Fierce Wings wrote:Hello all pup parents and lovers. <3
Does anyone here have any advice on how to stop or control prey drive and pack aggression and mentality? We have three dogs, two unspayed females, one neutered male, who are really bad about this. They are incredibly sweet and loving dogs and they play together very often but once they sense a moment of weakness, (like if one hurts themselves and they yelp), in each other they start fighting. The girls tend to gang up together. This doesn't happen often but when it does it's not pretty. We don't know how to stop it and are going to be getting professional behavioral training as soon as possible but I was wondering if there was anything we could do ourselves? I won't go into detail or anything but something bad happened recently and we need to get this under control so it never happens again.
The main problem with this is that the three of them have yet to have basic training so when we look up solutions we can never find effective answers since they all call for basic training. Two of them have been butting heads and fighting for alpha status ever since we introduced them and the other one is usually very well behaved but once a scrap starts out she joins in and makes everything worse. We're desperate to stop it.
We've looked up dog boarding and training around where we live that we can afford with no luck. We did, however find someone that does house calls. They are not doing any at the moment since they're training people for it but will be opening them back up sometime next month. I was just wondering if there was anything at all we could do ourselves in the meantime? They're also food aggressive with each other but not with us. They have never once been aggressive towards us. Just with each other.
Any help and advice is extremely appreciated. ;w;
Most basic training components you can teach yourself pretty easily, ie -sit- lay - down - stay-. Heel is nice, but not totally necessary. A board and train will most likely teach dogs one on one, resulting in the behavior issues with the others not going away. board and trains also can be pretty risky if you don't know what red flags to look for. There's tons of lawsuits on them as well as some dogs coming home pretty traumatized due to the trainers using methods not approved by pet owners.
edit: as in one on one without the other dogs involved. if they used other dogs, it would probably be their own/ calm dogs that would not correct to avoid liability issues
as asalizia wrote- crate training/ crate rotating is a good idea. for food- either feed them in their crates or feed them in separate rooms or one outside and one inside
the dog whimpering is most likely trying to tell the other dog they are in pain- but some dogs will start targeting/attacking the other dog which sounds like what is your case. as for the females ganging up and being the aggressors it is a possibility it is because they aren't spayed. i always suggest spaying or neutering if you cannot train your own animals (ie need to pay for a trainer) as that can make life with them a bit hard since they often act different from fixed/altered animals.
i'm not fully sure what your situation is- ie if the females are older/been together for awhile and the male is the newer one etc.
It would be best to walk the females separately, train them separately and just try to have them not be as attached to each other.
when i worked at a dog daycare we had a few pairs of dogs from the same household that would target dogs together. Best solution was always just to seperate them. Never had incidents from those pairs after.
