I have two male dogs. One is a large, long-haired German Shephard and is 7 years old. The second is a Boxer and is now 2 years old but was introduced to the older dog as a young puppy. The two have lived together happily over the last 2 years. I am starting to have problems with the occasional fight breaking out. It is quite disturbing when it happens. These are two, large, powerful dogs and are capable of damaging both themselves and me when I have to separate them. Now, the fights usually occur either at feed time (the two eat together), and the Shephard will occasionally try and steal the Boxer's food. Secondly, fights have occurred when we are playing together (with a toy of some kind) and one of the dogs appears to get jealous of the other. A fight is usually preceeded by growling and I can tell them off and stop it escalating. Sometimes the fight starts so fast all I can do is wade in and pull them apart.
It has been suggested that the younger dog is starting to test the dominance of the older (and much larger) Shephard, and that castrating the younger dog may solve the problem. Although I am relunctant to follow this route if at all possible. I would like to know what other people's opionions or ideas may be on this situation. It should be noted that once the puppy was old enough the two have always been left together when I am out of the house. I am starting to question whether I should separate them when I am not in residence. Although it appears that the aggression towards each other is only manifest when I am in the house.

Sorry but if you need to castrate one then it should be the older dog. Because he will have less time to live with about a thired of his hormonal system missing. The behaviour is normal but if you can't cope, try giving the older dog tardac for about 3 months and see if that helps, if it does them castrate the elder not the young dog.

Sorry Jacky but I don't necessarily agree. The dog that needs to be castrated is the lower ranking dog whichever that might be. If you castrate the higher ranking dog then you run the serious risk of bringing them both down to the same level and may never get rid of the trouble between them. You need to be absolutely certain which of the two is the lower ranking before making any decisions.

I understand what you are saying in terms of castration in general, but in behavioural terms it might not be the right answer.

Joan
Take the rough with the smooth

Yes I agree, if you know which is the lowest ranking dog. That is why I suggested tardac. Opppps I did not suggest tardec, well I do now, just looked and I did, whew thought the red mist had moved in.

Castration may help, but ONLY if the subordinate member is done, and it wont help alone, the dogs will need help to avoid further fights, eg feeding sepratley, or the entire male first, letting the alpha walk through doors first etc, castration alone will not help
Vikki

Actually I read an article from Peter Neville regarding a similar situation between two male staffy's. He recommended castrating them both and they stopped fighting almost immediately the operations were done.

Jesse

hi,
i dont agree with getting both dogs castrated, i had the same problem years ago when i kept 2 male dogs, i had them both castrated at the same time and the fighting continued and it was a lot worse than it ever was before they were castrated.
in the end they had to be separated, one stayed with me until he died of old age, and the other my grandfather and grandmother took in.
sometimes keeping them separate is the only answer, i nearly came home to a dead dog! one of the dogs had a pierced jugular (sp) and was hospitalized at the vets for over a week.
separating them was my only answer to solve the problem of them fighting, before one of them ended up dead!.
JMHO.
Jane.

Hi

I had a similar problem with my two Cocker Spaniels. I thought that the younger dog was the dominant one as he had been used at Stud. They would always fight over me, if I was fussing one the other would get grumpy and then a fight would start. I have now sussed out that the older dog is the dominant one and he is the one that sits by me on the sofa, and if he lets the other one come up then that is fine. He is always first to be fed, let off the lead etc. I have also found that by giving Skullcap & Valerian tables to the younger one it seems to take the edge off. But I’m happy to say that they are both fine 99.9% of the time now !!!

You need to suss out who is the dominant dog in your pack and praise him up and push the other one down in rank.

I’m no expert just going by my own personal situation and experience.

HTH

Dessie :D :D

To be honest, if you are dominant then you should not get too much trouble, although I have had a pair of bitches who did not get on and had to be seperated. Castration can make matters worse, if you try tardac first on one of the dogs and them on the other you may find that castrating one of them may help. Leave a good long gap between. It may be the most dominant or it may not. The top dog is usualy the quite one, but not always. Have only ever castrated one dog and after a couple of years I found that all my other dogs picked on him, mostly mounting, even the bitches, so in his case it seemed that it had pushed him to the bottom of the pack but he was not in the least dominant in the first place.

So by castrating the under dog you could well make matters worse, but castrating a naturaly agressive dog may make that worse too. So tread with care and use chemical castration first and make sure that a bit of firmer treatment by you would not work and save you having to risk castration.

Castration is always such a difficult issue. I have two male rescue dogs and also foster. One of my rescues is entire, the other is neutered. I recently fostered an uncastrated male (nearly 6) who had not been properly socialised with other dogs - he showed dominance behaviour (head on the back, trying to mount, actually mounting, etc.) but didn't really mean it - he just hadn't been told not to do it before. My entire dog took this in his stride and over a couple of days, without fighting or any real noise, taught the foster that this behaviour was not on and they got on very well. My neutered dog, who up to that point had been fine with all other dogs, took real offence to this behaviour and I had to seperate them. The foster was castrated and is now happily living with two other male neutered dogs.

The point of this story is that there is no 'one' answer - it depends on the personality and behaviour of the individual dogs. My entire dog is top in some things but generally couldn't care less, the neutered dog in others. My old neutered dog used start fights with my parent's entire dogs. Neutering is not an answer to behaviour problems, unless, as in the case of the foster, the behaviour is mounting males and is likely to get them in to trouble with other dogs. Neutering does usually stop mounting in the case of males on males.

However, if there is any chance that your dog can get out and find bitches in season, then neuter. Rescues are full of dogs born because of 'accidental' breeding.

It depends on what people see as dominence, most make the mistake oif seeing the most aggressive in a pack as the dominant dog.

Ingrid

I remember the Peter Neville article and his approach did stop the Staffies brothers fighting, but he had very specific reasons for his suggestion in that particular situation :). He wouldn't for example suggest this necessarily for this situation :)

From a purely behavioural viewpoint, as already suggested, the lower ranking dog would always be done, because it does widen the gap between them. I am not sure if this would help (although of course it might) because from the original post, it seems as if the dogs are resource guarding and if it is only when the owner is present then it may even be something the owner is inadvertently doing. The owner is probably being seen as one of the resources . I think my suggestion in this case would be to get in touch with a behaviourist or a trainer who can assess what is happening and will give out a programme to help.

I would certainly start by feeding the dogs separately to reduce tension - the more the situation is inflamed, the higher the likelihood of fighting between the 2 dogs.

I do wish the owner luck

Lindsay

Hi Andy

I have to agree with castrating the more submissive of the two males. The fighting has co-incided with the younger one reaching maturity and it is probably a case of either the older one now realising he has a mature, rather than immature packmate, to challenge his top dog position OR the younger one deciding that, as he's now mature, he wants the top dog slot.

The older dog, by virtue of being the only male dog in your pack prior to the arrival of the Boxer pup, would automatically have had the top dog slot. Now his position is unsure. You really need to know which is more dominant by nature (temperament) not on the basis of first in is top (dominant), last in is omega (submissive). Then castrate the more submissive of the two. If you castrate the more dominant one you immediately put the status of both dogs back to the same level which again results in fighting for top dog position. What you need is for one to be dominant, one to be submissive. The dogs won't care which is which once the ranks have been established. All they care about is having a pack hierarchy which they understand and live by.

If you don't want to castrate, then you need to reinforce the status of the dog which seems to be naturally more dominant. I think it is achieved by feeding, grooming, walking, training, playing with the top dog first, giving it more privileges than the underdog etc etc.

I've yet to face this myself. I have two rescued males. One I have had for 8 years - he is now 8.5 yrs, the other one I've had for 7 months, he is now 18 months old. The older dog most definitely is the more dominant but the younger has yet to reach maturity. My big problem will be that as both are castrated I've nowhere to go but down the line of reinforcing the position of the more dominant dog!

Good Luck!!

Elaine

Would be interested to know how, without seeing the situation, you can tell the dominant dog, having owned dogs for a long while, I still find it difficult to sort the pecking order and have decided that, if I make sure I am at the top the rest can sort themselves out and for me it has worked. If I have trouble, saying enough once seems to work, perhaps I have been lucky but one can only tell of ones own experiance.

Being involved in a very pack orientated breed ;-) probably 9 times out of 10, when you ask people to relate the behaviour of their 'top dog' it turns out it is more likely a middle ranker they describe :-)

I totally agree with Dessie. Fuss more over the dominant dog, feed, pet, treat, walk first, ect. I have 3 males in my house only one intact (boston terrier). My big dog and him would always get into scraps but I made my boston the dominant one because he was always on top (alpha). One day the boston attacked my big dog over a bone for no reason which resulted in him losing an eye :(, now all toys are picked up and only given when they are safely kenneled. Fights can still happen I think if they are fixed or not. I even had my younger male boston who is fixed challange the intact one, I just sprayed them with water everytime they even thought about starting up, and any rough play. Seems to have worked because now he is at the bottom of the pack. I also have 2 female boston's and all 5 now get along great.

Me personally I would just make the less dominant one realize he is under the other one. In my case Taz (the big dog) will be 10 years in October but my boston who is 3 years always challenged and to stop them challenging eachother I made my boston the alpha and it has worked. Taz is pretty happy where he is. The younger one will challange the older one is normal pecking order. Younger ones always challenge because they see the older one is getting old and week and time for them to see if they can be alpha and hormones do kick in ...lol :D

Just my own opinion and from my own experience.......Good luck :)

ttfn :)

I do agree it can be difficult to establish which dog is "dominant", esp. as in many cases the so -called dominance is fluid anyway. We've all seen the dog who is boss at home, who can be manipulated out on walks by the other dogs, and so on.

When there is a largeish group/pack, the "fighters" do, i agree, tend to be the middle ranking dogs fighting for position and it can get bad. My breeder friend who has 13 dogs, most of whom are large, had to re home one of her middle dogs as he just couldnt' establish his place and kept havingfights with the other dogs at his level. I think however with just 2 dogs it may be easier :)

Lindsay

Whats tardac?

a drug which mimics castration by stopping the manufacture of testosterone [i.e. chemical castration]. You can search Tardak here and look at my posts on this if you like - I decided to try it on my dog a few months ago. :)