My wife & I have 4 dogs in outside pens.
Joe the collie (male) has his own pen.
Skeeter the mutt (male) has his own pen.
Coco the chocolate lab (female) and Halo the boxer cross (female) share a pen.
My wife walks Joe every evening , when she gets back home & is putting Joe back in his pen the two bishes in the other pen start fighting. Coco the lab is the the instigator.
Ordinarily the two "girls" get along just fine , never a cross word between them , until my wife comes back from a walk with Joe.
Major battle this evening ,not the usual little scuffle , the two bishes are now in separate pens.
What the heck is going on here ? Why does putting Joe in his pen start a fight between the two ?
Mike
I'd speculate that it's displaced aggression stemming from one or more of the following factors:
1. Desire to get the hell out of the kennel and get attention from your wife;,
2. Frustration and desire of both bitches at not being able to get the attention from your wife that the collie is getting;
3. The lab being dominant over the boxer (thus feelinig free to direct frustrated aggression toward her).
All dogs get excited when your wife shows up with the collie. They all want to get attention and exercise. Their excitement turns into near frenzy and the lab expresses the frustration through aggression.
You need to watch their behavior closely and repeatedly to analyze it. I'll bet you can see the behavioral precursors and you'll be able to predict what's coming next. Then you just have to figure out how to divert them before the fight breaks out. I'll bet if your wife let the two bitches out of their shared kennel and interacted with them for awhile there would be no fight - unless they were really jealous of each other in which case the lab may be aggressive asserting dominance and "ownership" of the key resource - your wife.
But I'm a long way off and just speaking from my experience with dogs and just speculating.
