very bad behavior

Question
I have a 1 year old neutered male and a 8 month old female yorkie. My male has recently become very aggressive towards my husband.  When we try to scold he goes out of control barking and trying to bite.  He does not do this with me.  He has become more aggressive with the female as well.
He has been puppy pad trained and recently he started urinating all around the house.  Please help me his behavior is scarring me I love him very much and need to know how to correct this.


Answer
Hello Chris,

It sounds like you have a bad problem on your hands.  I will try to answer your questions the best I can.  I will break them down to make it easier to understand.  An animal that is one year old that begins to show signs of aggression can have several reasons for their behavior.  These are some examples:

1.)  Any purebred dog can be high strung, however if the dog was bread using a close relative (this is sometimes done to improve the bloodline) they can become aggressive.  While "breeding back" is a common practice there are rules and restrictions and they are in place to prevent exactly the problem you are having.  Usually you are only allowed to breed back with a close relative (mother to son, brother to sister etc.) one time.  Each time a dog is bread back the resulting puppies will become more and more aggressive resulting in an uncontrollable dog.

2.  Jealousy is a problem with pets.  If your male yorkie was bonded to you then he may view your husband and the female as threats to your relationship.  If this is the case then with constant reinforcement of the expected behavior from you (not your husband) is the only thing you can do.  There are many ways to go about this and if you think that is the problem I would be happy to give you some pointers in a later email.

3. You did not say if you have had the female since she was a puppy.  If you brought her into the house as an 8 month old then that is probably why the male is being aggressive.  You also did not say what size the male and female are.  The reason I would want to know that is because the male killing the female is a definite possibility and until you get the situation under control you will need to watch them closely at all times.  In my years of breeding I had many occasions where people called me crying because their Yorkie which was full grown was killed by one of their pets that was bigger in size.  I am not talking about a large dog like a German Shepherd but something the size of a poodle.

As far as the urinating problem that is something that is not going to go away.  Because you had him fixed does not mean that he nolonger needs to "mark his territory".  I never kept any males for that very reason.  My son has a male Yorkie and when he comes to visit his male wants to pee all over my house.  We solved the problem by putting a doggie diaper on him.  You can get them at any pet store.  Be sure it is a male diaper because they are much different than a female.  My son's dog still tries to mark his territory but he does so in his diaper.  You can buy pads to put in them that are disposable.

How to solve the aggression problem is going to depend on what we decide the problem is.  Please review the list above and write me back with what you think it is.  You may be able to discover if there was inbreeding by looking back at the blood line but most unscrupulous breeders that would breed back to many times would not record that because the akc would not certify the puppies.

Thanks,

Melinda