A WAKERLEY

Hi again Adrienne, Thanks for your reply. In answer to your questions: 1) I have previously had a family dog, however, she didn't like to socialise with other dogs, so haven't seen a great deal of normal puppy/dog play behaviour firsthand. 2) I've uploaded a video of an example of the behaviour here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sbSvnFN9DTJ1_7AWdxuK79P1nnL1mUZ2 3) He does react, they will tug a little and then sometimes he'll just go and get another toy and she might come and try and play with that as well. Or they'll tug and then start playing/fighting. 4) No, we're pretty certain there have been no actual injuries. 5) The labrador is bigger, you may be able to see from the video. 6) I'll have to check this. It's not usually when he has a toy, she's always quite interested in whatever he's messing with/digging up. Couldn't comment too much on the stalking, she kind of eyes him across the garden and then runs at him, sometimes just in front of him/past him and then he'll be the one to bite her. Will give more information when we have it. 7) At times, he'll want to go back. There will also be times where they kind of break from playing/fighting and he'll go back for round 2, so to speak. 😎 We did kind of learn about the littermate syndrome a little before adopting them, hence what we're trying to avoid now and get them to learn acceptable behaviour. I'd mentioned in the last post about them sleeping in the same pen, do you think we'd be better separating them, or is this a reasonable thing to do? Thanks again. Joe

Hi Adrienne, My partner and I have recently got two puppies, a labrador (F) and a Irish Setter Cross Poodle (M), both just over 8 weeks old. We've had them both since Saturday and have seen some worrying behaviour from the labrador in particular. When playing indoors where there are toys, the lab will see the poodle cross playing with a toy and will fixate and try and take the toy off him which often ends up in fighting. She sometimes does it when he's just walking around. He does do it back to her as well, but the ratio of her to him is higher. This behaviour is seen in the garden as well, almost to a greater extent as trying to distract them becomes a lot more difficult with the extra stimulus. I've had some success by teaching the lab to look to me when her name is called to try and preemptively stop her fixating, similar to your smacking sound technique, I would say. I've also tried to reward her when she breaks eye contact with him. Also, they both try to get the treats that the other is receiving when rewarding one and not the other. They are both a little anxious being left in a pen or crate by themselves and for the next week and a half, it will mainly be one person caring for them and therefore difficult to split them easily. Some other information that may be relevant is that since last night, they are sleeping in the same pen with unrestricted access to each other. We tried keeping them separate for the first few nights, but there was lots of crying and anxious accidents - both poos and wees. They slept through last night with little to no incidents and no crying. We want to know if this is fairly normal, or if we need to act quickly to nip this in the bud, before we end up with siblings that are aggressive with each other. My questions are: 1) Is this normal behaviour from puppies? 2) Should we break them up when they're fighting, or simply allow them to go on until they stop themselves? 3) Would they benefit from seeing more acceptable play behaviour from an older dog? 4) What steps/training should we provide to sort this and, in what order, if it's problematic? Taking into account that they're struggling to be separated. 5) What steps should we take to curb the behaviour if not problematic? Thank you in advance.