Meet the Chinchilla's...

This is Amanda, Brent and their two dogs Cali and Scarlette.

They called me because their dogs started to fight a lot. Their last resort was to get rid of one of the dogs, but they wanted to do everything they could to keep them both. They are very dedicated and loving owners and its important to know that their situation has nothing to do with how these dogs were brought up.

Cali is a 3 year old female American Bulldog and Scarlette is a 7 year old Shepard/pit mix. Two female dogs in a household always brings the risk of fighting. This doesn't mean they have temperament problems, they are only doing what their instinct tells them to do. Usually dogs will just duke it out until one submits and its over. However, Amanda didn't know if one would ever submit.

When 2 of the same sex dogs live under the same household, it's very common for them to fight over the dominant ranking at some point. Don't get me wrong, even if dogs aren't the same sex, its still common, but you can almost expect it with same sexes. When it starts, it is hard to stop it.

We set up a in home bootcamp and started to set boundaries, along with not allowing the dogs to interact until they were a bit more trained. The point was to establish Amanda and Brent as the leaders first and foremost.

They followed everything I said and the training went really well. When it was time to put them back together, we took precautions and bought muzzles, had the hose ready and even put on an electric collar just incase something were to happen. They had a really hard time prying them apart before we started the training, therefore, we had to prepare if that were to happen again.

At first there was some posturing so we were a little nervous. However, nothing happened. Every day, Brent and Amanda would put the dogs together for a short time (with their muzzles on) and would then bring them back inside. It was almost like reintroducing them.

Our last lesson went really well - Cali is a rockstar by the way. Anyway, we ended it by putting the dogs together with no muzzles and they did great. Of course, they will always have to be cautious and can never fully trust them. However, they set out to correct their problem, and so far, they have done it. I am proud of them, and they should be too.

Tags: dog aggression, female dogs, bootcamp, ,dominance, alpha leader