My dogs go crazy in their crates when my son visits with his dog. They are otherwise well behaved, what should I do?

I am hoping that you can help us. I have two ? Australian Cattle Dogs. The ? comes when my step son?s Australian Cattle Dog (neutered male) (Ryder) comes to stay with us for two days every two days (my step-son is a fireman at Otis AFB, here in Mass.). I have a spayed female (Libby) and a Champion show dog (Diesel). ALL these dogs are crate trained. All these dogs are registered ACDs. When Diesel and Libby are home and out of their crates, they are very good together, I am the pack leader as well as my husband. Libby and Ryder don?t usually make a peep when they are in their crates. Diesel sometimes whines (very distracting).



My house goes into chaos when Ryder visits. When my step son drives in (the dogs have excellent hearing), Libby starts barking, and Diesel gets to the very corner of his crate, barking and raising quite the ruckus. Then Ryder comes in the house. All Heck breaks loose. Diesel actually moves his crate to try to get to Ryder. There is a mutual hate by both Ryder and Diesel. Libby gets along with both, but sometime has a little difficulty with Ryder. (He?s a 75 lb. ACD!) When Diesel is out of the crate with Libby ? Ryder will charge his crate as well trying to get to Diesel. We don?t let Diesel and Ryder out together AT ALL. We?ve pretty much resigned ourselves to that fact. We?d like to bring peace back into our lives though.



We do have bark collars ? we?ve found that if we have the bark collars on Libby and Diesel when my step son drives in that sometimes the aggression isn?t there. Do we need to step this up to a training collar? We?ve had a difficult time with Diesel in correcting him for lunging at the corner of his crate when Ryder comes through. It is impossible to correct him in the crate.



My dogs all get taken out to the arena to catch balls, run around, and my dogs do agility, so Libby and Diesel get worked and get tired. Ryder, sometime has no interest in the ball, and will just just run after Libby.



We are running out of choices, ideas, etc. this is definitely affecting not only the dogs, but my marriage. We?ve tried contacting another trainer about the red zone aggression and have gotten no response.



Ideas, thoughts, help please!?



Margaret