Trying to stop two dogs from war lacking using a behaviorist?
These two dogs are roughly 10 years old and female, both have be spayed. They are also my mother's dogs.
For the last 5 years or so since they moved to Florida they have had issues beside these two dogs fighting. It has escalated the last couple months near the deaths of two of their other dogs. One was near 17 years antiquated and was put down because of old age and declining aspect of life, the other was just concluding week at 10 years old. He crashed in the morning and the vet worked on him for over an hour and my parents decided that adequate was enough and told them to just tolerate him pass since he kept crashing after they would revive him.
After tonights latest excursion, one had to be rushed to the vet to carry her ear checked since there was a lac inside of her ear that kept bleeding. This would the the 4th or 5th time they have have to rush one of them to the vet.
Their vet isn't really believing in the medication route and just suggested keeping them separated, but that isn't possible. Both dogs will tear through doors to find out and with the family.
Other than a behaviorist what else can be done?
My mom and step-dad also do not believe in crating and to be honest these dogs will never help yourself to to a crate.
Well I regard as you should get one, but if not you should get ceaser milan DVDs, or books, or even keep under surveillance his shows. He deals with stuff like that adjectives the time. I have learned alot watching hes shows.
Hes show are on national geographical channel on cable.Really smart guy.
This is what I would do. Both dogs are kept on collars and short leashes at all time - prong collars if necessary. At the START of anything, they get hold of a correction - and a serious one, not a "nagging" one. Eventually, they realize that they are not in charge, and that they cannot fight without consequences.
Answers: First off, I'm guessing you know that the outlook isn't that great if you can't use management (keeping them separated) and the dogs enjoy a long history of fighting.
Since separating them is out, I might just try looking to find the times when they do get along and working to increase those times. Maybe one dog yawns sometimes to diffuse attention - reward her for it. Teach them both a "down" cue (if they don't already know that). If it looks similar to they might be getting tense, ask them to down and reward them for quitting any glaring, etc and laying down instead.
Also look around and see if there's anything one or the other might be getting from combat. Do they fight over toys? Getting pet by someone? Going outside? A favorite dog bed? If you can identify something - say a toy they both similar to - you could take it out of free access and only let them hold it if they're being good. As soon as one dog get a little growly, take the toy away: oops, too discouraging, it's gone now.
You could try some kind of punishment, but because the dogs can't be separated, it would be hard to craft sure that they don't practice fighting / pre-fighting when no one's around to correct them. There's also closely of issues with knowing how to use punishment correctly, and I'd personally never try fixing a long-standing problem like this beside punishment unless I had the help of an experienced professional. Any kind of collar, etc, could in recent times make it worse: dog A goes to bite dog B, dog A feels spasm, dog A blames it on dog B and tries harder.
Seriously whether they can not be kept seperated, either get rid of one OR keep them crated. What do you expect associates to say? Let them fight?? Its either that or grasp a professional involved.
