My Dogs Are Fighting

Our dogs, Griffin and Sebastian, are each 3-years old. Griffin is a cattle dog mix and Sebastian is a yellow lab. They have been around each other for basically a year now. During that time, you would think they were litter mates. They got along wonderfully. Name_Removed and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Within the last couple of months, things have changed with them. It started with the 2 boys fighting when we would feed them. The issue is with my dog Sebastian going for Griffin’s food and Griffin protecting his bowl. This I find to be normal. Heck, I would do the same. Sebas inhales his food where as Griffin is more of a picker. Now they are fighting over the unknown. Name_Removed and I can’t really tell what the underlying cause of it is.

We know that Sebastian has an issue with space. He doesn’t realize any boundaries. The dog seems to invade everyone’s “bubble”. Griffin has become extremely protective of Name_Removed. So when Sebastian starts invading space, or gets close to Name_Removed, Griffin attacks. Is Griffin’s issue that he doesn’t want to share? I just don’t know what has caused all of this. Sebastian normally was very submissive. If a dog would growl at him, he would take off. Now if a dog growls, he will growl right back.

Most of the time, the two dogs are great together. I can take them in the truck with me and they hang out. I worked from home all day today and the boys were perfectly fine. They even took a couple of naps together.

My suspicion is that the dogs are trying to establish he pecking order. Who is going to come out on top? Every time they fight, I get right in the middle of them and separate the two. I have not been injured by them, but this even, Name_Removed was caught right in the middle and got a couple of scratches on her hands.

What should we do? Should we allow them to fight and determine who is ‘alpha’? Maybe they need more exercise (like their owners).