Sometimes I wonder how to prove I'm damned determined instead of a darned fool.

I don't have the option of getting rid of either dog - they both need training and without it the same issue could come up in another home. Especially with one being deaf and one having severe food allergies.

Even though I have to keep them seperate this is still the best home they have - and in the end I feel that this is my fault and not theirs.

Thanks for all your support and ideas. After yesterday I just felt depressed.

I balled my eyes out with "guilt" several years ago, when every dog in my home was a rescue, and a rescued male Greyhound, and a rescued male GSD from HORRIBLE circumstances didn't get along. This is WAY before Gary and I got into Schutzhund, in fact this situation was just the start in some ways, of our "REAL" education.

After the first time the Greyhound went for stitches, we knew we were over OUR heads for training. We consulted lots of different trainers, and paid several, and I think in the end we actually got decent advice. The bottom line? The rescued GSD did not get a good genetic start to life (most likely inbred) and had an equally bad start to live environmentally (chained to a tree and half starved to death with his sister) before he was rescued.

Training helped, but unless you can solve that sort of problem 100%, you endanger a dog, and gurantee yourself lots of vet visits.

Up to that point I had never considered separating dogs in our home. I felt good about rescuing dogs, and giving a home to unwanted dogs, but geez....how DARE those dogs inconvenience ME!!!!

Here now 4 years later, I recognize that training has value, and environmental control has value too. With multiple dogs, it's often a balancing act.

Our mixed mutt rescued female of unknown origin and our GSD female don't exactly love each other. Through a combination of training and separation, we keep them both happy and safe. They can be together under certain situations, and not others. We have picked our battles and I am proud to say that there have been NO stitches required.

Bottom line (and sorry for my "rambling") don't feel guilty. Just work on practical solutions to the problem. The best trainer on the planet might not be able to get them to 100% hang together 24X7 without supervision. So don't expect that of yourself. Look at compromises where all can be happy!

Beth

Beth, that is perfectly worded. I will have to refer to that in the future. Thank you.

2 females that hate eachother should just be seperated. Females will fight to the death and usually you won't have "a few minutes" to step in. Normally what happens in situations like this where you try to make them OK with eachother is you correct them hard for aggression so they learn to not show signs of aggression, then one day when one of them annoys the other to that point where they can no longer restrain their aggression, one will attack the other with practically no warning because she figured out that warning gets a correction.

Best case scenario is that you teach them to completely ignore eachother. If you find that they are too fixated with eachother then treat it like obedience under distraction -- put one female in a down on a tie out and do obedience with the other one at a distance where she is almost losing focus on you and correct her for paying attention to the other dog. You need to be firm with this, and I wouldn't use a prong to correct for the aggression. But I would not let them run together or be unleashed in the same room together.

Hey all here is an update - been crating them next to each other and there have been no issues with that. They are always seperated (and always will be). I went to my session with the trainer last night and we did basically what Mike and Anne describe above. Both dogs muzzled, the submissive "target" dog Lilly tied to a post and Sadie the "agressive" one with me with the ecollar. Over and over again we approached Lilly from side back and front. Sadie charged on the first go aroudn but after that she would lay on the ground and turn her head away when we got to close.

I really cannot figure out the trigger because of when she shys away like that. Also when Lilly is in the kennel and Sadie is out Sadie stays away even though she is the agressor.

And to add to it before the training Lilly tolerated all of the dogs that were there male and female until someone came and picked up their black female pitbull. She bared her teeth and advanced which was odd because otherwise she is submissive. So I think there is something about the female pitbull that sets Lilly off. (Though Sadie is a white one).

Also my trainer told me a story about how he had his dobe in the doggy day care he runs and he had a feeling that the dobe would be agressive even though he never had been before and then he did attack another dog and would have killed him. I hate to question my trainer but what the heck? Don't encounters like that cause dog agression sometimes?

Thanks for all of your help and any more continued ideas you have - Kelly