We recently went from a two dog house to a three dog house, and notice the difference. We added a nine year old, un-neutered, high herding drive dog into our house and the first two dogs don't like it. Cactus the cranky old girl, who is the BOSS of the house (after the big black cat and me, mostly in that order) hates him on sight. She will walk into a room, see him and immediatly go after him, teeth bared, snarling and generally having a great time. I've found him on the living room end tables, the couch back and huddled half in the dogtoy box in the corner. Geordie, our other un-neutered male, who is less than a year younger, and weighs within a pound of Blaze was initially OK with him coming into the house, but after a day or two was expecting him to leave. So, the growling and fighting started. We first thought that Geordie was the aggressor, but after a week of this, we called a friend who is a Behaviourist, and had her come over and see what she could figure out about the situation. It seems as Blaze is actually the aggressor, but he is very sneaky about it, and will irritate Geordie until he starts to growl, and then will come over, sit beside me and look as though he has been wronged. Damn Border Collies, who would ever think that a dog would be smart enough to manipulate a situation and then lie about it. Either way, crating Blaze at night has solved a lot of problems, since he wanted to sleep in the bedroom with us like the other dogs, but Cactus would get up in the middle of the night for a trip outside (she's an old lady) and then trip over Blaze and the snarling and growling would start. Blaze has never fought back, but on a few occasions, has jumped on the bed to get away from Cactus, and then Geordie, who is the on the bed dog gets upset and will then go after Blaze. It's pretty exciting at about 4:30 am to have two 47 pound dogs fighting on the bed with you. So, for now we are doing the little things the behaviourist taught us, and things are working out pretty good, but eventually they have to work out the pack order themselves and we humans can't really do much to influence it either way. The major problem is that the two boys are so evenly matched that the little scuffles that they have mostly end up in a tie, so there is no clear winner. So, we may have to go as far as to muzzle them and then instigate a confrontation and let them go at it until one of them is the winner, then live with that. Or, if things get really bad, Blaze may have to go, but I don't want that to happen, since I'm entered in a trial at the end of the month, and Blaze is one damn good herding dog.
Ken, Geordie, Cactus and Blaze
