i have heard mention of sibling rivelry quite often on the board. ussualy advise geared towards the keeping of 2 dogs/2 bitches together. also the signs of agression starteng to develop.

my question is on behalf of a lady who lives on my street, i shall start with a bit of back round and then move onto the problem.

basically the lady homed 2 littermates after seeing an advert in her local vets about 2 pups (a dog and a bitch) that were handed in after being found dumped. they were in very bad condition had mange, worms, were unhandled beleved to be about 3 months old. and to be staffy x collie with maybe a bit of jack thrown in. they are medium dogs.

bascially she treated the physical problems and also socilised as much as possible and tobegin with the dogs seemed to be turnign into resonably well adjusted dogs considering there start. then the dog started to get aggresive towars other dogs and so they had it castrated at the age of 6 months. after that he reverted to being very puppy like and as a result has never really appeared to grow out of the puppy liek stage and has a split personality of being loving and playfull one min to being very dog aggresive the next.

the bitch of the two is worse, she is horrible towards anyother dog/bitch she sees and at times the owners has told me she has gone for other dogs.

just before xmas the dog was attacked by apitbull and it appears to have really effected him and nowadays when i see the lady walk them i see the bitch chasing hell out of the dog who runs flat out with his tails between his legs.

a weird thing they have started to do is that when another dog passes the owner with have them both on there leads and they will suddenly start to attack each other. i had not seen her for a while but tonight i saw her and i saw for my own eyes how bad they fight with each other. they are comign on 12 months now and apparently the owner says that the bitch is always attacking the dog.

my two bitches play fight and mess, but what they do is nothign comapred to what this ladies 2 do. it looks very aggressive and they ock on each others throats.

does anyone have any idea whats coudl be goin gon here?

there was talk of spayin gthe bitch after her first season and but will spaying an already aggresive bitch make her worse?

a weird thing they have started to do is that when another dog passes the owner with have them both on there leads and they will suddenly start to attack each other. i had not seen her for a while but tonight i saw her and i saw for my own eyes how bad they fight with each other.

I had a bitch that would always attack (seriously) the dogs she lived with when she got excited for whatever reason -that frequently included hearing or seeing my other dogs preparing to go out for a walk, or coming home from one, or anything similar. I had 2 male dogs then and she picked on one in particular, I homed him with my mother in law as he got so depressed by this, and then she started on the other dog instead. (The bitch in question was a toybreed so was separate from the big dogs but could hear and see them through gates.) It got worse and worse over time, in the end I had no option but to re-home her as a single dog. I honestly don't know why she did it.

Sounds like this person's best option for now is to NOT walk the dogs together.

My next door enighbours Jack russel sisters so the same, fortunately the more timid one doe3sn't fight back.  they do theis anytime they are over excited or frustrated.

Walking separately would be best I think - she's seeing redirected aggression, where both dogs are either frustrated (not being able to go and interact with the dog dog) or anxious (not being able to defend themselves/run away) because they are on leash, so take it out on each other.  It can get very nasty, so individual walks would save a lot of stress I think.