older dog seems to be getting more aggressive

Question
Hi Dawn,

I have 3 male neutered dogs. 2 dogs I got from the humane society at 6 months old, the 3rd, lucky, was a black lab stray i could not find a home for. all the dogs are mixed with lab probably (but the black lab is all lab), rodeo is maybe mixed with austrailian sheppard, the other, peanut, is probably mixed with pit bull. peanut is the alpha dog by far. the black lab is happy go-lucky, and rodeo is the sissy dog. peanut has gotten into fights with the other two maybe twice a year, the other dogs "physically" start the fight out of fear (probably over peanuts body language, so he maybe starting it). peanut always wins and we have been fortunate to break them up. some fights have required stitches. all dogs are now 7. they have fought less as they have gotten older. that is, until a new dog moved in next door and other oddicies. i took them to the vet for annual shots. peanut freaked out so bad, we had to eventually muzzle him cause we thought he would bite, it took 3 people to try to hold him down, he crapped and urinated. unfortunatly, he was tramatized. however, he's been to the vet numberous times and been fine for 7 years. he just decided he was not going to have a shot and fought - hard. after the dog next door moved in, we have a chain link fense, peanut has bitten off part of each of the 2 dogs ears... we just put up that tennis court type material over our fense to block the dogs views and hopefully take that dog out of our dogs environment. i have no idea what to do. i do not hit my dogs or show aggression. peanut cuddles with us, when we tell him to sit, lay, or whatever he does. if we let him on the couch to cuddle every so often, when we verbally tell him down, he gets down. he really is a sweet dog, but we can not have him potentially really hurting the other dogs. we also treat him as the alpha male, when we come in the door, we pet him first, when we feed them, we put his bowl down first. do you have any recommendations? he is a member of our family, but we are getting very nervous about his growing behavior problem. any help would be great!

thanks so much!

Sarah

Answer
Hi Sarah,  Basically Peanut is feeling his leadership threatened by the new dog next door.  The way it works in a pack situation is the lead dog (Peanut) controls all the other dogs, but when a new dog comes in, the new dog will try to drive out or kill (if in the wild) the leader to take over the pack.  So Peanut is reacting to the new dog by trying to keep everyone under his control (via fighting) and establishing his leadership.  As he gets older, to him mentally, that threat of a new dog gets more serious because he is in more fear of losing his life to another dog over his leadership.  Unfortunately there is nothing you can do because this is a natural instinct situation and you don't own the other dog, so you can't keep the other dog away from your fence which is what really needs to be done.  Peanut needs to think that the other dog is gone.  That is the only solution to this problem.  If you can figure out a way to keep that dog away from your fence so Peanut thinks the dog is gone, you will see a big change in his behavior.  Hope this helps,

Dawn