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6233527 tn?1379721656

Dogs not getting along

I have two Yorkshire Terriers. One which I've had for about 7 years now and the other which I've had for around 4 years. The older one is female. They've always gotten along and been in good health up until around 6 months ago. My younger dog, Nike, has gotten very territorial of me and lashes out at my other dog, Hershey, when I give her attention. It's not all the time that it happens, but has become more frequent in the past couple months. I feel that I give them both fair amounts of attention and they are both trained, well behaved dogs.

Over the last week or so Nike has been acting even worse. They both have kennels in which I keep them in at night, and they are only used for that purpose or when we have someone from Mediacom or  someone out of the ordinary come into our house because they get excited. But recently Nike won't get out of his kennel in the morning, or if Hershey is around he sits in his kennel and won't come out, he growls if she walks by, if she comes any where near him he gets very stiff and anxious and growls sometimes, it's all I can do to keep them from fighting, and Hershey has grown quite scared of him.

I'm in a real predicament here because I love both of these dogs as my children and I'm not sure what to do. Being as they weren't always like this towards each other leaves me to believe something can be done to combat this and resolve this issue.
I know I can't keep them separated, and I want more than anything to know what to do for them so they will feel comfortable around each other and we can resume our normal lives.
So if anyone has any suggestions, tips or pointers it would be much appreciated. I plan on talking to my vet in the next couple of weeks but I just wanted to know if there was anything I could do before hand or anything to remedy this situations asap.
Thanks.  
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Avatar universal
With my dog, what we had to do was reassert the dominance chain in the house. For example, we took the eldest dog rocky who was getting beat up and the youngest dog ACE who was being the bully and showed that rocky was dominant. (both pits)

First we asserted dominance with ACE and let him know that we were head of the pack. IE: Putting him on his back till he stopped kicking, winning a staring contest, and even one time had to bite his ear.

Then we let both dogs in the same room and when ACE went to attack Rocky we pulled him away quickly, stood between both dogs, stared ACE down, said "GENTLE" in a commanding voice and let ACE approach again. When he would start to growl we'd pat him on the but and say "No" but give Rocky attention for being "Gentle". Then, we'd start the whole thing over again.

Next, we moved to food. ACE would try to attack for his food, so we took it from him and gave it Rocky. We make ACE sit and stay until we noticed that Rocky was ready to walk away and let ACE approach. On that note, we would then tell ACE he was allowed to approach, but when Rocky wanted to approach again, we forced ACE to back down.

Sooner or later ACE and Rocky basically learned their places that we gave to them that way they didn't have to fight to the death for dominance. It actually worked and now we have our rank in our pack. Both boys get along fine. Yes, sometimes we have to reassert dominance of Rocky over ACE but they haven't actually gotten into a massive fight so I'm pretty happy.

Try to pick your own chain of dominance. You first then oldest to youngest dog. :)
Helpful - 0
612551 tn?1450022175
Your profile says you are 18, so you got your first dog when you were 11?  If so, the second one dates back to the old age of 14.  So, you had these pets as a youngster in your parent's home... are you still there?

I don't know that my questions will lead to anything useful but I find you story strange to say the least..

We have our first Terrier, a Westie, and if he is any example I can say Terriers are very unpredictable and stubborn.  Outs, which we got as an 8 year old rescue, will lash out at me and while I have never been bitten hard, he has nipped.  I've tried a lot of approaches and he is getting better but he is still capable of lashing out.  Again, this may be more common in the Terrier breed than in other breeds.

Guess this is going nowhere useful... but it seems to me you have to try to put them together and let them work it out - or is there some blood shed?
Helpful - 0
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