Dog Fights at Home
Stop Fighting!
Quizzes are fun when I know the answers. Fights between family dogs are caused by:
a) Dominance
b) Resource guarding
c) Jealousy
d) Bad juju
e) Sometimes a) and/or b)
Choices are important; nobody wants to feel trapped. Most adult humans can stay in a living arrangement or, if necessary, find a way of getting out. That may be easier said than done for us but for our pets it’s pretty much impossible.
Atticus and Tandy, a couple of cairn terriers, were fighting. They were feisty little devils, a trait developed for their work of eliminating foxes and other varmints, but these two dogs were at each other’s throats. Their people, Sylvia and Jason, were horrified. How could this happen? They loved their dogs and treated them equally. They thought they had two alpha political candidates.
Adopting Tandy felt like a good decision at the time. Having watched 2 year old Atticus play nicely with other dogs, it seemed to Sylvia and Jason that he’d enjoy a permanent companion. And so, Tandy, aged 9 months, was selected and injected into their happy home.
All seemed well for the first 11 days, until all hell (heck?) broke loose. Multiple frantic time-outs and scoldings later, Tandy only needed one glance at Atticus for her aggression to explode, triggering her to lurch violently at her victim – who fought back with intensity. Oh sure, they were terriers, but mutually assured destruction? Not normal.
Tandy and Atticus had yet to inflict significant wounds but they had reached the edge of a cliff. Their people were all over the place: Board and train? New homes? Return Tandy to the breeder? A friend had suggested extraction of their canine teeth. OMG!
Well-meaning dog trainers urged punishment. Could electric shock collars jolt Tandy and Atticus into love, kindness, and mutual respect? Research has shown that meting out painful consequences actually worsens fear while it poisons relationships. The brain is considered the most complex organ in the body. Uncovering the causes of this train wreck wouldn’t be simple.
Oh, the quiz: e) is the least worst answer.
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Veterinary behaviorists, like me, treat a lot of aggression between family dogs. Tandy and Atticus had already endured multiple mutual maulings without bloodshed but their intensifying hostility, fear of annihilation, and the adrenalin surge of self-preservation would soon exceed somebody’s threshold for self-control. Disaster was imminent.
There’s a complex system of circuits, neurotransmitters, and hormones upstairs that can be altered permanently following physical injury. Pain often leads a good brain in a bad direction. I told Jason and Sylvia that even one penetrating wound would send the prognosis south.
Life was good until one fine evening when Sylvia was frying chicken. Both dogs were camped out at her feet, hoping to share the experience. Atticus moved in and stood up against his dog momma’s leg to get a better sniff. His higher ranking competitor, Tandy, saw things differently. There was only one pan of chicken and only one Sylvia.
Didn’t they realize their people would never allow them starve? That love and affection were limitless in their home? Human logic, like this, is meaningless to dogs. They’re programmed for survival, sure the great famine will start in about 20 minutes and that their leaders may be savaged by hyenas even sooner. The innate canine concept of scarcity took over. If Tandy didn’t get every bit of the chicken and Sylvia, she was sure she’d get none of either. She had to strike hard and fast. Atticus had nowhere to go.
If these dogs were free-living, rather than domestic pets, either of them could choose to cut and run to avoid conflict. Atticus might have hit the trail to join a different canine group. But he was trapped in his own home. When Tandy launched her big terrier teeth at him there was no flight for him, only fight.
Communication between Atticus and Tandy had to be suspended; swapping body-signal threats and spewing canine epithets would only intensify their mutual animosity. They had to be kept separated, without even a line of sight, until we could calm the storm.
Why fight if a hard stare would send the message?
A healthy canine brain is programmed to communicate with body signals and occasionally words like, “Grr!” Knock-down, drag out fights in the wild can happen but they’re really uncommon. Nobody has to take it. If you get seriously bullied you can get the heck outa Dodge. But, confined by the walls and a fence of their loving human domicile, neither Tandy nor Atticus could escape each other.
There was another wrinkle: From my observations, and a lot more information gathering from Jason and Sylvia, I came to learn that Tandy also struggled with a significant anxiety disorder. When circumstances weren’t just right, her agitation escalated fast. Watching her momma cook, and waiting and hoping to snag a hot chicken leg, her low-life underlying Atticus foolishly made physical contact with the chef. Tandy’s tenuous grip on impulse control instantly evaporated. She attacked.
Hearing this story, you can bet I was concerned about Atticus’ safety. I also knew that Tandy-the-tyrant could pay an even bigger price. When victims of assault are backed into a corner they’ll fight tooth and nail to survive, inflicting far worse damage on their tormentors. The mayhem didn’t end there. Sylvia freaked-out, dropped her frying fork, and grabbed her dogs’ collars to break up the fracas. Nothing went as planned. Rather than enjoying a home cooked meal with her husband, they spent the evening at urgent care. Their dogs walked away spitty but otherwise unscathed.
If we’d focused only on the obvious aggression, other important factors would have been missed. It turned out that Tandy was hypervigilant during leash walks, stopping often to look behind her. She was easily startled by almost anything: normal household noises, a fly in the grass, a leaf blowing in the yard.
Home surveillance video showed Tandy and Atticus doing just fine together when their people were away. They never mixed it up on leash walks either. Avoiding competitive triggers would be a must but what about Tandy’s short fuse? Could she abandon her seething hostility when her subordinate approached? Could she live with him and food in the same house? Her wellbeing was suffering. Would medication help?
No more tears? It ain’t easy
Right away, after Atticus and Tandy were separated in different parts of the house, everybody relaxed and exhaled. There had been plenty of smack downs but, so far, no perforated pets. Sylvia and Jason were committed to doing whatever was necessary; I was cautiously optimistic.
Tandy’s anxiety disorder needed research – based behavior modification. Her brain’s neurochemical imbalances also required treatment. I started her on an antianxiety medication called Reconcile, the canine-approved chewable fluoxetine. Her folks reported her being much calmer about 4 weeks later. She was no longer spooked by little noises. Rather than her head-on-a-swivel during leash walks, she was sniffing and investigating while happily tail wagging. She was now ready to learn.
Competition between Tandy and Atticus had to end. Never, for the rest of their lives, could they be together in the same room with food of any kind. Until they were consistently relaxed (never a guaranteed outcome) they could only be near their people one-at-a-time. A baby gate kept them physically apart while able to hang out and swap jokes, which we assumed involved snarky comments about their parents. Teenagers!
I explained how to use a clicker for immediate reinforcement of simple commands. Sylvia and Jason, each with one dog a generous distance from the baby gate, followed a click not with food (taboo when the dogs were together) but petting and praise. The book, Click to Calm, helped.
They took down the baby gate a week later. Tandy and Atticus were kept leashed, several feet apart, getting clicks, petting, and praise for performing fun commands. They learned to watch their leaders for opportunities to earn rather than squabbling, reacting aggressively, or trembling with fear. Frequent repetition motivated these sweet dogs to continue their good work over the long term.
Sylvia and Jason gradually allowed Tandy and Atticus to drag the leashes, so they could be safely pulled apart if the politics got ugly. These good dogs were better when together but two rules would always apply: 1) Take the process slow. 2) No guarantees. The wheels could fall off any time.
