Sibling Aggression: It CAN Be Resolved! DFW Dog Trainer Blog
There are many types of canine aggression. What differentiates aggression is the trigger that causes a dog to snap, growl, lunge, and–quite possibly–bite. If your dog shows aggression when someone or some animal touches his/her food, it’s food aggression and resource guarding. If your dog barks when a stranger comes to the door, he or she is probably feeling territorial, or fear could be the cause.
For this blog, I’d like to talk about sibling aggression.
Sibling aggression is when two or more dogs within the same household, whether they’re related by blood or not, simply cannot get along. It may start out as growling, or maybe you’ve just noticed that their rough housing is a little too intense. Generally, this is an indication that one dog is trying to establish dominance over the other.
Sometimes, this isn’t even an issue. Sometimes, one dog is perfectly happy submitting to the other dog. In other cases, however, he or she may fight back. The dogs may attack each other or you may simply be worried they’ll start attacking each other due to their behavior and body language. While dogs with sibling aggression have a clear target and may never consciously hurt a family member, this type of aggression can result in injury to your beloved dog(s) or injury to a family member attempting to intervene.
The best way to solve this problem is by establishing yourself as the dominant party and making it clear that all dogs in the household are submissive and on an even playing field. My in-home training program has successfully helped dogs suffering from sibling aggression, using techniques like basic obedience training, proper leash handling techniques, place training, structured scheduling, the elimination of roaming, and many others.
To learn what types of training techniques would help your dogs, give me a call today at 800.649.7297. You’ll be surprised at how quickly my training brings harmony back to your home.