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+--- Thread: dog help (/showthread.php?tid=3597)
dog help - tikki - 07-20-2018
[align=center][div style="width:60%;overflow:auto;font-family:verdana;font-size:11px;text-transform: lowercase;text-align:justify"]okay so this one isn't really site related
I've got two fairly large dogs, a German Shepherd named Peaches who is super sweet and scared of everything, and a mixed breed who we think is a shepherd doberman mix named Witty. They usually get along super well, they play and they sleep together and they're super adorable.
Only issue is recently Witty is getting to be kinda food aggressive for no apparent reason? We've always fed them in separate rooms at the same time, always given them the same amount of food and everything, but instead of eating her own food Witty will try to attack Peaches to eat her food. She hasn't been able to yet due to someone being home every time they are fed and we get onto them about it, but it still kinda worries me, since Peaches is my baby.
So if anyone could shed some insight, that'd be great?
Re: dog help - nefarius - 07-20-2018
[align=center][div style=" background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid black; width: 550px; min-height: 9px; font-family:; line-height: 110%; text-align: justify; color:; padding: 20px"]As someone who has lived with a lot of dogs at once before, it can be a mix of a ton of things. Assuming your dogs are both female from your descriptions of them, could I ask if you have them spayed or not? Usually aggression in females comes from being in heat and/or pregnant.
I used to live with two smaller breed females that were akin to your dogs in that one was shy and the other was outgoing, but the shy one usually got aggressive with certain things. It's most likely that Witty is just protective of her food and wary that Peaches will take it. In dogs, dominance is key - when there are more than one in a living space, things that they associate as theirs are immediately to be protected from potential aggressors, even when they're close. I'd suggest simply watching Witty and keeping her in an enclosed area while she eats, and not allowing either to see the other while feeding happens.
Keep in mind that if they fight, they'll just get a taste of it and do it more often. I had two large male dogs that would seriously harm each other over a female in the vicinity, or because one of them was getting attention while the other was not. Not allowing them to be around each other is the best you can do atm.