we recently acquired a third dog and she isn't getting along well with one of my other dogs. Are we too late to put the newest dog in a crate now? Can we turn back the clock and re-re-introduce the new dog?

Question

Hi Ed,

I am contacting you from England. Boy, I wish I had seen your website before we bought latest dog.

We have a 10-year-old female black lab and a 4-year-old male lurcher/labrador/collie cross, when we first introduced him to her I was told by many people never to put a male and female dog together, however we were very lucky and apart from a few spats at the beginning they have lived together quite happily for 2 years. Both are very placid dogs and although the lab shows aggression towards us when we try to make her do things she doesn't want to do, just growling, she has never bitten or attacked either us or the male dog and usually responds eventually albeit reluctantly. I now realize that she is extremely dominant.

We have recently (2 days ago) acquired a 1 year old female lurcher, she is quite small and a very placid dog, but the female lab has taken against her and started a fight last night ? we were absolutely horrified as she has never shown aggression towards any other dog and this was a full on attack, then for the rest of the evening and all day today they have ignored each together and then at about 8:30pm tonight (same time as last night) she had another go. The male dog keeps right out of it and gets very distressed when they fight.

Are we too late to put the newest dog in a crate now, can we turn back the clock and re-re-introduce the new dog. She has also just been spayed so I am not sure if this has something to do with this aggression. We are going to muzzle both dogs tomorrow and for the moment we are keeping them apart.

We have a crate we use for transportation but have never used it to house a dog, is it OK to leave one dog in the crate all day while we are at work? We do have a dog walker who comes in during the day to walk the male dog as the older Labrador has arthritis and only has short walks ? she cant keep up with the dog walker! She would be able to check up on the dog in the crate and let her out into the garden. Or are we better just to leave the newer dog shut in one room and the other 2 in the rest of the house? Or are we safe to leave one dog in the crate and the others to roam ? it feels a bit mean!

I have read your article on how to introduce a new dog into a house but am worried we may have missed our opportunity, although we have only had the newest dog for 2 days.

Any advice you can give would be most welcome.

I am sorry this rambles on a lot but I have realized there is a lot to this story and we don't seem to have anybody with your no-nonsense type of advice in our area.

Many thanks.

Accepted Answer

I would definitely start over. Whoever told you to never have a male and female together gave bad advice. It’s SAME sex pairs that will typically fight, over male/female pairs.

I’d follow the article Ed wrote on introducing dogs. It’s never too late to start again.

Start with our groundwork program with all your dogs right away. Crate ALL the dogs, not just the new one.

I’d also recommend Pack Structure for the Family Pet and Dealing with Dominant & Aggressive Dogs.

If you only crate the new dog you are not addressing the problem, which is the dynamics between all the dogs (not just the new dog) by only working with the one you think is the problem, you will likely be leaving the situation virtually unchanged at a core level.

If you spend some time reading this section on dog fights, you’ll see that your problems are very common. If you don’t teach the dogs your rules, they can’t possibly behave how you want them to.

Cindy Rhodes