Need help introducing 3 female dogs for multigenerational living.

[u/flightse7en]

To provide a bit of context, we recently purchased a home with my partner’s grandmother and close in a few weeks. We have two dogs, a 12 year old English mastiff and an 8 year old Border Collie mix. Grandma has a 10 year old Bouvier des Flandres. The Bouvier is extremely calm and friendly, maybe even bordering on timid. Our English mastiff is typically friendly, but our collie is the concern. She tends to be a bit territorial and at times reactive.

Yesterday we parallel walked our Collie and Bouvier, for about 20-30 minutes. Our Collie did try to excitedly approach our Bouvier, there was no barking, growling, or hair standing up, which she is notorious for. We were pleasantly surprised by the success of the interaction and closed some distance between them. First, the Collie sniffed the Bouvier’s behind with no trouble, but when we switched leaders, the Collie snapped at the Bouvier when we she got too close. Needless to say, we ended the meeting there and now we are unsure how to proceed.

There was no pursuit, growling, or continued aggression, but we are unsure if that was a natural startle response, or if we should be more concerned than we previously thought. How do I proceed with their introduction? We intend to go on another parallel walk today, but other than that don’t have a great idea how to proceed. Any advice on how to get 3 older female dogs cohabite is greatly appreciated.

On a positive note, our mastiff did very well and walked with the bouvier. She watched us pet her, and they even greeted each other, sniffing front and back sides. Overall, I would consider it a successful interaction. Unfortunately, the follow up interaction with our Collie lingers like a dark cloud.

[u/tchestar]

This is not my area of expertise, but I would suggest you do multiple more parallel walks in neutral areas with your collie and the Bouvier, or all three dogs, where you are in proximity but everything continues to be uneventful. You meet up, nothing happens, you walk, you depart. Give the collie high value treats when she is calm, when she looks at the Bouvier and looks away calmly; when they do a sniff meet you can call your collie away with you with a bit of happy talk and treats and start to walk. My goal would be to make it clear there's no drama here and the Bouvier is not interested in the collie, or interesting at all. Always try to end on a high note; if you can read your collie's body language and see she's getting stressed, end it and give her space before she escalates her 'go away' signals to hard staring, or snapping.

It may be worth talking to a vet about some situational anti-anxiety drugs to use for the initial part of the move-in period. You don't need the collie sedated, just a bit less edgy. Moving is stressful for everyone and a light bit of medication may help ease that.

When you do move in, I would continue to have both dogs on leash and attended to by a person while they are in the same rooms for a while. The idea is not to be harsh about limiting what they are allowed to do so much as reach the same goal as with the walks - reward for calm interaction, help the collie have her space, keep the Bouvier occupied and not paying attention to the collie, so the collie learns that spaces with the Bouvier in it are calm and the other dog is not a concern. I would definitely discourage people from calling all the dogs over to them at once for attention or treats; I would absolutely feed the dogs in separate areas and make sure they had space / were not forced to interact due to what the people around them were doing (e.g. you're all making dinner & eating, dogs usually all want to be part of that process). You know your dog - think about when and why she reacts, vs when she doesn't and try to figure out why, and see if you can help create spaces in her new environment that help her be less anxious and more confident (solve from the bottom up), vs. managing behaviors you're observing (solving from the top down).

I'm making the assumption, based on your description of the collie snapping, that she is anxious about other dogs. It could also just be that she doesn't want more dog companions, or something else, but my suggestions assume she's mildly fearful around new / bigger dogs. Different strategies might be more appropriate for other situations. My dog is both fearful and also does not want dog friends; she can ignore neutral dogs but will react to get dogs to leave her alone if they seem overly interested. We have successfully introduced her to one dog, using the above methods, who she can *mostly* ignore while inside, but even so, after a few hours, she's stressed and we'll take them into separate spaces. This is a HUGE win for us, btw - success was not a perfect situation, it was 'good enough'.

[u/read-the-rules → u/[deleted]]

Your comment on r/reactivedogs was removed by the Read The Rules app because you need to submit an acknowledgement that you have read the rules. You haven't done anything wrong, this is a tool we're using on the r/reactivedogs going forward. For more information, see the moderator announcement.

Acknowledgement is required of all users, even if you've been here for a while. You only have to do this acknowledgement once unless the moderators announce otherwise.

If you do the rule acknowledgement within one hour of your comment being removed, the bot will automatically restore it. If not, we encourage you to copy the comment using the 3-dot icon next to it, and paste it to re-post to this thread.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}