Getting really nasty!

[lisarose]

I have a 15mth old staffy/pitbull x female (stellar) and a 9 year old staffy bully x male (donnie), both sterilised. I take stellar to regular obedience training where she loves everyone, canine and human alike albeit she is a little submissive with other dogs at times, rolling on her back and looking unsure. At home she plays happily, she shares her toys or (donnie will take them off her and destroy them), but she has an air of arrogance and extreme possessiveness over me. She nudges our cats out of the way if they come for cuddles, gets in the way of Donnie if he gets too much affection and on and off we have been having really aggressive fights over the shopping, the fridge being open, entering or exiting the kitchen. The last few weeks I started full-time work and now the aggression has increased to every second day, sometimes twice a day and has resulted in a puncture wound to each dogs' necks. I am so scared that one of them will be killed. Stellar is the challenger, she glares and lunges without a seconds notice. Is there anything that will fix this, my husband is ready to rehome her but it would break my heart?

[Mattie]

I don't allow my dogs in the kitchen when I am working in there, especially when I am putting the shopping away or cooking. The best way to stop this sort of behaviour is to not let it happen.

I would also seperate them when I left them alone, this is easily done with crates and if they look as if they are going to fight, crate them to cool off.

The more they fight the more they will fight, to a dog it is self rewarding, Stella stops Donnie from getting attention so next time the fight will be more intense because she has been successful.

[Aidan]

You have two dogs of breeds who are likely to fight, which means you need to be an expert trainer and use management extensively. Either that or you almost certainly will have to rehome one of the dogs given the frequency and increasing severity of this problem.

Matt has already given you some great suggestions which I will second.

I would also like to add an exercise.

Have two mats or stations where your dogs are both taught, individually, to go to and stay in a down position.

When they are really good at going to and staying on their mats (use lots of food to train this, keep a high rate of reinforcement), then teach them to go to their separate mats together.

When they can do this, then each day give a brief amount of attention to each dog individually while they both stay on their separate mats. If either dog leaves their mat, the cuddle session ends. While they stay on their mats, cycle back and forth between them giving each a short amount of attention.

Over time you can increase the length of time you give each dog attention for.

The attention you give is a reward for staying on the mat, you stop using food at this point.

[ajln40]

I would also suggest increasing her daily exercise time with you. Make sure she gets time to take a walk with just you because this will give you guys time to bond as well as release energy.