone? No more bone tonight. Growling while I scratch your ear? Go lay down on your bed.

3) enforce discipline if trained for it. I try and train a "lay down" and put them on separate beds and don't let the offender leave the bed for awhile.

Don't use an e-collar for fight-related discipline. I'm told it can be misconstrued.

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isonychia
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Re: Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by isonychia » Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:24 pm

OK Thanks for these thoughts, super helpful. I once had a trainer tell me you had to hit both dogs at the same time with the stim and at the right time in order to end fighting, but then I definitely have heard the echos of what has been said here so far a lot more often. Then again, my remote is a 2 dog remote so the same time means alternating a switch and, well, that isn't exactly the "same exact time." What I noticed when I did this in the camper was the first stim escalated things for that split second and by the end of switching back and forth both dogs seemed to feel pretty defeated and certainly associated it with my intervention.

Updates... So far, things are much better and the dogs are even playing some again (yes, this means "growling" but it is a completely different escalation, with completely different body language, etc). Now when I sense things are setup badly (one dog at the top of the stairs with body language that says "None shall pass") or I catch a whiff of testy attitude I bring their attention back to me and stop them quickly with a simple "No." This was not working before our collar experiment. Let's hope this is progress, it appears the younger male has gone back to being submissive. I could see if you had a bullet proof dog, or even just a different day with different weather, the high stem on the ecollar would make things much worse and very quickly, however these boys I have don't have that kind of pain tolerance and, at least in the moment I used the ecollars, they shut down for the rest of the evening.

Hopefully, like with avoidance training around cars or trash breaking, it was a one time lesson and as long as I play off of it correctly and re-assert order when needed, this thing will have been but a small phase.

One could be so lucky, so with that thought, I am sure more updates will be coming. Cross your fingers for me though! Funny thing is these two are great with other dogs, just sometimes the other dogs don't like them because they are unneutered.

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Re: Intact younger dog and older dog aggression

Post by Sharon » Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:53 pm

Sounds to me like you have a good handle on the problem. My JRT likes to bully the old setter. Hands on discipline and consistency works best. Never tolerated bullying when I was a teacher, and sure won't tolerate it between two dogs.
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