I would like to give my opinion, only by observation of our dogs here. I do not know your dogs directly or the exact situations but they sound similar to what I have went through in the past with our dogs when I was here by myself.
Dog aggression to me is when you let one out and they stretch him out immediately, no warning / posturing nothing just jump on him as soon as the gates are opened no matter where you are or what is going on....my husband my husband hunts with a guy from here in town he refuses to turn his dogs out with this guys because they have 'dog agression', they will stretch your dog out no matter where or what they are doing.
Now, our dogs have a DOMINANCE issue which comes with some of them being put up while others are allowed to roam the acre we have fenced off. I (notice I reference myself) can turn them out and immediately our Tana gyp starts posturing to our Lucy female who stays out….I am a ‘let them figure it out’ kind of person but since there are several out it gets carried away quick because the ‘prey drive’ kicks in with the ‘pack mentality’ and nothing but bad comes from it with no lessons learned except a fueled ego.
I know the dogs that are left out have their own pecking orders with my 15 year old toothless gyp being on top, she is the first to eat and guards the food bowls until SHE is ready to abandon them and no one challenges her.
In the past I was able to turn all the dogs out and they just hung out laying under the trees, we actually used to receive compliments on how well our dogs behaved while they were out together and it is still achievable so long as certain ones are put in the yard vs. in the pasture and my husband (ALPHA) is home….I gave up long ago on letting them out unsupervised when Allen isn’t home.
We have came close to losing our Charlie dog, who when let out his nub goes up and he is asserting his dominance to everyone – NOTHING has stopped it and I mean nothing
I went to town one day not thinking anything about the dogs being out only to come home and find him stretched out by three other dogs….the only thing that saved him was he went and got underneath the steps on the trampoline….my husband was gone and this was the first time anything like this had ever happened so I didn’t give it much thought.
Two other times I went to my mom’s who lives on the other side of the fence line. This time with young dogs out and one ‘victim’ being Nitro (who is hunting a pecking order within the pack) and the other being Psycho the CD (I still haven’t figured out what started it) who outweighs everything we have here and is mild mannered as the day is long. The ONLY reason I knew they had stretched either one of them out was because of the hound that was barking and Tana sitting at the gate wagging her tail with the ‘it ain’t me’ look.
It was almost too late for Psycho because it was 100 degrees and in a shed while Nitro when I first seen them I thought it was my husband’s old man Goober (heart attack in the making) but he was at the dog pens.
All dogs made it and it was a dog pile situation all times it happened with the main factors being:
A) Allen wasn’t home
B) Certain dogs weren’t separated appropriately
C) Dominance / Alpha attitudes definitely played a role in all
It is most certainly bitter sweet lessons learned and thankfully we didn’t lose any dogs in any of the past incidents but I do not consider any of our dogs as ‘dog aggressive’ because if you put them in the box or in the woods and they are not worried the first bit about fighting but on their home turf they all want to be ‘king of the hill’ and IMO there is no ‘training’ of any sorts going to get them out of it.
You just cannot put dogs with a extremely high prey drive / pack mentality together and expect them to always get along or work out pecking orders while not becoming full on dog piles…..it just doesn’t happen that way and if does I want to hear it....culling true dog agression is one thing but not acessing the entire situation before doing it is another - do any of you cull for dominance?
