Female fighting

We had someone write to us about their 2 females fighting, both are fairly young (between 2 and 4 years of age). Anyways, I thought I'd post here to see if you guys have any tips/advice for her to try, she definitely is willing to work with them. 90 percent of the time they are fine but then they end up having a fight a day or so. It sounds as if most of the fights are over her, not food or toys. They are fixed.

Mud wrestling? Wet T-shirt Contest? Roller Derby?

I think I had a long day because, my brain is on crack.

Much experience here, unfortunately. Our girls' issues are food and jealousy. The food is an easy one to manage. They eat separately and don't get any treats together. The jealousy is a harder one. Honestly, it just takes some time of really paying attention to your behavior and how it, in turn, affects their behavior. We've had to learn the triggers and just know to avoid them. The biggest issue is Nell going after Lucy if she's getting too much one on one attention but Lucy has been known to get snarky in the opposite scenario as well. It really is a fine balance. There are plenty of nights when Lucy is cuddled up on the couch with me and I can hug and love on her and Nell is fine but I'm always watching her and paying attention to her body language and if I can tell she's getting pissy I immediately stop touching Lucy. Sometimes when they get really worked up, but not quite at the fight stage, I'll just get up and walk out of the room. They then either forget each other so they can follow me or they work it out themselves in a calmer manner than they would had I stayed in the room. Usually it involves Nell putting her front paws up on Lucy's back to assert her dominance, then they're fine.

I don't know if that's helpful or not. If she has specific questions, I'll be glad to help as much as I can. I'm sure others can chime in about whether it's a behavior you can completely break (the jealousy induced fighting). We haven't found anything. Things are MUCH better than they used to be but it's because we've trained ourselves, not necessarily the other way around.

They don't call them bitches for nothing. It's really common with girls, unfortunately. Everyone wants to Queen Shit on the top of Turd Hill. Amanda has good suggestions--I don't have anything extra to add. I'm REALLY careful with girls. Sometimes it goes beautifully and sometimes.......not so much.

I don't know if the Victoria Stillwell website lets you look at specific episodes, but she did have one about two female pugs who were constantly fighting.

If I remember correctly, she dealt with it by first separating the ladies, then having the owners each take one of them and bring them together (not very close at first, though). As soon as they got in sight of each other, each pug got a small treat. She repeated this, over and over, for several days gradually decreasing the distance between the two dogs. Eventually (given the magic of TV editing), they were happily sitting side by side on the couch looking for treats and ignoring each other. Victoria's goal was something like "convincing each of them that good things happen when they are together". She also stressed that it wasn't a quick fix and that the owners would have to keep working on it and learn to observe the precursors to a squabble. Don't know if it's applicable to this particular situation, just tossing it out there.

Here site is: http://www.victoriastilwell.com/phpBB2/index.php

yikes.... fighting is no good. Amanda mentioned a lot of good advice...i to have nothing further to add..just good luck and hope they stop or settle down a lot more!

Imon wrote:I don't know if the Victoria Stillwell website lets you look at specific episodes, but she did have one about two female pugs who were constantly fighting.

I think that I remember seeing that episode - watched it just because it was about pugs, of course!

I hope that they can get the fighting under control. We just had a family who had previously adopted from us foster for the first time. Their female & the foster female did NOT get along. So much so, that they had a fight last Friday that resulted in their own pug losing an eye. Needless to say, the foster pug was moved. I felt so bad for them.