Multi-Dog Households

Because dogs are pack animals, we have high expectations about their abilities to live peacefully in groups. If you are a human member of a multiple dog household, it is important to be realistic about what you can and cannot accomplish with your canine family members. Your own personality, behavior, commitment to managing and training your pack, as well as your choice of packmates, will all play important roles in your ability to create your own peaceable kingdom. Pack management is as much an art as a skill. If you have always had a multi-dog household, never had problems, and never thought twice about it, congratulations!

If your dogs are fighting, and are causing severe damage to each other – or one dog is causing severe damage to another – I’m sorry to say that you are dealing with the most difficult of all canine behavior problems, the one with the worst possible prognosis. Your options are extremely limited, because the treatment really should have happened when the dog was 4 1/2 months old, which is when dogs normally learn bite inhibition.