EventingMum
Well-Known Member
We have two terriers age 8 and 2 who get on well together. Son and DiL live beside us and have one who is 6. We have always had the dogs together, originally we had another older dog when son's dog was a puppy and all got on. The current three dogs were fine together until recently with son's dog spending much of the day with ours and when either of us went away the dogs would stay with however was home in either house. Last summer things started to go wrong and our older dog and son's started fighting - full-on, drawing blood and very hard to separate, both Mr EM and I sustained bites in the process of separating them and our dog had to have his ear operated on as a result.
This has probably happened three times in total, we've kept them separate after the first time but once we accidentally bumped into each other and once son's dog jumped into our garden and attacked our dog. Neither dog is aggressive with other dogs and our 2 year old dog gets on well with both individually. All three were neutered as puppies.
I understand that the son's dog probably wants to be top dog and our dog isn't happy with this and is trying to retain his position. My gut feeling and that of my vet is that they will never get along and we will have to permanently keep them separate however our son happened to be talking to a canine behaviorist in the course of his work and she reckoned something could be done. My question is how likely is this to be successful? I would never feel happy leaving them unsupervised again and don't want to spend a fortune if it's unlikely to work or risks either dog being injured or the young dog's relationship with both of the others. In a lifetime of having multiple dogs within my family this is my first experience of this sort of behavior.
This has probably happened three times in total, we've kept them separate after the first time but once we accidentally bumped into each other and once son's dog jumped into our garden and attacked our dog. Neither dog is aggressive with other dogs and our 2 year old dog gets on well with both individually. All three were neutered as puppies.
I understand that the son's dog probably wants to be top dog and our dog isn't happy with this and is trying to retain his position. My gut feeling and that of my vet is that they will never get along and we will have to permanently keep them separate however our son happened to be talking to a canine behaviorist in the course of his work and she reckoned something could be done. My question is how likely is this to be successful? I would never feel happy leaving them unsupervised again and don't want to spend a fortune if it's unlikely to work or risks either dog being injured or the young dog's relationship with both of the others. In a lifetime of having multiple dogs within my family this is my first experience of this sort of behavior.