Working Dogs and Aggression - Page 1

I know many people seem to think that working dogs cannot get along with each other and that most working dogs are dog aggressive. Mine live together and do wonderful (of course there is the occasional scuffle but nothing serious).  I have been looking at getting an older (around 1 yr) dog and people seem to think I am crazy when I say I want one that is not dog aggressive, at least with dogs in his/her own household. Is this true and if so do you just house your dogs all separately and how do you go about that? I like my dogs to work but to also be part of my family - they sleep in my room, play together in the backyard, go to the lake together etc. Am I just being unrealistic to want this with my next dog?.

Kaden, you can't generalize. It all depends on the individual dog. Every breeder I know has certain dogs that can't be turned out with certain other dogs without fights erupting. Females are reportedly the worst. During the brief time I had 2 females, they would fight to see who got to sleep beside the bed at night.

I don't believe working lines are any worse or any better than showlines when it comes to this. It all depends on pack dynamics. Sometimes two males will do well together, until one becomes old and weak, and then the young one will challenge him, and bloodshed will result.

The safest mix is, of course, a male and a female. If you want to try anything else, BE CAREFUL. Crate or kennel the dogs when they are left alone to be on the safe side.

The Management are getting on for 10 now and lived together all their lives, currently sharing the house with a high drive Sch H III Malinois female with no issues.

i152.photobucket.com/albums/s196/Kaffirdog/DigsXmas.jpg

Margaret N-J

This depends on the dogs, also if you bring in another one you can upset the peace that you now enjoy. You need to be prepared to live in a house divided. My girlfriend uses the child gates to block off rooms

 Everybody told me I couldn't keep a mother and daugher peacefully in my house, but the two are inseparable. It's weird, like the big dominant one lets her mom boss her around. Very cute, and very lovey-dovey, always washing each other's faces.

I can confirm what Margarety( Kaffirdog) said. All three dogs are highdrive and SchH qualified. They live together in the house with no issues. the decoy for the GSDs and the mali Handler, its me and I live in this house too
just see for yourself what kind of dogs they are.

Video1

video2

video3

All the best
Ulf

Hi Missbeeb

It is me handling Hot Diggery Dog (vid 1) and Digby Dogbi (vid 3).  Both The Management and Floh the Mali have only ever had Schutzhund training,   The vids were taken just a few weeks ago, first shots, no rehearsal or pretraining, hence the embarrassing lack of control on my two who have been retired for years, in fact, doing this reality exercise with them was a spur of the moment thing since Floh was the one we wanted to test in an "off the training field" situation.

In case you wondered why I sat down for a minute, it was less to do with my age and fitness than the fact Ulf inadvertantly bashed me on the head with the stick, knocking the phone out of my hand and almost stunning me.  The decoy in Flohs vid was a local farmer who had never worn a sleeve before and had just come to train his own dog and I thought he deserved an Oscar for his performance, his ad lib was superb.

As you can see, we had a great laugh and I think the vids show that a properly trained Schutzhund dog with the right temperament will "get real" without the trappings of the training field if necessary.

Margaret N-J