So I went to a Pet Adoption Day at tinest minion of Sauron’s daycare on Saturday and found a new furry friend.
I pleaded and begged and gave him the puppy dog eyes and finally Sauron consented and let us adopt her.
She is 3 1/2 years old, 24 pounds, solid white with deep brown eyes. Her name is Angel. She is a spitz mix. She had heartworms but only has one treatment left. Her owners gave her up…don’t know why.
Here’s the problem…she can’t seem to get along with our doggie at home, Baxter. Baxter is 3 1/2 years old, 21 pounds and part sheltie, part Australian shepherd. He loves to play and I was so hoping that Angel would be a good playmate for him.
Everytime I am petting Angel if Baxter walks up then she tries to bite him. She will growl and show her teeth and move all around me to keep him from getting near me. She seems to ignore him if they are just in the back yard together and none of the family is outside with them.
Baxter is scared of her. As of last night he won’t come onto the deck if she is up there. We have a fairly nice sized fenced in back yard.
We really don’t want to have to give her up but if she can’t get along with Baxter then we will have no choice.
I have tried giving them both treats and petting them at the same time and Angel doesn’t go for it.
Any suggestions on how we might be able to help her get adjusted to her new brother?
I know it’s too late now but generally a good idea for adopting dogs, if you already own them is to let them interact before you make your final decision.
It’s going to take some time, and it may not ever happen. Angel has been though of stress lot lately (owner give up, adoption with lots of other dogs, moving into a new home) so just give her lots of affection and be patient.
I agree with mouthbreather, you need to give it time. Right now the dogs are establishing their hierarchy. It may take a few weeks for them to get used to each other. If, after a month, they still don’t get along, you may want to try professional training.
I know what you mean. Baxter gets along with every dog in our neighborhood when they come over to play so I didn’t figure there would be a problem with him.
Angel seemed to get along with all the dogs at the Adoption Day and I specifically asked the lady from the Humane Society if she thought there would be any problem or if she knew if Angel was an only dog at her old home. The lady told me she didn’t know about being an only dog but that Angel was very even tempered and had a very sweet personality.
And she does…she is great with all of us individually…it’s when we call for Baxter or he tries to get some love that she freaks out.
She hasn’t hurt him but she snips at him and chases him off the deck.
It has only been 2 days so we are giving it another 3 or 4 days to see if they can get along.
If not, we will have to take her back to the shelter.
Please give it some time! We adopted a dog about three months ago, and at first she didn’t get on with our cat at all. They’re still not best buddies, but they tolerate each other and have even been known to share a bed. Dogs are pack animals and once they sort out who’s the alpha dog they should be ok. A brilliant book which helped us a lot was “The Dog Listener”. I forget the author’s name but she revised the method used by the original horse whisperer to train dogs and it really works. Poppy went from a loud, destructive tearaway to a well-behaved little darling - but it does take time and patience. Angel sounds like she’s worth it though!
We had a very sweet Irish Setter mix. She was never aggressive in the least. But when we brought home a very obnoxious Golden Retriever puppy she would terrorize him. She’d get him in the hall, then would lie down at the entrance and trap him there, growling like Cerberus if he tried to escape. I had to feed them separately for weeks and she would always go for a nip at his feet when I’d take them outside. After about a month, though, they learned to tolerate each other and lived together in happy drooling idiocy for 12 odd years. ::sniffle::
One thing that helped was a crate. We would crate Diggity (the golden puppy) at night right next to where Arrow (his tormentor) slept. They got used to each other. They had no choice.
Both of those dogs are long gone now and I admit that the memory of what a pain in the ass those first few weeks were is a bit dim. But it did settle down, Aries. Just took a few years off my life is all.
Good luck and good for you for adopting in the first place.
Typically, females are more dominant than males so Angel probably is going to end up being the alpha of the house. Once they get that straightened out, things will probably settle down. Another thing, it can take a couple weeks for Angel to start settling in and showing her true personality.
I have 3 females and 1 male. One of the females has a strong alpha personality and will sometimes snap at the others when I’m petting her and they try to get in on the action. She also gets vocal when I’m giving another dog attention instead of her. Let Angel know that you are the alpha by correcting her and she will settle down. She may never stop snapping during loving time but as long as she’s not being violent, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
We definitely want to keep her. She is a beautiful dog and very sweet to us so far. It’s just with Baxter. Poor Bax stood at the bottom of the deck, tail wagging, last night and wouldn’t come up no matter how many times I called him…not even for a treat…as long as Angel was up there with me.
I think Baxter would have no problem letting Angel be dominant. He just doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to play like all of his other visitors.
The shelter told us we had 10 days to bring Angel back and pick out a new dog if they just couldn’t get along. I really don’t want to do that but Baxter was ours first and we have to think about him and his feelings if Angel starts to really hurt him.
She shouldn’t. Dog fights rarely get to the point of being lethal unless one of the dogs is viscious.
When my husband and I moved back to our hometown, we had to live with my grandmother for a while until our house was ready. She had an adult male dog, and I have an adult female. They immediately clashed. I tried to keep the two apart because of the fighting, which I feared might get dangerous.
My vet recommended that I just let them fight it out, saying that he would be very surprised if any blood was drawn. He said that once my female felt she had established dominance, the fighting would cease.
We let them go. There was a tussle, nipping at ears, and ramming into one another, but no injury was done to either dog. Occasionally, the male would do something that would offend my dog, and they would go at it again, wrestling around, growling menacingly, but neither one of them was ever hurt in their fights.
It took a few weeks, but they eventually established a peace.
She’s acting like a typical spitz. American Eskimo dogs can be wimpy little things, it doesn’t sound like she is aggressive, she is just afraid (have you heard her make that high-pitched screaming noise yet?). I’ll echo what everyone has said, you just have to give it time.
Our two dogs that were adopted at the same time have been dealing with dominance stuff since day one. Our golden retriever, Rusty, has been dominant since day one, but our yellow lab/golden mix, Isaac, has longed to not be at the bottom of every heap he’s ever been his whole life. So every few days there’s some more dominance games. I was amazed at how often male dogs hump other male dogs just to prove their position…but Isaac stands there and happily lets Rusty hump him any time Rusty feels it’s time to reassert his position.
Introduce another dog into the mix and it’s dominance time all over again. They wrestle and fight all the time, and sometimes it seems like they’re trying to kill each other. They just had a knockdown-dragout because they got too excited when the mailman came by. Sometimes they draw a little blood, but so far it’s just been the boys being the boys.
Give it time. Establishing pack order is important. Just make sure you and any humans in the family are higher in the pack than any dogs, and it should all work out!