Question:
I have a family that includes 5 cats and 5 dogs. 4 of the dogs are Great Danes…2 male, 2 female, all fixed. ( The 5th dog is a totally cool Aussie/cattledog male) The 2 males fight as of the last 2 years, so we have to arrange them in 2 pairs and rotate for bed space.

All the dogs sleep with cats curled up with them. Its really cool, except if the boys get together. How can we teach them to get along again? My husband and I love all of them equally.

Answer:

That’s quite a menagerie you have there! You’re already doing the best thing that I could advise without seeing the dogs, which is keeping everybody safe.

The devil is in the details with dog training, so to really get this right, you should hire a reward-based trainer near you. Look for one on the Association of Pet Dog Trainers website or the Karen Pryor Academy website ). Or find a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist on the Animal Behavior Society website.

The right kind of trainer will discuss ways to change the dogs’ feelings about one another, rather than just punishing them for fighting. Never punish a dog for growling. If you do that, you are just telling him to stop letting you in on how he’s feeling, that you’d rather be surprised with a dog fight out of the blue.

Here are some tips: If your dogs have fought several times without injury, then bringing them together should be fairly straightforward. If they have injured each other, you want to get them both used to a muzzle before you re-introduce them. To get them together, start off of the property so they are not so territorial. Expect it to take several sessions, but you’d start with walking them in the same direction, on opposite sides of the street (or further).

Every time one looks at the other, he gets a treat. I use a clicker for training, which can help. You can do this without the clicker by just saying the dog’s name and reaching down with a super-scrumptious treat. But you can also use the clicker – just click the instant he sees the other dog, then give him a treat. If he doesn’t already know what the clicker is, then you may want to teach him about that, first. Learn more about clicker training here. Once you click & reward a lot for just looking at the other dog, begin to click a little later, *after* he looks at the other dog and back at you.

When you get close enough for them to sniff, find a big stretch of chain link fence and have them sniff briefly (less than a second) through the fence, then call them back for a treat. Work up to longer greetings and more time together.

These tips will help, but I’ll remind you again to hire a reward-based trainer or behaviorist, to help you with the full situation.

Grisha Stewart, MA, CPDT, CTP

Voted as Seattle’s Top Dog Trainer by the readers of CityDog Magazine, Grisha Stewart is the owner and founder of Ahimsa Dog Training in Seattle, WA. Grisha is a Certified Training Partner from the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training & Behavior, a Certified Pet Dog Trainer and since 2002, an active member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. She attends several training and behavior workshops each year and is a certified Pet First Aid attendant and evaluator for the Canine Good Citizen program.

For more information on Grisha and Ahimsa Dog Training in the Seattle, Washington area, visitwww.ahimsadogtraining.com.