Building Healthy Relationships in a Multi-Dog Household
Living in a multi-dog household isn’t always full of playtime and cuddles. Things can go south quickly if the dog’s behavior, boundaries, and resources are not managed correctly. Here are some tips to reduce conflict and build a healthy relationship between your dogs.
Dogs Are Toddlers
When it comes to social behavior, dogs are a lot like toddlers. Many times they have poor emotional regulation skills, poor conflict resolution skills, are impulsive, and suck at sharing. Just like with toddlers, it is your responsibility to step in and reinforce rules and boundaries before things get ugly.
Micro Aggressions Lead to Big Fights
Having a solid understanding of dog body language and behavior is a must for multi dog households. Fights don’t just “happen out of nowhere.” Months or even years of micro aggressions and unaddressed stress signs can lead to massive fights and long term feuds. If you address the micro aggressions and stress signs from the start, not only will you avoid the big fights and feuds, but you will be building a healthy and strong relationship from the start.
Healthy Boundaries
Healthy boundaries are the backbone of your dog’s relationship. Without them relationships can quickly deteriorate into conflict. With them you can curate an environment where the dogs feel safe enough to be their best selves around each other. Here are some healthy boundaries that are a must for multi-dog households.
No competing over resources like food, water, affection, space. They each have their own or wait their turn.
Dogs have safe spaces where other dogs will not bother them if they need alone time.
Dogs each get one on one time with the humans.
Dogs are separated when humans are not around to watch them.
Micro aggressions and stress signs result in human intervention to avoid conflict.
Once the Fight is Over Training Begins
If your dogs fight, the conflict is not over the moment the fight stops. It continues to brew and will escalate again if given the chance. To prevent future fights, training needs to start immediately after. Management protocols need to go into place to avoid a future fight as the dogs are reacclimated with each other through specific training protocols. The more the dogs have a chance to fight, the more they will choose to fight to address their emotional dysregulation and conflict with each other. If they fight enough, it will become a habit and hard to successfully address. Even if the first fight is a “minor scuffle” training still needs to immediately be implemented so that “minor scuffle” doesn’t accumulate into a massive fight later on.
Reasonable Expectations
Your dogs do not need to be bffs who constantly play and snuggle. They may not have the same play style or enjoy the same kind of physical affection and that is okay. You need to accept each of them as individuals and advocate for their individual needs. If you meet them where they are at they will feel safe, secure, and happy in their home, leading to less conflict and a stronger bond with their canine sibling.