Why your dogs fight and how to stop them

We have this client who is a fan of mastiff dogs. He actually goes crazy for this group of dogs. He first got a pitbull cross which was a female white dog. The dog was about two years old when he got another mastiff, this time a male bullmastiff also crossed. The pitbull cross was named Rosey and the bullmastiff –Regan. Rosey was much older when Regan came along and they were best of friends. Rosey really took care of Regan when he was a puppy such that they used to curdle together when sleeping until Regan was about one year old that trouble started.

Their first fight began when they were served food differently and only for Regan to finish his food and ran to Rosey’s. Rosey that would normally leave her food for him resisted him this time and resulted to a fight that was kind of brief because Rosey let him have his way. Another one happened when someone knocked at the gate and Rosey barked at the sound and Regan quickly came to attack her and fight ensued.

This fight continued that the owner of the dogs went to separate them with his bare hands and got the bite of his life. His arm bled seriously that he was rushed to the hospital. This fight graduated to a very prolonged fight that the owner will send for water to be boiled to be able to separate them and they will keep fighting until the water boils before it’s used to separate them. And each time I was invited to treat the burns on them due to the fight.

The owner of these dogs exhausted all the means of separating them except the “hot water technique”. I got confused when the man went ahead to buy a Neopolitan Mastiff he named Franky. I tried my best to keep calm and the man was even carried away with the breed that he was treating Franky so special and would praise the dog at any slightest opportunity. Franky grew bigger than Regan and started to fight him. In fact, unlike Regan and Rosey’s fight, Franky overpowers Regan and usually ends in a brief fight.

I’m sorry for the very long story there but I was trying to emphasize that dogs want to dominate other dogs when they grow bigger than them naturally. Sometimes the smaller dogs feel threatened and try to suppress the bigger dogs and this will result to fights and usually ends when one of them submitting totally or dominating later.

The principle is that there will always be a prime dog whether male or female but in my experience a male usually succeeds to dominate and become the leader especially when there is more than one dog. Becoming the leader in a pack of dogs does not usually come easily. It usually comes with a fight and domination of all others. The leader determines when others attack and then they do not.

Why do dogs fight?

1.       Dogs may fight when one of them wants to dominate the others by fighting the most vocal of them all.

2.       They will fight when 2 males try to mate a female on heat.

3.       They will fight for food especially when food is insufficient.

4.       They will fight when a male tries to mate a female that is not on standing heat among other reasons.

What to do to prevent fight

To be very sincere, there is very little you can do to prevent the first fight but something can be done when you identify the reason for the fight.

 Serving food for dogs in the same bowl might very tricky because one of the dogs might just want the lion share and that might result in a fight so endeavor to separate the meals by serving them with their individual plates or bowls.

Be very observant when the female is on heat especially early in the heat to be able separate them from the males who might loose their senses trying to mount and end up fighting with the female who is not ready or two males might even engage in endless fight and inflict serious injuries on themselves.

If you have more than one males or dogs, watch carefully for domination tendency of each of your dogs. This is mostly apparent when one of them is barking and the other is trying to stop him from barking. This will give you a clue to what might happen next.

What to do when the fight starts

Never ever try to stop the dogs by using your bare hands PLEASE! These dogs mostly loose their senses when fighting. They might not respond to their names at all.

Try to splash a bucket of water on both of them while calling their names. The use of a pressure water pipe to splash water at them will help. Some might separate temporarily and resume again so try to chain them down immediately they leave each other.

You might use a stick to beat them to separate but this might sometimes inflict wounds on the dogs but when you have no choice use it.

If you have a huge board you can force it in between the fighting dogs to separate them while screaming their names.

If you have some other person to help you, you two can pull their tails to separate them simultaneously while shouting their names.

Please DO NOT use the ‘hot water technique’ as described above because the dogs will suffer burns that might need medical attention.

There are many other ways to prevent and stop fighting dogs but these few suggestions are the ones I have tried and succeeded so you should try any of them.