Generally my 2 lowchens (both males) get on really well together.  The younger one dotes on his older 'brother' and hardly ever leaves his side. The older one is very tolerant and long suffering.
However last night we were shocked when the younger one, Spuddy, almost flew across the room to have a go at Tidgy. The fact that it was entirely unprovoked worried us a bit. The circumstances were that Spuddy was sleeping on the settee next to me and Tidgy was lying quietly on the floor several feet away. All of a sudden Spud woke up, jumped off the settee making a fiercesome noise and grabbed Tidgy by the neck and pinned him to the floor.  Tidgy submitted immediately.

We told Spuddy off and, admittedly, he did seem very sheepish. Although there was no physical damage Tidgy was very shaken but after a few minutes everything was back to normal.

What makes a dog react like this do you think ?  Perhaps he was just having a bad dream....?

i think you have a dominanat order problem here see your older dog should be the alpha male in your house not your younger dog i think that spuddy has got it into his head that he is dominant and is showing tidgy that he is boss however this must be stoppped do not allow spuddy to sleep on the sofa if tidgy is on the floor it should be the other way around and if he snaps at tidgy you should punish him i think you have this problem because it sounds like the older dog doesnt act like alpha male so he feels he has to take on the role it shows this by tidgy submitting to spuddy when he shouldnt.
what you need to do is when you do things with your dog make sure tidgy is first and that spuddy knows he has to wait like when you feed them give tidgy his food first then spuddy also if spuddy is proving dominant sit on the floor with him and roll him on his back and put your hands on his chest and keep him there until he is still if he struggles then press down not hard on his chest and growl you are showing him you are the boss and not him

I don't know where you got all that from, Kerrie, but I'm afraid that without witnessing the situation it is wrong to give such detailed advice on the net. The 'dominance' theory has been widely discredited, and the forcible rolling-over that you suggest is potentially very dangerous indeed. There is no reason why an older dog should be 'top', and to favour the submissive dog can cause a bad situation to escalate.

Thanks Kerrie and JeanGenie for your replies.  As Tidgy was an only dog for 5 years we naturally thought he would assume the top dog position when Spuddy arrived. But, in dog terms, perhaps this was the wrong assumption. 
We've always put Tidgy first as regards eating, grooming, playing etc but perhaps he might prefer the more submissive role and we are making things worse by trying to re-inforce what doesn't come naturally to him.
It just seems to go against the (human) grain for the smaller, younger dog to be the boss !

Sorry - don't agree here Kerry. This situation could be made worse if you try and make Tidgy the dominant dog - dominance between members of a 'pack' is a subtle fluid thing and is largely shown by body posture and signals that we may not pick up on. Your youngest dog has reacted in this way I think , because his signals have been ignored or negated by your attempts to establish the older dog as dominant when this may not be how things would naturallly be. Hence the flying out for no apparant reason. Leave them to sort it out between themselves and watch closely at how they interact with each other as the saying goes " the clues are there !" :D

Hi Joyce

Can I suggest that you have Spuddy throughly checked out by a vet. 

Did he attack almost before he had woken up?  I had a bitch do this a few times over some months and I always ensured that none of the other dogs were anywhere near her when she was asleep.  She was pts due to a tumour.  The only other dogs I have heard of that also erupted (no other word for it) from a sleep into a snarling fighting mass also had head/brain tumours.

In my bitch x-rays showed nothing even though her eye had a tumour that travelled.

Hi Christine - heavens, I must admit I hadn't thought there might be a medical reason for the attack. 
It was certainly a fast reaction - from being in a deep sleep to him grabbing the neck was all in a split second, certainly far too quick for me to react. And immediately afterwards he did look very confused.

I'll certainly keep a careful watch and will get him checked over if it happens again.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was a one-off.

This is how my Megan reacted before discovering she had a brain tumour back in May. And although she was alpha female she never needed to dominate my dogs, she had great body language and a certain presence so this was totally out of character.  If anything like this happens my 1st instinct is medical.
Kay

>I don't know where you got all that from, Kerrie, but I'm afraid that without witnessing the situation it is wrong to give such detailed advice on the net. The 'dominance' theory has been widely discredited, and the forcible rolling-over that you suggest is potentially very dangerous indeed. There is no reason why an older dog should be 'top', and to favour the submissive dog can cause a bad situation to escalate. <

Absolutely,  I agree every bit with Jeangenie in the above post.  What is more not all multi household dogs have a pecking order and often it is fluid and situation specific depending on value assessment of a resource.

Wendy

Spuddy went for Tidgy again last night but this time he hadn't just woken up. 
I think it's all to do with me. He was sitting on my knee and watching Tidgy and it looked as if he thought Tidgy was about to muscle in (although there were no signs to me that he was).  So Spuddy jumped down to 'sort him out'.

If it is a jealousy/protective thing I'll have to watch how I am with them but, up to now, I've always been able to give them equal attention without any problems. 

I  agree that it is sensible to check out medical possibilities first, this should generally always be the first port of call if a dog does anything totally unexpected behaviour wise, just in case. Once medical problems can be ruled out, the problem can be looked at from a behavioural/training  point of view.

I was going to ask in fact, if Tidgy moved a muscle when he was attacked (as dogs can be so so quick to react, which could explain the speed if Spuddy was just dozing and sensed him moving).

It's possible that Spuddy is starting to see you as a resource he wants to guard but hard to tell without actally being there and seeing it.

If Spuddy has always, as you say, been fine with this, and been happy for Tidgy to approach then it could still be medical so the first thing you need to discuss with the vet is perhaps blood tests and also other tests to determine anything else.

Also relationships between dogs may change so it could be due to that...

Lindsay
X

Hi Joyce,

Jealousy was the first thing I thought of when I saw your post.   I sometimes have the problem between my two Cairns, but there is never any damage done.   It's not a dominance issue, it's pure jealousy and resource (human petting machine) protection. 

You need to teach Spuddy that Tidgy gets him more attention, not less.  Tidgy gets associated with good things for Spuddy, not withdrawal of your attention.  Equal attention does not work, dogs are no good at maths.  I would also take Spuddy outside the house for a walk or a play alone with you for some truly undivided attention with no rival in sight.

Stacey

Hi Stacey
I walk them together in the mornings but do separate walks in the afternoons. But Spuddy is a nightmare on the lead.  I have posted on here before and people have given me good sound advice.  Unfortunately nothing I've tried has cured him of his pulling and lunging.He's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde is Spuddy. Very obedient indoors but as soon as he's the other side of the front gate..........

To be perfectly honest, much as we love him, I think we'd have been better sticking to just the one dog, but too late now for regrets :)

I have a friend with a huge male 3 yr old GSD, and a 1 yr old male WSD, both castrated. She also assumed the bigger, older dog would be boss, and had countless fights between them, until I suggested that maybe the collie was more dominant and she should start treating him as top dog. Since then, fights have almost ceased completely, and the GSD seems to have sighed with relief. The thing is, dogs want to know where they stand in the pecking order. My grandmother once told me one of my dogs would 'die of a broken heart' because I had a favourite. What she couldn't see or understand was that all I was doing was encouraging the top dog, and as alpha leader, it was my job to show them who it was.

I have two bitches - the older bitch won't eat a biscuit that's been thrown to her, until the younger bitch has eaten.....

I have taught the younger one to accept the older one being fussed by refusing to fuss her if she tries to make a move on the older one, but positively encouraging and rewarding her for accepting they both get fussed together.....

I understand what you're saying, Claire.
But I would find it SO hard to treat my older dog (who I have to admit is my favourite because he's so special and no trouble whatsoever) as the subordinate.
How did you manage with yours ? did you find it difficult ?

Those dogs were my friends, not mine. My boys are both collies and castrated, so to a certain extent, they speak the same language. They know what a glare means, the older one can drop the other into a down just with a look. There is also a huge age gap between them- 7 and a half years, which does help. Part of my friends problem is there is only 20 months between her boys, so the position of top dog was not so clear. Plus the youngest was a farm collie, so he was born tough! My dogs have never had a fight, not even a little one. There was a point when the youngest reached about 6 months and they seemed to form an agreement, which went something along the lines of, 'lets just not go there, OK?' And they haven't.

However, I do back the oldest one up over certain things: he always gets leftovers, yoghurt pots, crusts and such like; if I am fussing him and the other one pushes in, youngest is told to go away, but not vice versa, he always gets fed first, groomed first, greeted first and so on. But I certainly don't do all that pinning them to the floor on their backs rubbish.

It is really hard to give advice about behaviour without seeing it, because things can be interpreted differently depending on how it is written, so I wouldn't try telling you what is causing the attacks or how to deal wih it as I could make it worse. Also, I could not imagine having a favourite between my dogs, although to the untrained eye, I do treat them as though I favour one. I think the best thing you could do is get him checked by a vet to rule out health problems, and then get in a qualified behaviourist to help you.

HTH and good luck, Claire

Hi Stacey
could you give me some examples of how I can teach Spuddy that Tidgy gets him more attention.  I kind of know what you mean but I'm not sure how to put it into practice

Hi Joyce,

Sure.  For one thing do not give Spuddy attention unless Tidgy also gets attention, basically, do as you would with young children.  If Spuddy acts in a jealous manner toward Tidgy you ignore both dogs.  Like kids, even negative attention is sometimes better than no attention, so make sure that Spuddy never gets more attention because of poor behaviour toward Tidgy.

If Tidgy wants to sit next to you on the sofa, call Spuddy to sit on the other side of you.  If Tidgy then lunges at Spuddy (my new Cairn Rudi used to do this with my other Cairn), then they both go back on the floor.  And yes, this is unfair to Tidgy, but it should only take a three or four weeks for the message to get through to Spuddy.

If Tidgy is nowhere in sight and Spuddy wants attention, he gets none until he is near Tidgy.  Spuddy needs to learn that Tidgy's presence is the key to good things happening for Spuddy.

Apart from that I would take Spuddy out by himself for a walk or an obedience training session. 

Stacey

Stacey

Thanks, Stacey, that's really helpful. 
I've been careful this weekend to avoid situations which might lead to 'jealous' reactions and I'm glad to say that we haven't had any repeat incidents.
If I put your suggestions into practice hopefully peace and harmony will be resumed long term. :)
Thanks again.