Case Study of Dogs Fighting in the Home Marley & Grace - Part 1

Marley and Grace are a rottweiler and a French bulldog cross who have been fighting within the home environment. There is an awful lot of opinion on the existence of domestic dogs being pack animals, which encompasses dominance, territorial behaviour, and hierarchy. In particular, there is a non belief that humans can trigger adverse behaviour in dogs within the home by them showing a controlling response, and yet that is exactly what is happening in this situation.

Other contributing factors at play here are that both are female, and same sex dogs in a home environment can sometimes significantly increase the potential for altercations, particularly as one of the dogs is entire. The female owner of the French bulldog cross also got the puppy at a very emotionally unstable time in her life. The emotional response we share around our dogs has been scientifically proven to affect behaviour.

Before her arrival, the rottweiler was already in a position of control within the home, this only became more apparent with the arrival of a second dog. As Grace (French bulldog) got older, she became increasingly more protective of her owner not only from the other dog, but also her husband. As the hierarchy intensified both dogs claimed the sofa as a power spot meaning that if Grace’s owner tried to sit down it triggered Grace to attack, but also if either dog happened to be sitting on the sofa a fight would trigger.

Both dogs are trying to retain one single position of control, which of course is not possible. The situation is at a crisis point and the plan of action to resolve this is straight forward. By removing the hierarchy and not allowing the dogs to claim territory within the home, coupled with Grace’s owner encouraging her to spend more time in her own space the dogs will become perfectly relaxed. How do I know this? When I first arrived at the home the dogs were playing together, but not in a particularly healthy way, tensions were high. However, when the owners were not present the dogs co-existed perfectly without any problems. When the husband came in the dogs immediately resumed unhealthy play, and with the added presence of his wife, within minutes the dogs had a fight, as can clearly be seen in the video.

This will by no means be a quick fix and will require consistent diligence and commitment from the owners if they are to fix this long term. It is worth mentioning however, that within 24 hours of implementing some of the changes the owners had already reported improvements. I will be revisiting the owners after a few months to see how they are getting on.