Dogs fighting

Apoorwoman

My friend Mrs J has a problem with her two new dogs and any advice would be appreciated.

A month ago she took on a Norfolk Terrier and a Norwich Terrier, 8 and 5 years old, both unspayed. They were two of four dogs owned by an 85 year old lady that was taken into hospital. One was kept by the lady’s daughter, one was rehomed locally and my friend has taken on the other two.

They seemed to settle in well apart from a couple of fights between the two in the garden (nothing major) until this afternoon. She had taken them to a park along with her daughter, granddaughter and their own six month labrador. All went well, all off the lead and playing together. My friend and her daughter stopped to talk to a lady and all three dogs were to heel. Suddenly, the two terriers laid into each other to the point they locked jaws. My friend and her daughter were literally trying to prise their jaws apart resulting in a few cut fingers. Once separated, she put them in the car and they were fine together driving home.

Mrs J is now really rattled and she is worried about her six year old DGD, although these dogs have never shown any aggression to people or indeed other dogs they meet.

My friend is an experienced dog owner, farmer’s widow, and has always had gun/working dogs, but has no experience of these particular terriers. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this? Do you think that having them spayed would help? Any advice would be greatly received.

Fosterdog

Their whole world has changed in the space of a month, they don't understand what is happening or why. They have lost their owner, moved to a new home, living with relative strangers and lost half of their "pack". The four dogs together would have had their own pecking order but that has now changed.

A friend recently lost her elderly dog who was the matriarch of her little group, all of the dogs have always got on well but since thevdog died my friend has been living in chaos while the remaining dogs re-establish a new order. Her previous calmest dog has become very highly strung and is starting most of the fights, the one that has always been the terror of the group is quiet and withdrawn and the other two just seem confused and they struggle to settle, lots of pacing around and stress behaviours beingbshown. It will get better but will take time, it has only been just over two weeks and while there are some problem free days other days are a complete nightmare.

Spaying is unlikely to help. Most dog fights seem a lot worse than they actually are, if they really get into it again don't put hands in or near their mouths, get behind the dogs and lift their back end off the ground, it doesn't always work but will often get them to release their "death grip". Look up online how to safely break up a dog fight and there will be videos showing how to do it without hurting the dogs.

Really the dogs should not be left unsupervised with children under any circumstances so keeping the granddaughter safe shouldn't be a problem.

If it is beyond what your friend feels capable of dealing with on her own I would recommend a dog behaviourist to assess them, they may notice obvious triggers that would otherwise be missed and can help them to build a better bond.

Person_one

What do you mean when you say they 'locked jaws'? That's not a term I'm familiar with.

If the dogs were uninjured, then I'd say its most likely that as they have lived together for years then it was probably just 'handbags at dawn' and nothing too serious. If they were really fighting, they would have hurt each other, there would be blood, dogs choose how hard they bite.

While there can be a lot of noise and it can look pretty shocking when they have a 'sorting something out' little scrap, its nearly always best not to start putting your hands in the way of their teeth and nails as you will get accidentally caught by them.

As there are other dogs and children around though, your friend will probably want to nip this behaviour in the bud. The best way to do that is to observe them closely and keep an eye out for signs of tension or stress between them, or one harassing the other, or any sort of guarding behaviour towards either herself, food, the other dog etc. Then she can distract them and stop the situation before it starts.