My dogs hate eachother . . .

Augustmom2012

Hello ladies!

I was hoping that one or more of you might have a few ideas.  I have a 7 y/o Havanese and a 13 month old American Bulldog.  I had another American Bulldog, who sadly died at the age of 7 last Christmas.  This was the dog that we brought the Havanese home to when she was a puppy.  He was (of course) the 'perfect dog' they loved eachother, cuddled, and the AB would even get down on her level to play with her.

Now, the Havanese HATES the new AB puppy.  He tries to play with her, and all she does is growl or snap at him.  She tries to 'guard' him from my office, or tries to keep him outside the doggie door (we have 40 acres, so we just let them come in and out as they please).   He can't even play with a toy on his own without her growling at him. He does back down to her, which I think is slightly amusing as he's got about 80 pounds over her! He'll even run to me crying if she snaps at his face.  They are both trained and usually if there is some kind of 'incident' I make them both go to their crates, but I can't keep them separated forever.  They are find during feedings etc.

Does anyone have any idea of the reasoning behind this behavior or have any tips for me?  The Havanese is a little angel whenever the AB isn't around, but he brings out the worst in her! Any advice would be very much appreciated!! Thank You for reading!

LadyShaSha

When we brought home our second dog (Winston), our original dog (Sadie) bullied him in much the same way your Havanese is bullying your AB.  We got over the bullying by strictly implementing NILIF (there is information in the FAQs or you can google it) and by doing A LOT of boundary training with Sadie - which helped with Sadie's space-related resource guarding.  It made a huge difference quite quickly (no more growling, keeping Winston out of certain spaces).  It took a while after that for them to actually become friends (e.g. play, sleep next to each other), but the outright aggression ended.  I would also encourage you not to leave toys out until the aggression has gotten better, then slowly add them back in with supervision.  Our pups did fine with toys once we added them back in, so we didn't have to do any training specific to toy resource guarding. Finally, I wouldn't let the AB hassel the Havanese too much about playing right now, it might annoy her and bring out more aggression.  Hope that helps!