SIBLING DOG FIGHTING

SIBLING DOG FIGHTING

Dateline: 6/15/98

By Larry Lachman, MS, MA

Animal Behavior Consultant

Sibling dog fighting situations are making up more and more of my in-home consultation cases. This is where the owners have brought home a second dog, and the first dog begins fighting with it, or the owners have had two or more dogs from day one, and now, 3-6 years later, they begin to fight. After treating sibling dog aggression cases for several years now, there are several factors common in all the cases which I have taken note of.

First, ninety-nine percent of the sibling dog fighting cases I treat involve same sex dogs.

Second, ninety-nine percent of the sibling dog fighting cases I treat, involve the dogs fighting ONLY in the owners' presence.

Third, ninety-nine percent of the time, the dogs who fight with one another are older dogs, averaging four years or older.

Fourth, ninety-nine percent of the cases involve a struggle for who will be dominant dog in the family pack. And in these cases, the owners frequently have chosen the wrong dog as the dominant dog and begin treating it as such. Or, the owners anthromorphize, and attempt to treat the dogs equally and "democratically," as if the dogs were human children.

Case in point: on June 18, 1994, I went out on a sibling dog fighting case involving two female Dalmatians. The dog first in the home was a seven year old spayed Dalmatian. The new dog, which the owners had brought home a month before, was seven months old. Within the first five to ten minutes after my arrival and after I greeted the dogs, they engaged in four full-out aggressive fights, frequently when one of the dogs were under the table or under the owners' legs, or standing beside one of the owners and myself. I had to literally swing my feet away to avoid receiving a redirected bite.

It became crystal clear as to what was happening. The older Dalmatian, Dotti, was attempting to establish and reinforce her dominance through various eye stares and body posturing. Lucy, the younger Dalmatian, would immediately trot over to Dotti, and challenge her and not back down in response to Dotti's warning glare and growl.

In addition, as also is evident in ninety-nine percent of the sibling dog cases I treat, the dogs did most of their fighting when being greeted by the owners, coming in and out of entrances and the car, and around food and toy objects.

Also, the owners were trying to treat Dotti and Lucy as equals, and were thereby becoming cues for Dotti to initiate a fight to reclaim her dominance.

Frequently, sibling dogs work out their dominance "issues" among themselves. This is evidenced by the fact that when the owners arrive home, there are no signs of fighting or injuries.

One of the first things I had to do with Dotti's and Lucy's owners, was to explain the concept of a canine dominance hierarchy and to point out how they were setting up the dogs to fight by inadvertently reinforcing Lucy as dominant dog when in fact she was not.

One of the other things I had to do with the owners was to operationally define what dominant behaviors looked like. I reviewed with them that the dominant dog gets to greet them first, gets attention and fed first, gets to go in and out of entrances first, and is allowed to horde the toys, guard food, and mount and T-stance the submissive dog.

Lucy, the submissive dog, should not be allowed to do these dominant behaviors. And because she was doing them, and not backing off when Dotti warned her or counter-dominated her, they the owners, in the roles as pack leaders, needed to enforce Lucy's backing off on Dotti's behalf.

Given all these observed and reported behaviors, an anti-sibling dog fighting program was enacted.

First, we outlined the behaviors the owners were to adopt in actively reinforcing Dotti's role as dominant dog between the two dogs.

An example of such behaviors was for the owners to greet and pet Dotti first, and Lucy second.

In addition, the owners had to enforce Lucy's role as submissive dog by intervening with non-corporal punishment startle techniques whenever Lucy attempted to equal out the equation and hone in on Dotti's dominant privileges. The owners were to discipline Lucy for trying to be greeted first or by trying to get in and out of entrances before Dotti.
Both dogs required some structured non-force obedience work, entailing sits, downs and stays. This was partly necessary for the owners to more clearly establish their benevolent dominance over both dogs, and partly necessary to gain control of each dog so they could call the dominant dog first and the submissive dog would remain in a stay until it was its turn to come.

Another component to our sibling dog fighting program was to use the behavior modification technique of counter-conditioning, whereby the two dogs would start associating pleasurable stimuli when in the other's presence as opposed to getting their guard up and being ready for a fight. Part of how I had the owners begin to achieve this was by only giving attention to one dog when the other dog was also getting attention. Each dog would become a cue for the other's receiving positive attention.

In addition, the type of attention given, would be structured, through positive reward obedience exercises, initially on leash, until each dog could be in the owners' presence, be placed in a down stay side by side, and not move, growl or fight.

Before I left Dotti, Lucy, and their owners, they were already getting along better and engaged in a twenty minute non-stop play session without any aggressive displays. This was partly the result of me having the owners ignore both dogs while I was there, which forced the two dogs to seek each other out for attention.

Three days after my initial consult, the wife called me up and told me that the dogs were getting along great. They had only one minor altercation over the last 72 hours, whereby, the baseline frequency had been every hour or so, prior to our intervention on the weekend. She stated that our behavioral intervention gave her and her husband hope and improved the relationship between the two dogs. I expect the dogs to do well and cease the sibling dog aggression displays as the eight week program proceeds.

In general, treating aggression cases involve the utilization of behavior therapy approaches such as systematic desensitization, counter conditioning, and operant reinforcement. Avoiding recurring triggering stimuli, implementing non-force obedience practice and possible drug therapy are further adjunct treatments which can be used.