13 month old Corso showed temporary aggression to my Golden

[DadOfVino]

I’ll do my best to make this short, but also trying to give sufficient background info.

My Cane Corso (Vino) is 13 months old. We got him at 3 months and have had him in obedience training since day 1.

He is great with people, loves having visitors come to our house, but yet is protective towards strangers until we tell/show him it is ok. Couldn’t ask for better behavior when it comes to people.

He is great with dogs visiting our house. He plays appropriately based on their size (does not pounce on little dogs). He has developed some leash aggression due to a couple of bad experiences at dog parks that we are working on, but that has not translated into any aggression towards other family member dogs that visit our house.

We added a Golden Retriever to our family about 3 months ago. Vino and Sammy are only about 4 weeks apart in age. They get along great, eat together with no resource guarding, play constantly together – wrestling, chase, etc. They play really rough together and both love it. Occasionally step in and break it up when they get too rough – but it is always rough play, no signs of aggression.

So, now to the situation I need some input on:

This last weekend we babysat my daughter’s two French bulldogs, male and female, both are over 3 years old. Both the Frenchies are a bit on the bossy side, and my Corso has always deferred to them as being more Alpha than him. Truth be told, he has a bit of a crush on the female.

During the visit, the Frenchies would bully our Golden. Occasionally they would rush him, snarling and snapping. He would run, and we would correct the Frenchies. The whole weekend was much higher energy than usual in our household – the Frenchies barking at every little noise, running to the front door, etc.

Also, our Golden, who usually squats, started lifting his leg and marking wherever the male Frenchie peed. My Corso would then mark over that spot also.

On day 3, my Corso started going after my Golden – not in a playful way, but all out aggression. I had to pull him off him three times that morning, and they spent the rest of the weekend separated by baby gates and or me having my Corso leashed. Our Golden was completely afraid of his brother at that point, and avoided him at all costs.

The weekend ended, and the Frenchies went home.

We then brought our two boys together and put them through series of obedience commands together with very high value treats as the reward. We focused on talking to them in calming voices the rest of the evening.

The next day, everything was complete back to normal. They played together, chased, wrestled, with no aggression. My Golden now trusted the Corso again and wasn’t scared. My Corso was rolling on his back and letting the Golden pin him down, just like old times. All is good again.


So looking for some input. Do you think the aggression from my Corso was him trying preserve his position in the pecking order, and knowing that he shouldn’t dominate the male Frenchie, he was fighting for 2nd in line? Was my Golden now marking his territory something that ticked off my Corso? Was my Corso showing off or fighting for the attention of the female Frenchie? Or was it just plain stress from the high energy in the household throwing off my Corso?

Any and all input and opinions are welcomed!

 

[Iulicris88]

I, personally, would avoid having the male frenchie over, at least until his owner does something about his aggression, or you risk one of the dogs getting seriously injured. All I can imagine, in this situation, is that a strange, aggressive male in their territory made the other two dogs very tense, to the point that one of them snapped and went after the one he perceived to be the weaker out of the two.

 

[DadOfVino]

lulicris88 - that's a pretty good observation, and a good recommendation.

I did forget to mention that both frenchies are fixed. Both my Corso and Golden are intact at the moment. I was worried that my Golden, now at 12 months, was starting to emit something that bothered by Corso, but the timing really points to my Corso having been stressed out and not knowing how to handle it.

 

[DennasMom]

I'd put it all on the energy levels being put out by the Frenchies...

If you do have the Frenchies over again, I would keep THEM under tighter control - either crated or leashed to furniture. I would also be reprimanding them at the FIRST sign of bad energy (there may have been some eye contact before the attacks that you could address), and/or sending them to a back room to quiet down. We have a pretty strict no barking/rushing the window rule in our house... you could try ("try" being the key word) teaching the Frenchies better manners - for use at your house, anyway. Grandma's house, Grandma's rules!

You could also help the Corso deal with them by preemptively putting him in down-stays or 'place' commands when things start getting over-excited... i.e. when the Frenchies start barking, turn that into a 'place' (or 'come' to you) command for Vino, so he knows what to do and doesn't get as frustrated.

It sounds like you went about recovering from the weekend the right way. I would keep an eye out for any carryover from the bad energy, but hopefully that was all there was to it. Dogs do recover well from things like that (better than us humans!).

 

[Elana P]

I'd put it all on the energy levels being put out by the Frenchies...

If you do have the Frenchies over again, I would keep THEM under tighter control - either crated or leashed to furniture. I would also be reprimanding them at the FIRST sign of bad energy (there may have been some eye contact before the attacks that you could address), and/or sending them to a back room to quiet down. We have a pretty strict no barking/rushing the window rule in our house... you could try ("try" being the key word) teaching the Frenchies better manners - for use at your house, anyway. Grandma's house, Grandma's rules!

You could also help the Corso deal with them by preemptively putting him in down-stays or 'place' commands when things start getting over-excited... i.e. when the Frenchies start barking, turn that into a 'place' (or 'come' to you) command for Vino, so he knows what to do and doesn't get as frustrated.

It sounds like you went about recovering from the weekend the right way. I would keep an eye out for any carryover from the bad energy, but hopefully that was all there was to it. Dogs do recover well from things like that (better than us humans!).

 

[Elana P]

I would put it down to the stress of having the little guys in the house.

Also...
Is it possible that having a female in the house (eventhough she's fixed) triggered some sort of wishful thinking aggression in your maturing boy, who suddenly saw his Goldi brother as possible competition for her favour?

I would watch the two of them very carefully around other females as well.

 

[gilles]

i think the problem is not the two frenchies , they are only creating a favorable situation for Vino to be aggressive. the problem is that you have two males reaching adulthood so aggression under favorable situation is inevitable. their age is very critical at this point so you have to take long term measures to avoid problems in the future. keep training them for obedience together its very good. walk them together but each on one side , your body being in between, this is a very good exercise you will be sending them the message that fighting is not good. DO NOT create a situation or a motivation to show dominance and resource guarding, the more they fight the harder it will be to fix the problem. so far you had one incident and it is easily correctable but avoid further fights: do not put them in a situation where it can create a conflict like feeding together or give a bone or something precious, watch when rough play escalates immediately stop them and reward as they stop In case the golden retriever initiates the fight concentrate on correcting him even if Vino had the advantage, Sammy must learn to respect Vino. ...often people feel sorry for the little dog yell at the big dog when a fight starts, the opposite must be done the smaller dog or younger dog must be corrected first to learn to respect the stronger one. Keep doing this for a while they are going through a rough phase in their growth now, later hierarchy will be established and they will hopefully be ok.

 

[DadOfVino]

Hi everyone - thank you for all the input, it was very helpful!

So here is the update - we have had no major incidents since my post. Vino and Sammy continue to play together and wrestle. They play rough, but there has been no outbreaks of aggression. When it appears they are getting too rough, I'll verbally break them and then reward them for listening. Additionally, we've made sure to have the boys separated when ever we give them high-high value treat, like a bone. When one or both are done, we collect up the leftovers and let them back in together.

Here we are one month later, and honestly these two have grown closer together during that time. They have a blast playing together, and Vino is showing less and less little dominance traits (positioning to be first out the door, blocking the way to make Sammy go around, etc).

Next up is some basic training classes for Sammy, and continued work on Vino's on leash reactivity.