AKA- so much fail.

The following incident was, both proximately and in the larger sense, the result of failures in handling and managing the dogs in question. In some respects, a case study in stupidity, naivity, and negligence. That said, I would very much appreciate any feedback or advice anyone with more experience could offer on where we stand and where we should go from here.

The circumstances involve a household of three dogs: a 6YO 65lb Black Lab spayed bitch that I have had since she was 6 months old and love dearly, a 5YO 25lb neutered male rat terrier mix that moved in along with my fiance three months ago (quite unruly and demanding- small dog dictator syndrome to the max), and a 50lb 2YO rescue pitbull-boxer mix spayed bitch that we adopted from death row two months ago on the insistence of said fiance, to which I acquiesced against my better judgement despite not having the time to properly study and enact procedures for properly managing and integrating the new dog. I simply (and stupidly) told her it would have to be her project. I have maintained from the outset, in fact, that as far as I am concerned we are fostering the dog until we can responsibly rehome her. I believed and still believe that three dogs is too many for us to comfortably manage.

The incident occurred over poorly managed bones, and the main event involved what appeared to me to be an all out attack on the Lab by the pit mix right in front of me while I was removing a bone from the recalcitrant lab. The pit mix was in full hold and shake mode on the labs neck, but released in response to a bucket of water and obediently/guiltily slinked into the bathroom on my (forceful) command offering no aggression towards me or my fiance in the process.

Fortunately, the lab was uninjured, and it seems all the pit-mix got for her trouble was a mouth full of undercoat- she missed all the important stuff, and the lab is a big strong dog with a heavy coat and thick loose skin around the neck. She was quite shaken up by it though (understatement). It is not lost on me that I can't count on that degree of good fortune next time.

I set up three crates in a row in the living room and the dogs have been only been allowed out one at a time since the incident a week ago. I exercise them in sequence in the morning, and they come out of the kennels one at a time, on leashes. I'm operating with a significant abundance of caution at this point simply to manage the situation in anticipation of evolving to something more sustainably workable that doesn't require us to live like wardens at the supermax.

I did, however, want to ensure that I don't risk a consequential mishap or risk further damaging my Lab, who has always been a sweet and gentle dog both with humans and dogs to this point. The pit-mix generally seems to be a people-oriented dog and hasn't shown any handler aggression in the short time we've had her (although it has become clear that she does need assertive ownership and boundaries- and on reflection we made some serious mistakes in that area along the way), and I definitely wouldn't want any harm to come to her if she is salvageable. With firm guidance, she actually seems to be the most eager to please, tractable, and trainable dog I've ever encountered. While she clearly seeks dominance with other dogs, there was nothing for over the past two months to portend that kind of dog aggression either, and she is actually the most dog-social of our dogs, often snuggling up and engaging in mutual licking with the other two. I kick myself now for the naivete of our having left them all out overnight and when we were out countless times because they all seemed to be getting along so well. I am grateful that if such an attack was inevitable (under the circumstances caused by our incompetence), it happened with me in the room.

My thought is that the most conservative tack would be to responsibly re-home the pit mix via a breed rescue, ensuring that she goes to a single-dog household with experience having assertive dogs, and maintain our Alcatraz protocol until that works out. I certainly don't think I would ever be able to trust the three of them alone again.

That could take a while, though. Is my approach overkill in the mean time? We have implemented something informed by the Leerburg GW recommendations; Is that likely to move us, under the circumstances, towards a point where we could be a bit less draconian? Could the dogs, for instance, be muzzled and walked together? Be allowed out under close supervision with tug lines? Or is the dynamic between the lab and the pit-mix a permanently lost cause? The pit mix has also forcefully dominated the (admittedly impudent) rat terrier a couple of times (and been corrected for it), but my sense has been that she doesn't take him seriously enough to actually attack him despite his petulance (or at least hasn't yet). She also seemed to treat him (and until last Saturday the Lab) with genuine affection most of the time.

I'm unwilling at this point to give up on the pit-boxer mix absent a responsible re-homing opportunity, so we could be doing this for a while.

Also, curious how serious those more experienced with dogs (and especially tougher breeds) think what happened between the pit mix and the lab was. It scared me to death (my first real dogfight experience), and my assumption has been that had I not been there to break it up, I would likely have come back to a dead lab. Is this correct? Or do these things usually break up when one dog submits and the other feels they have made their point? Am I overreacting?

My prior dog experience extends only to an English Cocker Spaniel and said Lab, so, while sometimes obstinate and unruly, easy dogs. Not sure it leaves me well prepared to make informed judgements in this case. As my impression is that this venue seems to have a number of posters with experience working with more challenging dogs, I'm eager for any insights.

Grateful for any advice.

"My thought is that the most conservative tack would be to responsibly re-home the pit mix via a breed rescue, ensuring that she goes to a single-dog household with experience having assertive dogs, and maintain our Alcatraz protocol until that works out. I certainly don't think I would ever be able to trust the three of them alone again.

That could take a while, though. Is my approach overkill in the mean time? "

You are not overreacting, and it's not overkill to KEEP THEM SEPARATED. There is no less draconian solution now, IMO. Not at this time, and maybe never.

You understand some of what you did wrong, but I have to point out that you also failed to take into account what a difference there is between two dogs and three, and what a grave error it is ever to have chewies, bones, or any high-value items, out among loose dogs. And I mean even two dogs .... even two who may have lived together without mishap for a long time. When there are three, and one is a recent addition .... this was asking for trouble.

(BTW, this is not a breed-specific thing.)


I don't have a lot of time right now, but I wanted to say ... please do not back off the strict plan for now to KEEP THEM SEPARATED.

And you already realize that a pack of three (or even two) is never a project for just one of the human residents.


I'm glad you are asking, by the way.

Many thanks for your advice Connie. It won't go unheeded. They're staying put for the foreseeable then.

My position was that increasing the household to the two dogs was already project enough for us and my intuition was the further add would complicate the challenges significantly, hence my opposition to the idea. You're right though, I did in my inexperience underestimate the degree to which that would be the case, hence my ultimate acquiescence.

We are both very much accepting the lessons learned at this point and grateful that the "tuition" wasn't more costly than it was. And given that I had acquiesced and gone along with the plan, it was, in retrospect, highly irresponsible for me not to take control of the situation and ascertain more clearly what we needed to do.

One of the "lessons learned" was very much the folly of introducing high value items under those circumstances. We might as well have added PCP to the water supply, frankly.

What more specifically led to the attack was that, as the dogs had all been very cooperative and relatively calm, and were getting along, I had the "bright idea" of picking up some knuckle bones for them while we were out at the pet store. I thought I was being cautious in giving them to the dogs, one each, under "controlled conditions" in the kitchen while making pancakes for brunch. We shut them in the kitchen with us to make sure they each stayed focused on their own bones, with the intention of collecting them before moving on (a plan obviously not well thought out from the start).

Things started to unravel shortly, when the Lab (the chewing champion among them by far) cracked her (massive) bone into two large pieces, one of which was collected by the rat terrier (without incident, so we didn't intervene). So the "one bone per dog" plan held up for about three minutes. Things further unwound when I overheated the griddle, and the fiance reflexively opened the kitchen door to clear the smoke, feeling like things were all under control with the dogs each chewing their respective bones calmly. shortly thereafter, the pit-mix absconded to the living room with her bone. I initially went to coral her back into the kitchen, but we had lots of things going on, so I left her alone, reasoning that as long as the other two were under control we were fine.

The plot thickened after brunch when I went to collect up the bones (now all in multiple pieces). We certainly weren't going to leave them laying around to start fights over (how clever we though we were being!). I ordered the pit-mix off of the couch and collected the bones I saw that she had pretend-buried between the cushions. About a minute later I heard the fiance scolding the pit-mix from back in the kitchen for "forcefully dominating" the rat terrier over a bone piece he had found still out in the kitchen.

As she was trying to get a slip leash on the pit mix to "time-out" her in the bathroom, and pausing to clear a couple of things out of that room we didn't want her getting into (we didn't have crates set up - foolishly), I noticed suddenly back in the living room that the Lab had managed to find a bone-piece that I had failed to collect and was lying over it possessively, on the living room floor gnawing at it, and she proceeded to ignore my command to drop it. As I stepped in to claim the bone from the Lab, I heard her growl- and was quizzical, as I had long since broken her of contesting with me over even very high value objects. Before I could correct her and take the bone, I heard a movement behind me and turned just in time to see the pit-mix, who had evidently eluded the fiance and been approaching, presumably having spotted the Lab with the bone, springing at the lab's throat like a linebacker within a quarter of a second of the Lab's growl, where she latched on snarling and shaking.

My guess is that the pit-mix thought that the Lab and Rattie rather than me had taken her bones, or was at least seriously miffed that they had ended up having them when she had lost hers.

As stated at the introduction of the topic, so much fail from start to finish. And as is I'm sure obvious from the outset to anyone here with experience, and is to me now, that it is naive to think that a situation like that is going to stay under control and not unravel in an unmanageable chain of events once the bones are out.

On one hand, the incident was, proximately, entirely the result of me setting them up for failure via my mismanagement. On the other, who is to say that in our absence, they wouldn't sooner or later have found something they considered valuable enough to contest over, and so perhaps in retrospect it was in some perverse way fortunate that my foolishness brought it to a head and resulted in me getting them separated and the house fully under control before something worse happened without me there.

One of our many lessons learned.

"On one hand, the incident was, proximately, entirely the result of me setting them up for failure via my mismanagement. On the other, who is to say that in our absence, they wouldn't sooner or later have found something they considered valuable enough to contest over, and so perhaps in retrospect it was in some perverse way fortunate that my foolishness brought it to a head and resulted in me getting them separated and the house fully under control before something worse happened without me there."


Yes, you are correct: either way would have been a direct result of mismanagement.

Maybe others will read the thread and avoid something similar. That's a positive outcome in addition to your own warning.

As a person who's lived with up to five adult pit and pit mixes in my house at one time I'm well versed in crate and rotate. I agree that the best thing to do would be to contact a breed specific rescue. You're in luck, since CA is extremely pit friendly. If you need any advice or contacts in the state, let me know. I've got a plethora of them, but two or three are really good options for info/help.

If you can, screw tall metal baby gates into door frames or hall walls (or both) to create larger 'safe zones.' They're easy to uninstall and only require some drywall putty and a paint touch up to fix the holes.

Thanks for the info Samantha. Don't know why my location isn't showing, but I'm actually in Dallas.


If by chance you or anyone might have any recommendations for breed specific rescue/adoption contacts in the North Texas that handle pit mixes, we would of course be very grateful.


We had considered gating off sections of the house, but sort of felt (especially given our recent record) that the potential for error on our part was too great, and that at this point we'd be better off sticking to a more foolproof structure. With only one dog out at a time, I am a bit concerned that the amount of time each dog is spending confined might lead to counterproductive frustration and I'm concerned about joint health with the reduced mobility, so we might look into that if this drags on and we get more comfortable that things are under control. With the pit-boxer mix, barriers of that sort would probably require having inculcated a pretty reliable attitude of compliance, as I don't think she'd have any trouble clearing anything short of about a six foot gate if the urge took her.


An additional concern about this (which I'm not sure is warranted- would welcome advice) is that we are kind of thinking we wouldn't want to risk the dogs (especially the pit mix and the rattie) thinking of certain territories within the house as "theirs", and maybe being territorial about them later.

You can always rotate the dogs into the confined areas so that there isn't any issues with territorial attitudes. I know for a fact that baby gates helped me with a few dogs that had barrier aggression towards other dogs. Having a larger space gave them more freedom of movement and they didn't feel the need to 'guard' the 'fence'. It's definitely a concern when a dog could scale them. I use one currently to prevent the dogs from going down the hall into the bedroom, since I've found a few accidents and I'm not sure who was the culprit. They respect the gate as long as I didn't go over it first! Once I'm headed down the hall they think they have the right to follow me.

I also apologize for thinking you're in CA. For some reason I saw Connie's location and thought it was yours! I'll ask around and see if there's anything close by for you.