[LISAHEATH]

I recently rescued a JRT female. I already have a 6 yr old male and a 5 yr old female. I also have a 5 yr old male shepherd. the newest female got into a serious dog fight yesterday with the 5 yr old femaleand the puppy was the dominant. is there any way to stop this behavior? It scared me. The 5 yr old female is small and a little fat but was the dominant female - until yesterday. I do not want to have to give up the puppy because I love her but it is hard for me to tolerate this agression. It took 2 of us to seperate the puppy from the other female. The puppy is 8 months old. Anyone out there that can seriously offer some good, sound advice would be most helpful. there were no injuries

[Curbside Prophet]

The best advice I can give you is to seek the help of a professional. It can be very hard to determine what exactly is going on in words, where a professional could actually see what's happening and be able to assess the situation in that moment. What you need is an action plan to establish the pack hierarchy as it needs to be, and I believe a professional would be able to give you the techniques necessary. Is hiring a professional an option?

[Keno's Mom]

Terriers are agressive little dogs. Are all your dogs spayed/neutered? If not, that's part of the problem with the fighting. You'll have to keep some separated till they can get along. Supervise any interactions. Sometimes females can be more aggressive to other females in the same house.

[Snowshoe]

What Curb said was a great idea.

Some other suggestions are

Muzzling her while she's in the house.

Leashing her at all times.

Making sure that you feed them all at different times.

Making sure all animals are spayed

Also, seek a behaviorist.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of JRTs for the reason you mentioned. A neighbor of ours has two, and they're extremely dog aggressive, except with eachother.

They will attack any dog around- it's not what I'd consider "normal" behavior, as they don't sniff, or treat other dogs like dogs.

It's just part of what makes a terrier a terrier. In some terrier specific shows, they actually make these little dogs face eachother, and stare eachother down. It's supposed to make them look vibrant and plucky.

They don't make them fight- just the stare down.