Can I Train the Aggressiveness out of a Dog?

BigDog the Lab is one friendly feller–to me and all my other doggies except one: Mr. Marley, the other Lab. Biggy isn’t so friendly to strangers like the UPS guy or Gayle’s nephew, people who happen to stray up to our fence gate, either. It’s the strangest thing. We got ol’ Biggy as a puppy after the police called us and wanted us to take this stray, a very little BigDog, before they had to take him to the shelter and meet his almost inevitable end. Of course, we took him, and he fit right in for several months.

BigDog the Puppy with Miss Honey, the Lab-mix

All of our canine guys & gals accepted him, including Marley, and everything was just fine until BigDog got big.

 

Big & son

One day, I was just sitting on the couch alternating between petting Biggy and Marley while watching TV. All of a sudden, Biggy leaped right over me and attacked poor ol’ Marley. The fight was on, too, with those two slashing at each other with those razor-sharp teeth like a pair of rival gang members wielding switchblades. It took a mighty effort from me to break them up and get them separated, and Marley was steadily getting the upper hand. By the time I got them pulled apart, BigDog was more than happy to get away from the mess he had begun. One would have thought he would have learned his lesson, but he has since repeated that behavior several times now, and each time Marley gained the upper hand shortly into each violent encounter. It’s to the point now that I have to keep them separated around the clock. Big would attack Marley the second he saw him. Marley, on the other hand, if past behavior is any indication, would wait to see if BigDog would attack or not. If not, fine; otherwise, he would finish whatever BigDog started. BigDog is the problem. Since I keep them separated, however, it’s not an issue. We haven’t had a “Big” fight in about a year now. I have three fenced-in yards, not to mention the house, and I keep everyone separated pretty easily.

Marley

Now, Gayle wants to give ol’ Biggy away so we don’t have to worry about forgetting who’s where and accidentally giving Big another shot at Marley. I’m scared to do that because you just don’t know, not really, how anyone is going to treat an adopted dog. I know, if he stays with me, that he’ll get plenty of food, shelter, medical care, and love. I would worry about him and feel guilty if I gave him away. That leaves two alternatives: the status quo of keeping the two separated for the next 10 years, or trying to modify Big’s behavior. I’m going for option #2.

The first thing I’m going to do is have Big neutered. I should have done it when we got him, but my company was failing, and I had very little money–very little. So we just kind of shrugged our shoulders and forgot about it. I’ve got another job now, so I can afford that again.

The second thing I’m going to try, post-neutering, is to put both of them in muzzles and let ’em hang out together in the backyard under my supervision. I’m going to try and do this relatively frequently and see if I can get them used to being around each other. I did this one time before, and BigDog went over and tried to bite Marley and finally gave up. Once BigDog figured out that he couldn’t put the bite on anyone, he and Marley appeared to do fairly well out there. So, I’m going to try that several times a week and attempt to get them conditioned to each other’s presence. Then we’ll go to leashes without the muzzles and see how things work then. Hey, it’s worth a shot.

We’ll see if it works.

Chairing a Dogfight

It was a lazy Saturday morning, and I was standing around yawning, scratching my rear, and half-watching Pawn Stars on the History Channel when my beloved returned from a quick errand up the road. Then she innocently opened the front door, and I woke up faster than a soldier hearing the shout, “Banzai!” I had forgotten that Marley, a rescued Yellow Lab, was in the  house, and Biggie, yet another rescued Yellow Lab who seemed to hate Marley, was in the front yard. When Gayle opened that front door, the two instantly went at it like a pair of gladiators fighting to the death. Breaking up that pair slashing at each other with teeth as sharp as swords wasn’t going to be easy.

In dogfights past, when at least one other person was around, I preferred for each of us to grab the hind legs of the two combatants and then pull them apart when they became a bit disoriented, considering the inconvenient and–to them–surprising position they were in.  Gayle would have none of that, though. She was throwing gas on the fire by following the dogs around and screaming an ear-piercing, high-pitched wail at the top of her lungs. Dogs, of course, are tuning forks. They pick up the vibes around them and emit the same vibrations, not unlike people. Those panicked vibes weren’t doing a bit of good and only added to the chaos. She would not, absolutely would not, grab either dog by the hind legs.

Getting desperate now, I had Marley by the hind legs and dragged the locked pair of fighters into the house and into my office where a set of chairs around my work table gave me an idea. Now, these wooden chairs not only had vertical legs rising from the floor to the seat but also horizontal bars stretching from leg to leg that kept the chair more stable. I turned loose of the gladiators even as they cut loose on each other, grabbed a chair, and then placed it on top of their locked heads, putting my full weight on the chair to keep those two 80 to 100-lb. dogs down.

The Peacemaker

It had the same effect as grabbing both of their hind legs. Their rear ends were still up in the air, but their heads were down low, uncomfortably low, and it didn’t take long for Marley, who was winning the fight by then, to let go. Gayle grabbed Biggie, who was relatively OK with getting away since Marley was clearly getting the best of him, by the collar and took him out of my office and shut the door. Whew! The physical part of the fight was over.  Of course, the fight wasn’t really over until we cleaned up the aftermath. I mixed equal parts of water and peroxide and washed Marley’s and Biggie’s wounds, which, luckily, weren’t all that extensive.

Biggy (left) and Marley (right) actually getting along.

So I learned a couple of things with this episode. First, if I’ve got two dogs that don’t get along with only a door separating them, that door is going to be locked so no unsuspecting person can accidentally kick off the mother of all dog battles. Second, the right kind of chair can be downright handy in breaking up a pair of biting behemoths. Instead of a fight breaking up chairs and other furniture like in some sort of rowdy, western movie, I’ll have chairs breaking up fights! I kind of feel like the chairman of dogfights now.