April 26, 2011
I have 2 female littermates that get into fights once in a while. They have horrible separation anxiety when they are apart. What can I do?
Full Question:
I read through the questions on dog fights and found quite a few answers but I do have a little twist to my scenario. My dogs are 6 year old female, husky/healer, litter mates (boy do I wish I had found you 6 years ago!).Needless to say, we have of course had difficulties establishing our dominance and pack order, it is something we work on constantly. Usually, "Mai" is more dominant but every fall "Blixa" decides to test her and we end up with a bloody battle. Somehow, it's been 2 1/2 years since the last fight and we though we had the problem licked until today. A neighborhood dog's ball ended up in our yard and a fight ensued. I was here to break it up and the dogs are sequestered. Our difficulty is that unless it is immediately following a fight, they have severe separation anxiety from each other - Mai has had medical issues with her stomach that our vet thought may be partially attributed to anxiety - so I'm not sure that kenneling at home is an option for us. Also, seeing as the fights are so rare, is there another option we should look at? Lastly, we have tried a choke collar for walks and the Husky pull drive was so strong they were near to causing injury to themselves, I'm concerned they will continue to pull right through the prong collar - your advice? Oh yeah, we currently use a gentle leader which helps some, but has not fixed the pulling either.
Sincerely,
Allison
Ed's Answer:
Your dogs have you very well trained. This is a common thing with pet owners.
Your vet is wrong. Find a new vet.
Use a prong collar or a remote collar on walks and obedience train these dogs - they are not trained.
We would never put these dogs together if they lived here. They would go in a crate with a Tri-tronics No-Bark Collar on and learn to be crate trained. I can't tell you how many people I have advised to use these collars on dogs that owners said had separation anxiety. They work. I get emails 4 to 6 weeks later saying the problem is solved.
So this really comes down to you making a decision to solve this problem - which is an owner problem not a dog problem.
Your vet is wrong. Find a new vet.
Use a prong collar or a remote collar on walks and obedience train these dogs - they are not trained.
We would never put these dogs together if they lived here. They would go in a crate with a Tri-tronics No-Bark Collar on and learn to be crate trained. I can't tell you how many people I have advised to use these collars on dogs that owners said had separation anxiety. They work. I get emails 4 to 6 weeks later saying the problem is solved.
So this really comes down to you making a decision to solve this problem - which is an owner problem not a dog problem.
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