Ask Me Help Desk - Aggressive and protective shelter dog to resident dog.

Someone please help me. My husband and I are from Alaska and just adopted a 2 year old sharpei/terrier mix from a high kill shelter in California.

We have a very sweet and submissive 2 year old Golden Retriever at home that needed a companion while we are at work (about 3 hrs at home at a time). We really wanted to get a shelter dog, so we adopted Hannah.

Hannah had a shelter buddy (another sharpei mix) that she seemed to get along with wonderfully, so we thought she would be a great companion for our dog.

We brought Hannah home yesterday and all hell broke loose. It seems Hannah is EXTREMELY attached to me. She won't let our retriever ANY where near me and tries to bite her and will stare at her whenever she's in sight. She doesn't care when our retriever is near my husband, but I'm a different story.

Not knowing her history, I can't imagine what this dog has been through. My husband and I want to start trying to have a baby next year, but I can't imagine bringing a baby into this household with a dog that is so attached to me.

What do we do? She is SUCH a sweet dog otherwise. She loves people and is very affectionate. She just hates our other dog. And our other dog is scared to death. She just hides under the table the entire time. I feel horrible because I just wanted her to have a friend, but it seems we did the exact opposite.

I don't want to give Hannah up. She has probably had such a horrible life as it is, I don't want her to go from owner to owner.

Does ANYONE have ANY advice? I'm at a loss...
Will it get better just letting the dogs work it out? I don't want my retriever to suffer for our mistake.

Oh... and we live on a small island in Alaska in a town of about 3000 people. I'm afraid obedience training is not an option. :(

Thanks!:confused:

Quote:

Originally Posted by surfsup1977

Someone please help me. My husband and I are from Alaska and just adopted a 2 year old sharpei/terrier mix from a high kill shelter in California.

We have a very sweet and submissive 2 year old Golden Retriever at home that needed a companion while we are at work (about 3 hrs at home at a time). We really wanted to get a shelter dog, so we adopted Hannah.

Hannah had a shelter buddy (another sharpei mix) that she seemed to get along with wonderfully, so we thought she would be a great companion for our dog.

We brought Hannah home yesterday and all hell broke loose. It seems Hannah is EXTREMELY attached to me. She won't let our retriever ANY where near me and tries to bite her and will stare at her whenever she's in sight. She doesn't care when our retriever is near my husband, but I'm a different story.

Not knowing her history, I can't imagine what this dog has been through. My husband and I want to start trying to have a baby next year, but I can't imagine bringing a baby into this household with a dog that is so attached to me.

What do we do? She is SUCH a sweet dog otherwise. She loves people and is very affectionate. She just hates our other dog. And our other dog is scared to death. She just hides under the table the entire time. I feel horrible because I just wanted her to have a friend, but it seems we did the exact opposite.

I don't want to give Hannah up. She has probably had such a horrible life as it is, I don't want her to go from owner to owner.

Does ANYONE have ANY advice?! I'm at a loss...
Will it get better just letting the dogs work it out? I don't want my retriever to suffer for our mistake.

Oh...and we live on a small island in Alaska in a town of about 3000 people. I'm afraid obedience training is not an option. :(

Thanks!:confused:

If no training is available I don't know what you can do - it's really not fair to your older dog to be bullied and made miserable by the newcomer.

I just don't know - some of these decisions are heartbreaking.

Both of my dogs are rescues - one I got at 6 weeks, the other at 5 months. The one I got at five months has all sorts of "emotional" problems. We tried private training, group classes - she's better but she's a handful. You could not have her if you had small children.

I don't know what the answer is - but I wish you luck.

First of all you have to stop feeling sorry for hannah, she will take advantage of it and see you as weak. You have to let her know that what she's doing to you is unacceptable, she thinks you are hers, this can be very dangerous, because when a dog trusts and respects only one person in the household everyone else becomes a target. It sounds to me like you have a dominant dog, Hannah thinks that she is higher up than you golden on the pecking order, but really it should be you and your husband,your golden and then hannah. What you need is to impower you golden so that he knows he is higher than hannah, you can do this by petting your golden first, feeding him first,taking him for the first walk, etc.. Don't give up, keep working at it, but JudyKayTee is right don't allow your resident dog to be bullied by this new one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rex123

It sounds to me like you have a dominant dog, Hannah thinks that she is higher up than you golden on the pecking order, but really it should be you and your husband,your golden and then hannah. What you need is to impower you golden so that he knows he is higher than hannah, you can do this by petting your golden first, feeding him first,taking him for the first walk, etc.. Don't give up, keep working at it, but JudyKayTee is right don't allow your resident dog to be bullied by this new one.

This may work, but then again, it may not. You can't make one dog dominant over another. If Hannah ranks at 6 on the dominance scale, and the golden at 3, there is no way to make the golden dominant over Hannah, because it doesn't want to be. However, that doesn't mean that you should allow the golden to be bullied, since you can enforce rules in the pack. Unfortunately, some of what we do as humans (such as feeding the golden first and petting it first) will result in it being bullied, since the dominant dog quite rightly feels like its position is not being respected and will work harder to put the other dog into its proper place.

Having said all that... it sounds like Hannah is a very dominant dog. And even worse, she is resource-guarding her owner, which is just setting things up for trouble, especially if a baby comes along. If there are no trainers in the area that can work with you on this, then I have to say that the best thing to do may be to take Hannah back to the shelter, and tell them about your experiences so that they can place her in a more appropriate home. And when you go looking for a dog to be a companion to your current dog, make sure to take your dog along to meet the prospectives, so that you can get a feel for what the interaction is going to be like.