Expert: Lee Charles Kelley - 1/29/2008

Question
We adopted two 9 wk old Shih Tzu’s. They are 8 months old. About 2 months ago, they have started growling and biting each other.They don't do this with humans. After they fight, or we pull them apart, they seem better and fall asleep together. We separate them, hold them firmly around the back oh the neck and say NO!!!  They don't listen. This happens about 2-3 times a day and sometimes not at all. They are very sweet and precious. They do play well together and like to be near each other. They are not fixed yet.
Thank you in advance for your help.

Answer
Hi there.

Thanks for the question.

The trick to stopping this behavior is to supervise them more closely when they're playing together rather than coming in after the fact, and scolding them and punishing them. They see that as aggression on your part, which doesn't help the aggressive feelings, that have bubbled up and boiled over during play, dissipate. It usually only makes the aggression continue to show up during play.

Have you trained them? If so, what training method did you use, treat training or being the pack leader?

While I wait to hear back from you, teach them what "Wait..." and "Okay!" mean. For instance, when it's time to go for a walk, stop at the front door, say, "Wait..." and then when they show a little impulse control, say, "Okay!" and let them through the door. This has nothing to do with showing them that you're the pack leader; there's no such thing as a pack leader in wild wolf packs, so dogs can't have inherited an instinct to follow an imaginary creature that doesn't exist in nature. It's a way of teaching these pups a bit of impulse control. You can do the same thing with a lot of other situations, when you put their food bowls down, for instance. The point is you want them to be able to respond to the "Wait..." by showing a moment of impulse control, and you want them to feel that "Okay!" means whatever they were doing at the moment is over and it's time to move on to something cool, like eating or going for a walk.

Once they've learned what "Wait..." and "Okay!" mean, and you put yourself in a better position to monitor them more closely when they play, you can use either of these "commands" to stop a fight from starting up, or to stop it when it does. What I normally do is use "Wait..." when I sense the dogs are starting to feel more tension than I'd like. And I use "Okay!" (in a happy voice) to stop the fight from happening.

If you can't stop the fight from happening, you have to intervene physically, but you must STOP grabbing them by the neck and shouting "No!" If you've already stopped the fight, that means it's over. And THAT means that any further punishment or scolding is not only ineffective you're essentially punishing and scolding the dogs for stopping! So don't do it. You should praise them profusely once they've stopped. In some cases I'll even praise a dog in order to stop a fight from happening!

I hope this helps. Let me know how they were trained, if they were.

LCK