brookcove
Posted : 4/20/2006 6:53:11 PM
I used to just let my adults work it out with the pups. But after my adults raised a couple of pups, I realized they were ending up with some of the same problems with interdog relations. Two of my adults were instilling bad attitudes in the pups they were allowed to raise. One is a very dominant female who aggresively would demand absolute submission from the pups - and she would hurt them, too. Another, a male, hates puppies, just hates them, and would not accept any amount of appeasement behavior - so the puppies would never learn correct social behavior.
With the last three pups I carefully regulated all interaction with these two dogs. The first one was raised by a wonderful old dog that was spending his last days with us. The second, since I was more confident in my ability to read the two dogs that were bad with pups, I allowed limited interaction with them and simply interfered when it got nasty. By the third pup, Maggie was much nicer and Ben accepted her immediately.
All three pups are confident with other dogs and my pack of six can all interact freely with each other - it's a great thing!