Lexi (yorkie) is 2 years old, Lucy (Golden Retriever) is 14. Most of the time, they are best friends and are always playing.
Lexi has will nip at Lucy's heels. Lucy has always been the dominate dog in the house, and has no problem telling the others off. However when it comes to Lexi, she just takes it. She lets her nip at her, she won't tell her off. It started about a year ago when Lucy would go inside/outside the house, Lexi would try to nip at her. We worked on it and she stopped.
However Lexi will now try to nip at her under a couple circumstances.
- When I get home from work and she's overly excited. (she generally won't do it if I'm gone for a short period of time)
- When Lucy gets in trouble or she is seen as weak. For example when Sammie and Lucy got in a scuff, Lexi when after Lucy.
I've been working on curbing this behavior. If I yell Lexi's name, she stops right away. I watch for it in these situations and so it rarely gets to the point where she actually hurts Lucy. Overall Lexi is an overly friendly dog, loves everyone and has never picked a fight or even show the slight bit of aggression.
But I can't wrap my head around why she would do this, any theories?