Hi,

I have a 9 yr boxer and a 4 yr min shnauzer about five weeks ago i got a 6 month old tt and we've taken everything very slowely getting them all together.
the boxer loves all dogs so no problem but the shnauzer took a couple of weeks to get used to the new bitch but loves her now. i still sleep them apart and seperate them when i go out just to be safe. Apart from that they all spend the day happily together, well until the day before yesterday.
My schnauzer and tt were playing really well then the schnauzer decided she didn't want to play any more and had a go at the tt which ended in a small fight. i seperated them quickly then when they were calm i reintroduced them again and everything is brilliant again.
The only problem is how do i teach the tt not to jump all over the shnauzer when she's had enough apart from putting them in different rooms.
I was really suprised with this problem as they play fight all the time chasing each other around the house and the schauzer loves all the play time as the boxer prefers to sleep most the time.
Due thinkit's just a case of take things really slow for now?   

Hi bear

with your TT girl still being so young she doesn't have acceptable dog to dog discipline yet.  It's a learning curve through the puppy stages as to how much they can get away with.  Your Schnauzer bitch sounds to me as though she now quite enjoys the pups company but only in small (ever changing!) doses :)  The pup will learn that it's on a licence which is starting to near the end of it's term and over the next few months she should pick up on what amount of roughness finally pushes her older playmate to tell her off and so learn when and how to calm down her behaviour.

I'd not be overly concerned as this IME is normal behaviour with any puppy in a household with established adults - even if the pup arrived at 8 weeks :)  My pup (now almost 14 months) has somehow managed to eke out his licence for a bit longer than most but occasionally when told off for being too boisterous the telling off now 'sounds' more serious and is often coupled with his mum holding his head (or at leat part of it LOL) in her mouth for a few seconds until he relaxes.  Slowly (very slowly) he's getting the message and I'm sure your youngster will too

HTH, Teri :)

Hi,
The only thing i was worried about is that the TT didn't back down and i had to seperate them although they were fine again a couple of minutes later.
I think the TT is trying to be top dog between these two, where as the TT knows not to push it with the boxer and he just has to look at her and she walks away.

Hi bear

I shouldn't think that your TT at a mere 7 months or so has any illusions of grandeur on capturing control on the doggy home front :)  She just hasn't been severely  (enough) as yet told off  by one of the adults to realise that she's over stepped the mark.  (That's not to say that at some point in the future she will not manage to secure the higher rank between herself and the Schnauzer but we're talking a couple of years or so or more and TBH I'd expect that since your other dogs are considerably older and fully mature that even then it's unlikely :) )

Perhaps your Boxer has already told off the young pretender in a manner which left her in no doubt that she couldn't afford to push too many buttons - sooner or later your Schnauzer girl will too and this all helps towards getting youngsters to become more manners savvy when meeting with strange dogs outdoors hence preventing boisterous approaches resulting in a fight.

Just observe them and if you're concerned things may escalate to your adult bitch coming down too hard on the pup then separate them and give the adults some time-out from the little hooligan.

As an aside, it's important that your puppy learns to play WITH YOU rather than just with your other dogs otherwise she will become too dog focused and it will be more difficult to train recall etc outside.  If she's full of herself take her into the garden or out to the park alone with a toy and let her enjoy interacting with you and playing games etc of hide and seek.

regards, Teri

hi,

you have put my mind at rest but when the dogs had a fight it was the shnauzer that came of worst as neither would back down. The TT is also bigger than her.
At the moment i take the TT out for two walks a day with toy play as well. hoping to burn off excess energy but i can't let her off the lead yet as she was from a kennel and gets spooked too easily. I am going to training classes though and she is learning pretty quickly. 

> you have put my mind at rest but when the dogs had a fight it was the shnauzer that came of worst as neither would back down.

What did the fight look like & how did the Shnauzer come of worse? Was there lots of noise, lots of teeth, face-to-face with maybe cheek-biting/neck-biting, but no blood shed? Did the Snauzer walk away or did you 'break it up' ?
When I still had my other dog, pup was a night-mare for stopping play when the oldie told him too, often the oldie would end up sounding like he was going to kill pup (pup thought it was a very good game, playing all rough like that), it would look & sound awful but htere was never any blood-shed, generally oldie would walk off, ignoring pup & if pup was stupid enough to go back for more (which he usualy was) oldie wouldn't bother with all the 'fight' display, he would give a bark, the bark always seemed to let pup know that the game was over. But it wasn't until I left them to it (I would break up the heavy play & step in when pup was OTT) that the oldie learned he could use his bark to make pup behave.

ETA, pup was MUCH bigger than 'oldie', I think this is part of the reason pup didn't bother when oldie physically told him off - it just seemed like a game to him, but if the adult dog was the same breed as the pup, the size difference may have given more impact to the physical warning that play was over.

The fight looked worst than it was but the shnauzer had a very small nick on the end of her ear which although was really nothing when i looked at it, there was alot of blood. As we know heads and ears always bleed alot if scratched.
The schnauzer started it but i think she wished she hadn't as the tt did a good job at defending herself.
The TT has been really patient with the shnauzer from the start and new that shnauzer wanted to play but was abit frightened of her. she would just lie down infront of her and make little noises trying to encourage the shnauzer to play. After a couple of weeks of slow introduction the shnauzer became more confident and she was the one wanting to play.  Just happened that on this occasion the shnauzer wasn't in the mood and rather than get a telling off the TT retaliated.
Since then i've been very careful and not let the TT jump on her but now the schnauzer wants to play all the time so it's knowing when to jump in before or if anything like this happens again. I feel abit stressed about it and i don't want to pass that on to the dogs incase it makes things worst. silly really as they are back to normal now but i'm almost waiting for something to happen.

> The TT has been really patient with the shnauzer from the start and new that shnauzer wanted to play but was abit frightened of her. she would just lie down infront of her and make little noises trying to encourage the shnauzer to play. After a couple of weeks of slow introduction the shnauzer became more confident and she was the one wanting to play.

Sounds very similar to my 2. The oldie didn't want much to do with pup at first, pup seemed to show a bit of respect in the begining and tried to get oldie to play by doing play-bows. I don't think oldie was frightened of pup, I think he just wasn't ready to interact with this new little hooligan and was quite disgusted by him! Oldie came round to the idea though and would start the play, but pup just wouldn't stop. It had me very worried, I was convinced one of them would get hurt and I ignored all the advice to leave them too it. a behaviourist I spoke to also told me to leave them alone and the fact that I kept breaking them up meant I was making things worse as pup wouldn't learn proper doggy manners.
It was so hard, but I forced myself to leave them alone, I still supervised them in play 'just in case'. It was only then that the adult had chance to teach pup how dogs do it, LOL, and once the adult had a chance to do that pup learnt waht was & wasn't acceptable - the adult dog taught pup doggy manners much quicker & better than I could have.

I know someone with same breeds and are now having problems with the bitches  ages range from 8 months to 5 years  now has to keep the different breeds seperate , they are hoping to re-intergrate everybody but as has been said before on this forum bitches fighting can be a problem (although not always)  hope its different for you

i have been very lucky i have bought in 2 bitches and a dog after my original bitch and between the bitches there is never and has never been as much as a cross word, the boy however?
well they all have a very low tolerance of him, feel sorry for him really

I don't think i will have long term problems with these two as the min shnauzer likes nothing more than to clean the TT's face for her and play with her most the time but i suppose i'm just worried that because the TT is bigger than the shnauzer she wants to be top dog over her. she knows her place with the boxer but i think she wants to be next in line putting the shnauzer at the bottom of the pack . That in it's self is ok as long as the shnauzer accepts that.

I have three tt's. Puppy is now 12 months old, mum 4 and my other girl is five. Have asked advice on here several times about "bolshy pup". She is still as bolshy although, as Teri said in her post, the older girls have definitely revved up their reactions to pup as she is getting older. The oldest girl is the quietest and less dominant but the last few weeks, when pup starts pushing her too far, she really shouts at her and bolshy pup flattens to the floor and starts the mouth licking. Her mum hasnt managed to flatten her yet and sometimes jumps up on my knee to escape the little thug but even she has started to take less from her. Mum and pup sometimes appear to be in the full throes of a really nasty fight with lots of snarling and threshing about but five minutes later they are lying cuddled up together. These "fights" can appear to be much worse than they really are, but of course you have to use your own judgement at the time. If  I find things are getting a bit ott, I give mum a break by putting pup in another room for a few minutes.