Interhoushold dog aggression

Question
QUESTION: Hi,

I have a 10 year old doberman, a 2-3 year old germanshepherd/huskie/chow mix, and a 3 month old German Shepherd. In the last two months the huskie mix has been attacking the doberman viciously for no apparent reason. The most recent attack happened today when I was reading on the couch and the doberman (Jade) was about two feet away from me on the couch as well. The huskiemix (Luna) walked into the room and growled at Jade, Jade turned her face aside and ignored her, and a moment later Luna launched an attack on her.
I stay home every day with them since I am now out of highschool while both of my parents are at work, they are usually very sweet natured dogs and I can not see a cause for most of these attacks. It usually ends with Jade's face being bloody and torn and Luna unscathed. Outside of these fights the dogs get along all the time, even sleeping on the couches next to each other.
We are contemplating giving away Luna for her dog-aggression towards Jade, but I was hoping there could be a more easy and less heartbreaking answer. Is there anything we can do to lessen and eventually stop these attacks?

ANSWER: Hi, Caitlin,

I'm sorry to hear about these unprovoked attacks.

I'd like to get a bit more information, if you don't mind.

How much hard, vigorous playful exercise does Luna get on a daily basis? Does she play fetch or tug? How much obedience training has she had? What kind of training was it: force and punishment-based, or food-based? How old was she when you first got her? Was she ever punished or scolded for any misbehaviors? Besides the addition of the puppy, have there been any other changes in your household recently? Changes in the daily schedule? Since the puppy is being housebroken, is s/he ever scolded or punished for making housebreaking mistakes?

Thanks in advance for your further input,

LCK

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I would say Luna gets about an hour to an hour and a half of playful exercise with the puppy, running around out back, and sometimes walks to the park. They play by biting and chewing on each other's faces, and sometimes I wonder that could be an issue. I do take her to the park to play ball/fetch, she likes to run after it, pick it up, bring it back to me, but as soon as I reach for it run off with it again. She has pretty basic obedience training, I was trying to further it before we got the puppy (Lyric). As a puppy her training wasn't food or scold based, she learned on her own what to do from Jade, with the encourage from us as we saw needed. We're not sure how old she was when we got her, it was a mispick kind of. We went to a shelter about 2 hours away thinking we would get a german shepherd/lab mix, but they seemed to have thrown her in there with the other female puppies. We thought she was also one at first, but she was more golden whitish than the other puppies and we thought she just took after the German shepherd more than the lab side. I do believe she was scolded when she misbehaved, but not to the point of making her feel too bad. There hasn't been any changes to the addition to the household recently, unless you count family coming and going/visiting. My older brother stayed for about 2 weeks and my sister stayed for a week or so as well. She hasn't been going on walks as much since I've been under the weather, it is usually her and the puppy I take to the park. I don't trust myself to hold a Doberman back if she spots a squirrel or something :). Lyric is pretty well house-broken, but she does accidents from time to time. She's a submissive puppy, so if we scold her, she'll just pee again. I was also worrying about that a little, but I did some research and many say she'll grow out of this strange submissive behavior. Thanks so much for your help :)

Caitlin

Answer
Hi again.

Thanks for the information.

What happens when Luna bites Jade is that something causes a charge of emotion when she sees her older packmate doing something she "shouldn't," or just being somewhere she "shouldn't" be. It could have something to do with their past history, or it could just be the fact that Jade may not be as strong as she used to be. Dogs don't like weakness. They probably get this tendency from wolves, who are designed to sense weakness in whatever group of animals they're hunting. When they sense weakness in one member of the herd they target that animal for attack.

This instinctive tendency can also turn on other pack members when the pack hasn't hunted in a while. That's because the pack is only as strong as its weakest link, so when they sense weakness in another pack member it makes them nervous. And while your group of dogs is NOT a wolf pack, something similar may be going on with Luna.

I think it's probably going to take a lot of work to get Luna to the point where her emotions are not thrown off balance by Jade's waning energy. I don't think you can do it Cesar Millan style because he's got a natural gift for getting dogs to fear him. (He thinks it's respect, but it's basically fear, or at least a high degree of caution.)

One of the best things you can do for Luna would be to get her to play tug-of-war with you outdoors. Always let her win and praise her enthusiastically for winning. If you can do this to the point that Luna will play tug as hard as she can, bite as hard as she can, and want to play as often as she can, then you when you see her start to get charged up over seeing Jade doing something she "shouldn't," or just being somewhere that disturbs her, you'll hopefully be able to redirect her into a tug toy and her urge to bite her friend will be satisfied by the toy.

I recommend reading  the following links, and putting all of them into practice:

http://tinyurl.com/3balu6 (A hand-feeding exercise which will help Luna see you as more in control of her aggressive energy than you are now.)
         
http://www.tiny.cc/tug (How to play tug.)

http://www.tiny.cc/rugaas  (Explains how to read stress signals in your dogs.)

http://tinyurl.com/2q2esp (Explains that there's no such thing as dominance and submission.)

http://www.tiny.cc/TrickorTreat (A calming exercise that teaches impulse control.)

http://www.tiny.cc/RedirectWalk (How to redirect an aggressive dog's energy.)

I hope all this helps, but again, it's probably going to take a lot of work.

LCK