We recently added a 9week old Airedale terrier to the family. My 4 year old beagle is having a very rough time with this transition. He’s always been very close to my boyfriend and I and we knew this would be tough for him. We did a lot of research and are trying to do everything we can to establish him as ‘alpha-dog’. He always gets praised first, greeted first, he goes out first, we try and show him so much love and special attention. The first night he nipped at the puppy and over the next few days he calmed down with his aggression. However if the puppy comes over when I am playing with him, he gets angry and growls. We give him a stern no and don’t punish him because I don’t want him to further resent the puppy. The thing that breaks my heart is that he won’t sit with us. When we are hanging out and watching with the pup he will go into our room and it looks like he’s sulking! I try to sit away from the puppy so he can just sit with me but it doesn’t seem to be working. It is breaking my heart that he is sad. Is this just something he needs to get used to? Will he be able to hang out with us again eventually?

I had a similar problem when my roommate got a puppy and my dog did not like it. It took about 2 months before they really got used to each other, now they sleep on the same bed.