Rescue dog aggressive towards one of my other dogs

Question
Hi,

I recently adopted a female German shorthair pointer from a kill shelter in Ohio and she is occasionally displaying very aggressive behavior towards my female red tick coonhound.  They are both dominant dogs, but the aggression is starts with the new shorthair pointer.  It seems as if they are not really biting each other, but only barking and nipping at each other, but it looks like it can get serious.  They have not injured each other yet, but yesterday the new dog did inadvertently bite me yesterday.  She has never shown any aggression towards me and has no food aggression.  I have another older lab and the new dog leaves her completely alone and ignores her.  I started to crate train the new dog last night after the dog fight.  Yesterday's fight makes this the third or fourth time this has happened.   I have to keep the dogs in separate parts of the house and cannot be in the room that the existing dogs stay, because the new dog  will be aggressive.  I have now bought muzzles for both dogs when I have to keep them together, but they still fight with them on!  Can you offer any suggestions about preventing the new dog from being aggressive over simple toys or running around with me?  It seems like they are competing when I am with them.  

Thanks a lot!

Answer
It can be very difficult to actually know who is starting the fights (sometimes it isn't the dog you suspect.) You might get a good trainer or behaviorist to observe the dogs and give you some ideas. You probably aren't going to like the advice I'm going to give you. Bitch wars are pretty much the worst kind of trouble you can have. Males fight for status. Females fight to get rid of the other one. Training around it can be difficult and management frequently ends up being life-long rotat-O-dog, which isn't much fun for anyone. I would see if there is a pointer or hunting dog rescue in your area, and offer to continue to foster her (keeping her away from your coonhound)if necessary. If management fails and you do need to break up a fight, there's a product you can buy from cleanrun.com called "direct stop"  which is a compressed citronella spray. Or a handful of ground black pepper - hard to bite and sneeze at the same time. Unless a professional sees the situation to be less serious than it sounds like it is, life will probably be happier and less stressful for everyone if a home can be found for the GSP where she doesn't have to try to deal with another dominant female. Sandy Case MEd CPDT www.positivelycanine.com