What to do After my 2 dogs fought

Question
Me and my family have two girls dogs. The older one, Winnie,  which is about 12 is lab/pit mix, and the younger one, Meca,  which is almost 3 is German. shep/rott mix. They are very loving dogs, my daughter which is 2 plays with them all the time. But since Winnie is getting old, he get tried of meca and sometimes will snap at her if meca gets a little too playful. They have never fought until today. Meca got a little too playful and winnie attacked meca. It took me, my brother, my mom and dad 15 mins to pull them apart. And Winnie was really hurt. The dogs are apart right now but we don't know what to do. I'm scared now that they will never be able to be together again. And then my daughter, Can she play with them anymore. We don't know anyone who would take one, and we can't keep one inside, one outside. What should we do and can they ever be friends again?

Answer
Hi, Tiffany,

Thanks for the question. I'm sorry your dogs aren't getting along.

Yes, it's possible that they could be friends, but it's going to take some work. The problem is that Winnie's energy is waning due to her age, and dogs are sort of designed to target weakness, so where before Meca would've backed off from a fight, this time she didn't. It's true that Winnie "started" it. I'm not sure from your description if Winnie did her usual snapping, which is just a kind of signal to back off, or if she actually went for Meca's throat, so to speak. Either way though, Meca felt she had to protect herself this time.

At any rate, this is a serious problem, so trying to solve it online probably isn't a good idea. It would be nice to be able to keep them together, since these dogs do love each other. But as I said it would take a bit of work. The simplest solution would be to give Winnie her own private "den," meaning a crate, so that when Meca wants to play and Winnie doesn't, Winnie has a safety zone. But even then you'd still have to monitor them a good deal.

Do you or other members of your family ever play any games with the dogs? Do you ever scold either of them for anything? How much outdoor play time do they get together? Playing outdoors tends to release tension while playing inside tends to aggravate things. So that would have to be a new rule: no more playing in the house. You should also hand feed each dog outdoors, separately of course, using a pushing exercise. And you should play tug-of-war outdoors, again with each dog separately. Both these things will reduce tension in each of the dogs, but it's no guarantee that things won't boil over again.

Here are some links:

http://tinyurl.com/3balu6
                  
http://www.tiny.cc/tug

http://www.tiny.cc/CrateTraining

Again, this friction between them could end up causing some serious problems, so what I'm suggesting here, online, isn't really going to be the best solution. Maybe a local shelter has a behavior expert or trainer that could also help you out for a low fee.

LCK