Aggression between two bitches.

[Deborah Christopher]

Yesterday morning my two bitches had a serious fight, I've never experienced such aggression between two setters before, or any other dog for that matter!  It started over a treat, I gave them both a treat, as done many many many times before, however one dropped theirs and the other one went to pick it up and then all hell broke loose.  They really tried to hurt each other, neither my shouts or pouring cold water over them did the slightest bit of good.  In the end I had to pull them apart by their collars and they were still trying to get to each other.  I put them in separate rooms until it all calmed down.  One bitch had puncture wounds on the neck, leg and side, the other no marks.  When I reintroduced them to each other it was as if nothing had happened.  Has anyone experienced this before and do you think its just a one off?  They haven't had a treat together since!

[Ossian]

Well done Deborah - you stopped and thought about it and realised you had missed a huge chunk of information that has a possible very large bearing on your situation.

Now you need to think about "managing" the next few months so that you can slip into a good routine with your girls. One of the things you might think about is marking things on a calendar.
It lets you see where the season started and when that spat happened. If it is cyclical you have a bit of an early warning system going and perhaps feed in different rooms or in crates for a while.

Manage your situation with the little one as well, no treats when she is arounf, she isnt there at feeding times and if there are particular toys that they might be guarded over take them out of the equation. Minimise the risk but try not to get uptight about it!
lots of help on here.

[Deborah Christopher]

Thanks Ossian
Yes I have had to take a step back and study their behaviour, I can see which one is the more dominant and I am now working on helping her to become leader without anymore violence I hope!

[Teresa]

Recently a had a huge fight between my 9 year old cocker (ginja) and 2 year old IRS (Pitanga). Ginja had always been the top dog, even over my 50 kg dogs, but after Pitanga had her litter she became more and more dominant and there were some smaller fights with no harm done. Then a couple of months there was a bigger fight wich Pitanga clearly own, but my cocker refused to belive that she was no longer the top dog. This last fight they would not break up. Pitanga would stop at my command but the ohter one tried to use this breaks to her advantage. We are working on the problem, but I had to come between them all and invert the treatments. I now treat Pitanga as top dog instead of Ginja and have been workin with ginja on submissive behavior. It seems to be working and Ginja is finally acceting her new place in our house. It seemed to me that either I did this or my cocker would keep picking up fights to try and get her spot back, and would eventually get hurt badly. I should also point out that all this fighting occured when one of them was in heat.