My Dogs Are Fighting...Now What?
Your dogs used to get along, now they don’t. Or maybe they never did and you’ve always kind of dealt with it.
I lived with fighting dogs for years, and I know how terrifying it can be. Don’t lose heart. Most folks can see some level of success after implementing a balanced lifestyle, however the amount of success depends on many variables - including the length of time the issues have been ongoing, physical damage/injuries, and energy and skill level of humans in the home.
1. Tighten things up.
Usually, fighting dogs are a tip of the ice berg type of issue. Anytime I see dogs who feel entitled to put teeth on each other, here’s what else I see in the home:
-lack of believable leadership
-no structure, rules, or expectations for the dogs
-free flowing affection with no limits
-no common language between humans and dogs (no training)
-indifference or resistance to human guidance and direction
-owner reactivity, lots of tension or fighting between the humans
-lack of process (or bad processes) and management for dogs
-too many dogs, too much pressure, not enough pressure release (think foster homes)
-dogs making up their own rules and correcting each other
Sometimes it takes years for people to get to a point where they need professional help. The trajectory of each case can vary wildly, with age, sex, and number of dogs in the home. Regardless of how long the dogs have been fighting, all dogs in the home (yes, even the older ones) need to go into boot camp mode immediately.
What do I mean by “boot camp mode?” I mean that each dog starts an individual training program, and the owner introduces massive structure. Dogs who have a history of fighting need to coexist only in a very controlled manner, meaning that they are more attentive to their handlers than they are worrying about the other dog. In short: you should be able to reliably get each dog in your pack to do things under heavy distraction before you put the fighting dogs together.
This is a very important first step, and it can take time to get here. In some cases, the triggers for the fights are discrete and easy to avoid (food, affection, toys), but in other cases the triggers are more difficult to pinpoint.
2. Go for coexistence, not best friends.
This is one of the harder pills to swallow for most, but just because it is hard to swallow does not mean you don’t need it. Sometimes things don’t go the way we planned them, but in the case of fighting dogs there is so much value in keeping your household together and not passing the buck to someone else. You’ll be a better person by handling your shit, in this respect.
I’m going to be honest with you. Depending on the severity and length of time the issues have been ongoing, some dogs may not ever play again. This is why that’s so hard for you to hear: it runs directly counter to the reason that you already own multiple dogs. You probably got a second dog so your first dog could have a playmate, right?
Some dogs may need to be walked separately, or with two handlers. You may not ever be able to leave your dogs unsupervised in the back yard again. There may be a “new normal,” and to digest that reality can certainly be a grief process.
Or, your dogs may be one of the cases where they get much better. Your dogs thrive under more structure and leadership, they know their place in the pack, and they prove themselves to be trustworthy. They may be able to play again. I can’t really tell you how your case will go without looking at your specific dogs.
But this is for sure: coexistence is the foundation of friendship. You cannot have the latter without the former. Think about it this way: if I want to be friends with someone, I need to be sure she’s not going to
1. Steal money out of my purse when I leave the room
2. Trash talk me in front of other people
3. Get drunk and start fights with me
You feel me? If I constantly have these worries in the background because of prior behavior, I’m simply going to pass on that friendship. (Thank you, next.) There is a basic level of trust and reciprocity that runs subconsciously in all social animals, including dogs. If that trust is broken, our wonderful survival oriented brains may not respond so kindly the second time around.
And dogs can sense when you’re trying to force a friendship. Trust me. Some of the biggest fights I ever witnessed with my dogs was right after I literally said the words: “Why can’t you be friends?” After that, my mantra became “You don’t have to like each other, but you do have to live together safely.” Today, my dogs do not play, but they do share space without issue.
What do I mean by “coexist?” I mean that your dogs should tolerate one another during mundane household activities. They should not growl or stare at each other. They should exhibit avoidance (averted eye contact, moving away) when nervous, instead of confrontational behaviors. If you can get your dogs to heel nicely next to each other, place calmly in the same room, and crate up next to each to each other, you have a good chance at coexistence. If you obtain coexistence, you have a better chance of friendship.
2. Explore management solutions.
Anytime you share your home with other people and/or animals, you quickly find out that compromise is usually necessary. Your needs and desires very quickly bump up against someone else’s needs and desires. Your dog’s need to hear himself talk at midnight bumps up against your neighbor’s need to sleep. Your need to use the bathroom bumps up against your spouse’s need to use the bathroom. How do we deal with momentarily incompatible needs, especially between species?
In short, process. Think about literally any human institution in the business of housing multiple beings together. For the sake of the following thought experiment, let’s take the average American sorority house. There is process of doing just about everything.
There are quiet hours. There are social norms (on Wednesdays, we wear pink). There are rules. Like, “You can’t have your boyfriend stay overnight.” There are hierarchies intended to guide the thinking of younger, more inexperienced pledges (Big sisters, house moms). People line up at certain times of the day for meals in a shared kitchen. Bonding occurs through programmatic shared activity (chapter meetings), as well as through spontaneous social activity (party buses).
If there are conflicts, they are resolved in very specific (nonviolent!) ways. No matter how much you hate your roommate, you can’t just cut her hair off while she sleeps or hijack her Facebook account. You can, however talk to her about your problems and if that fails, request a roommate change with the higher ups.
All social animals punish anti-social behavior. We have processes in place to punish anti-social behavior.
If you have fighting dogs, you need to run your home like an institution. Food cannot be left hanging out on the floor (if it is, it may encourage guarding). At night, your dogs need to be tucked into their own crates like bedrooms. When you’re hanging out in the house, there needs to be some way of accounting for your dog’s whereabouts - place, crate and rotate, or back ties. If your dogs are extremely tough, you may need to muzzle condition your dog, not as the only solution, but as one of the solutions.
I think training (a plan of punishment and reward) should be regarded as the first step for fighting dogs, because it teaches the dog to look to you as a leader. But management (like muzzles, crates, and leashes) are there in case the training fails, or you cannot be there to supervise.
As always, I do not recommend DIY traiing any type of fighting dogs.. If your dogs have done damage to each other or humans, please work with a professional.
Now, I want to hear from you. How have you handled your fighting dogs?