This may get a little long, so I apologize in advance. We have a 3 year old female chocolate lab. When we first got her, we had an older male boxer. The boxer immediately wanted to kill the new puppy. Not just a correction type of thing, he was out to kill. We know now that he had become above everyone in the family except me and when we introduced the new puppy, first of all it was in his territory and second, my wife was holding him. Now we only have the lab, which is pretty submissive around other dogs, I assume because of the aggression from the boxer as a puppy. So, now we are going to get a male rottweiler puppy, which is the breed I had my whole life until the boxer. I'm going back to my first love in breeds. I want to do this right this time and not risk the same type of problem we had before. I also don't want the lab to even become dominant at all over the new puppy. So, how should we go about this? I have several other questions, but they may belong in a different category.

Thanks,
Kory

 Quote: Kory Fox

This may get a little long, so I apologize in advance. We have a 3 year old female chocolate lab. When we first got her, we had an older male boxer. The boxer immediately wanted to kill the new puppy. Not just a correction type of thing, he was out to kill. We know now that he had become above everyone in the family except me and when we introduced the new puppy, first of all it was in his territory and second, my wife was holding him. Now we only have the lab, which is pretty submissive around other dogs, I assume because of the aggression from the boxer as a puppy. So, now we are going to get a male rottweiler puppy, which is the breed I had my whole life until the boxer. I'm going back to my first love in breeds. I want to do this right this time and not risk the same type of problem we had before. I also don't want the lab to even become dominant at all over the new puppy. So, how should we go about this? I have several other questions, but they may belong in a different category.

Thanks,
Kory

There's a LOT to this question, from how strong your pack structure is to how you plan to introduce them.

I'll start, though.

What kind of training do you do and how well trained is the present dog?

What other dogs is the present dog around? In what way is he around them? What do you mean by "submissive"? (That is, in what circumstances is submission to outside dogs coming up?)

You may have already but there is a bunch of helpful articles under "training categories" towards the top, click that then click on "puppy training" ones like "becoming your puppy's pack leader" and introducing new dogs and so on.
There is also the Q&A section top of page where you can search many Q&A's relating to the same and I'm sure some others here will be able to direct you to certain articles and answer direct Q's
Hope this helped some.

Connie got the jump

O.K. I was trying to keep this short but I'll try to explain the best I can.

I have always had rottweilers strictly as pets and have always raised them in what I now know is the wrong way with correction or compulsion training I guess you'd call it. I understand now that there's a better way and am trying to figure alot of that out now.

So, after my last dog died, my family convinced me to try a boxer because of a family friend that had one they liked. Well, he wasn't my favorite dog. Very different from my rottweilers. Then, to try to make a long story short, my wife and kids brought home this female lab against my wishes, when I wasn't even home. My wife tried to hold the boxer on the leash while my oldest (7 at the time) son turned the puppy loose. The boxer immediately went after the puppy.

I tried to introduce them when I got home by just letting them go without my wife and kids being there. Same thing. I took several months of working with them to get the boxer to accept the puppy, but he eventually did.

Now the boxer is gone and after all this my wife agrees that a rottweiler is for us and she regrets getting the lab, but we want to make it work. She has also come around to understanding that you can't let the dog control everything that goes on and I've gotten her to read a couple of books to better understand what the dogs body language and actions mean.

As far as the labs obedience goes, she doesn't have alot, but it's now improving because I made it clear with her that the dog needs to have more obedience before the puppy comes into the picture. She is made to sit when going outside, whichever one of us is taking her goes through the door first, then gives and o.k. and she comes through. Same thing with food or toys. I am now getting her to do fairly long stays (5 minutes or so). She heals pretty well on lead. Haven't tried off lead.

As far as her being submissive to other dogs, it's not extreme, but she does approach, or allow another dog to approach with her head slightly down and allows the other dog to sniff first. If there's a toy involved she generally surrenders it to the other dog.

With the new dog, I'm not going to "work" him but I do want to get into alot of obedience. Now that I'm beginning to understand how people get that willingness of their dog to do things, that's what I want. Not the way I used to do it where the dog was just doing because I wanted him/her to do it. That's about all I can think of at the moment


Thanks,
Kory

Edited by Connie Sutherland (02/12/2012 02:03 PM)
Edit reason: paragraphs! ;-)

My focus would be on not letting the puppy torment the Lab Kory. I'll bet he's going to be fascinated with her and want to pester the heck out of her. Thats what I would concentrate on not allowing from day 1.

Besides Steve's spot-on post, I am still interested in what situations lead to this:

"As far as her being submissive to other dogs, it's not extreme, but she does approach, or allow another dog to approach with her head slightly down and allows the other dog to sniff first. If there's a toy involved she generally surrenders it to the other dog."

She is with strange dogs, and with toys present? This is something that for me indicates a POV that is not a good one in a multiple-dog home.

I'm not jumping on you -- I AM pointing out something that bothers me, though.

As far as I can tell it's because of the aggression from the boxer when she was a puppy. I don't know of anything else that would cause this. She plays tug with us just fine. She'll chase balls or toys like normal, although we haven't taught her to bring it back, she generally will bring it back until she's tired of it. The boxer attacking her as a puppy is the only thing I know of that would have caused her being submissive to other dogs.

Kory

My question is how it happens that she is in this situation, with strange dogs, with toys present .....


This would not even happen among my own dogs, in my home, that the dogs would have toys to take from each other. Outside my home, with strange dogs .... never ever.

That's why I prefaced it with "I'm not jumping on you -- I AM pointing out something that bothers me, though."

O.K. I didn't understand what you were asking. We live on 10 acres in the country and unfortunetly there are many people that don't contain their dogs around here. We frequently get other peoples dogs on our property so if one of us has her outside with a ball or whatever and another dog approaches that's when this happens usually. I guess I shouldn't make it sound like it's alot, but it happens every now and then. Also, one time a friend with a GSD met us at a park, the GSD had a ball in his mouth our lab went to greet him and I guess tried for the ball. The GSD gave little growl and that was the end of that. She never even attempted to chase that ball after that.

Kory