How to Manage a Multi-Dog Household

How to cope with conflicts in a multi-dog household.

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As I write this, our four dogs are scattered across my office floor dozing in happy harmony. Dusty, our 8-pound Pomeranian, is curled up under my computer station on one side of my feet, Dubhy, the Scottie, on the other. Eighty-five-pound Tucker is sprawled across two dog beds next to the file cabinet, and Katie-the-Crazy-Kelpie is stretched out on the purple fleece on the far side of the room. All is well in the Peaceable Paws kingdom.

It is not always so, however. Katie and Dubhy have squabbles from time to time – usually a result of ownership disputes over some mutually coveted possession, or claim-staking for the highly prized location at our feet in front of the sofa. An occasional defensive falsetto Pomeranian snarl will ring out when Dusty perceives a pending threat to his small self by one of the larger dogs. And when Tucker and Dubhy engage in rowdy bouts of Chew-Face and Chase-and-Maul-the-Scottie, Katie, driven by her herding dog genes to maintain order, will often spoil the fun with fear-inducing glares, backed up by painful and effective nips to the offenders’ hocks.

Because dogs are pack animals, we have high expectations about their abilities to live peacefully in groups. If you are a human member of a multiple dog household, it is important to be realistic about what you can and cannot accomplish with your canine family members. Your own personality, behavior, commitment to managing and training your pack, as well as your choice of packmates, will all play important roles in your ability to create your own peaceable kingdom.

family of dogs

It’s in the Genes

Once upon a time, our dogs’ ancestors were all wild and lived in packs. It was critically important to pack survival that they get along well with each other. Even a minor injury from an aggressive packmate’s tooth could become infected and cause the disability and death of a pack member. Wild dogs depended on the abilities of the whole canine family to help with hunting and pack defense – a disabled member was a liability to all. For these survival reasons, dogs developed a highly ritualized language that enabled them to maintain pack order without bloodshed. Meaningful eye and facial expression, body posture, snapping, snarling, and even tooth contact without enough pressure to break skin all contributed to harmonious pack life.

Enter the human. Over the centuries, as we molded the canine species’ exceptionally plastic phenotype, we created breeds such as Beagles, Bassets, Foxhounds, Coonhounds, Labradors, Golden Retrievers, and others – the hounds and sporting breeds that still have very strong genes for pack harmony. At the opposite extreme, we also created breeds such as the American Pit Bull Terrier, that genetically have very little tolerance for the proximity of others of their kind.

If you are just starting out on your path to pack life, your shortest route to a peaceful pack is to select canine family members from the harmonious end of the scale, and avoid the pugnacious fighting breeds, feisty terriers, and obsessive herding dog types. That’s not to say that some Pit Bulls, Scottish Terriers, and Australian Kelpies can’t live in group homes – they certainly can – it just takes more effort on the part of the human to make it work.

Order in the Pack

Pack management is as much an art as a skill. If you have always had a multi-dog household, never had problems, and never thought twice about it, congratulations! You are one of the lucky ones – a natural. You probably instinctively have done all the right things to help your pack be well-adjusted. Many dog owners aren’t so fortunate.

Pack problems run the continuum from simple delinquent behaviors to serious intra-pack aggression. While many dog owners tolerate the former, group bad manners is often the precursor to aggression, and is far more easily addressed before canine emotions escalate to the blood-letting level.

The basic tenet for a successful multi-dog household is simple: The more dogs in the home, the more “in charge” the human pack member must be. The “in charge” tenet for pack management is closely followed by this corollary: The more dogs in the household, the more well-trained and well-behaved the canine members of the pack must be. So how does a floundering human leader restore order to the pack?

The first step is management. If you are facing pack behavior challenges, start by identifying the key areas of conflict, so you can figure out how to put a management plan in place while you work on long-term training solutions.

Conflicts Between Family Dogs

A sample list of common conflict situations might look something like the following. We’ll call our sample dog guardian Jane, and describe representative personalities of various players in her pack.

• Feeding time: Angel devours her food and then runs over to eat Sweetie’s, which sometimes starts a fight. Meanwhile, Sugar tries to pick up her bowl and carry it under the sideboard, often spilling it in the process. Honey wolfs down her food, growling and making evil faces all the while.

• Going outside: All four dogs jostle for position at the door, accompanied by snapping and growling, and an occasional full-on battle. Jane has been bitten trying to maintain order at the door while restraining Angel by the collar.

• Watching TV: Jane’s house routine is to eat dinner on the coffee table while watching TV. Dogs all vie for the closest spot to catch dropped crumbs and hand-fed tidbits. Fights most often occur between Angel and Honey.

• Playing: Sugar and Sweetie love to roughhouse together, biting and chewing on each other. All goes well for some time, but Jane can see their energy level rise as they play; three out of five times it ends in a fight.

• Getting home from work: All the dogs are very excited when Jane walks in the door after a long day at work. She is happy to see them too, so she greets them effusively, in a high-pitched voice, with lots of hugs and kisses. Occasionally in the excitement Honey turns on Angel and pins her to the ground.

• Bedtime: Sugar has claimed the human bed as her own, and that’s okay with Jane, she’s willing to share. The others usually work out who gets which dog bed on the floor with only minor grumbling, but Honey will sometimes test Sugar’s claim and jump up to join Jane and Sugar, to the tune of much snapping and snarling.

Why Do Dogs Fight? Stress!

Aggression is caused by stress, and there is clearly plenty of it in Jane’s pack. Jane is obviously not “a natural.” She knows she has a problem – if she had any doubts, the $800 vet bill for the last incident between Angel and Honey erased them.

She has tried to control her rowdy family members, but failed miserably. On the advice of a well-meaning friend she was letting the dogs work it out themselves, but things have only gotten seriously worse. She read a book that suggested supporting the “alpha” dog. As best she can tell, Honey is top dog in the pack, so she feeds Honey first, tries to let him out the door first (hence the bite by Angel), and lets him sit by her feet while she eats her dinner and feeds him treats. If a fight happens, she yells to break it up, then puts the other dogs out in the yard but lets Honey stay in, to support his position in the pack.

Jane needs a whole new approach to pack management. As the benevolent leader, she needs to decide what dog behavior is appropriate, not Honey. Order is best restored through calm management and positive training, not yelling and punishment.

Solutions to Multi-Dog Conflicts

Here are management plans and training suggestions for each of Jane’s six trouble spots:

• Feeding time: Feed the dogs separately, either in different rooms, in opposite corners of the same room, in crates, or by letting them come in one at a time to eat. Doors and baby gates can keep dogs confined to their separate rooms, while crates or tethers can allow them to eat safely in opposite corners of the same room. (See “A Gated Community,” this issue.) Eventually, after the dogs are trained to “Leave It,” Jane may be able to referee feeding time without having to physically restrain the dogs. (See “Off Limits,” January 2002.)

• Going out: The “Wait” exercise is exceptionally useful for maintaining peace at doorways with groups of dogs (see “Wait a Bit, Stay a While,” May 2001). Until she has taught her pack members to “wait,” Jane can use baby gates or tethers to restrain two or three of the dogs while letting them out one or two at a time to reduce the excitement and arousal that leads to aggression.

Once Jane has taught each of the dogs to “wait” at the door she can start practicing with them two at a time, then three, then all four. The pack should learn to be released from the “wait” one at a time so there’s no door jam, and Jane should vary the order in which she releases them so they don’t learn to anticipate the release.

• Watching TV: Jane is setting her dogs up for conflict by feeding them from her plate. She needs to stop this practice immediately. She can use tethers to keep the dogs safely separated, comfortable on their own beds, while she eats dinner at the coffee table (see “Tethered to Success,” April 2001). She can eventually teach them to go to their designated beds on cue by rewarding them generously when they are there. Chances are good that with time and practice, they will go to and stay on their beds when asked, without being tethered.

• Playing: It’s good that Jane can see the energy level rising between Sugar and Sweetie, because that enables her to step in calmly and break up the play session before it turns ugly. She can tether or crate the playmates for several minutes to give the arousal level time to subside, and then release them to play together again – no harm, no foul.

In time, Sugar and Sweetie may figure out that too much excitement makes the fun stop, and learn to better control their own energy. Jane’s intervention needs to be calm and cool; if she yells, punishes, or moves quickly, she is likely to escalate the energy between the dogs and actually trigger a fight.

• Getting home from work: Jane adds fuel to the fire with her excited homecomings; after a day spent inside, and a few hours of anticipating her return, the dogs are already keyed-up. The joyous greeting is too stimulating, and the dogs’ responses boil over.

Jane can manage her dogs’ greeting behavior while she does long term training by crating the dogs in her absence, assuming she won’t be gone longer than the dogs can tolerate. For pups, a good rule of thumb is one hour longer than the pup’s age in months – four hours for a three-month-old pup, etc. Adult dogs shouldn’t be routinely crated for longer than about eight hours a stretch.

When Jane comes home, she can let the dogs out one at a time and greet them calmly. If they get charged up she can just quietly turn her back and walk away from them, or even turn and walk out the door.

She can also simply start entering the house without greeting the dogs, ignoring them completely until they calm down. Once again, this teaches the dogs to control their own behavior, rather than submitting to her forcibly imposed will. Chances are good that if she does not “feed” their energy, they will settle quickly and fights won’t happen.

• Bedtime: One word – crates! I am not opposed to dogs sleeping on the bed, unless “dogs on the bed” is causing problems, which in Jane’s case it clearly is. She is at risk for injury herself, lying on her bed beneath two squabbling canines.

She could start by crating all the dogs at night, then, if her ultimate goal is to have them uncrated at night, experiment with letting one out, then two, and as long as good manners hold, eventually all four. (See “Crate Training Made Easy,” August 2000.) Any nighttime growling or snapping is grounds for a renewal of crating.

Of course, while Jane effectively manages her dogs’ behavior in the home, we also expect her to enroll in a good, positive training class. She may not be “a natural,” but she can learn. Her class instructor will be a valuable resource to her in identifying and resolving her dogs’ pack behavior challenges.

It will take her some time to complete basic classes with each of the four dogs, but the improvement in her communication with and understanding of her pack members’ behaviors and thought processes will be well worth the effort. In fact, it will be the ultimate key to her long-term success in turning her home into a peaceable kingdom, and ensuring that she enjoys mutually rewarding lifelong relationships with each of the members of her pack.

10 Steps to a Peaceful Pack

1. Manage the behavior

Use management tools such as tethers, crates, and baby gates to maintain order while you modify your dogs’ behavior through positive training.

2. Train

The more dogs in a household, the more important it is that all dogs be well-trained and well-behaved. Intervention in an escalating conflict is easier and more effective when the dogs respond to calm cues. The Web site of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (apdt.com) offers a “Trainer Locater” list of APDT members, as well as suggestions for finding a good training professional. APDT members may use positive methods to varying degrees; however, there is an increased likelihood of finding a positive trainer on this list who meets your expectations.

3. Be calm

Aggression is caused by stress. If you can maintain a calm demeanor around your dogs, especially when they are becoming aroused, you will help defuse potential conflict. Resist the impulse to scream or yell when dogs are squabbling; this will only increase stress. If you must intervene in a scuffle that doesn’t quickly resolve itself, keep a plywood board handy that you can slip between the combatants to separate them. Then make a mental note to analyze the incident and develop a management plan to avoid a recurrence.

4. See your veterinarian

Medical conditions can exacerbate tense pack relations. A physical condition or illness that causes pain or discomfort to your dog is stressful. Stress causes aggression, so anything you do to alleviate pain or discomfort in any individuals can help reduce the overall stress level in the pack. Ask your veterinarian for a full thyroid panel for any of your dogs who seem particularly anxious and aggressive. Thyroid levels that are on the low end of the scale but still within the clinically normal range can contribute to aggression. Your veterinarian can consult with Jean Dodds, DVM, a pioneer in studying the connection between thyroid and aggression.

5. Let dogs be dogs

While it is not appropriate to let dogs “work it out” if conflicts are escalating, it is effective to let pack members settle small scuffles themselves. These are part of the inherited behavior developed for group survival, and can help to resolve hierarchy unrest and restore pack equilibrium.

6. Exercise

A tired dog is a well-behaved dog. Excess energy is a stressor, and a pack of tired dogs is less stressed, less excitable, and far more likely to live in harmony than one whose members are spilling over with surplus energy.

7. Cultivate individual relationships

Spend quality time with each dog outside the presence of the others. This is necessary for training purposes anyway, and will help you develop a relationship with each dog as an individual. This will make it easier for you to establish your position as benevolent leader and manage the pack as a whole.

8. Protect vulnerable pack members

Very old, young, small, sick, or disabled members of your canine family may be unable to defend themselves, especially if one or more pack members are determined to commit mayhem. You must keep such fragile members physically safe by separating them from the rest of the pack. This may be a temporary solution until the invalid has recovered enough to rejoin the group, or it may be a permanent fix if the size/strength disparity between participants is long term or the conflict too serious.

9. Better living through drugs

Some dog owners find flower essence and herbal remedies to be quite useful for reducing the stress that leads to pack conflict. Rescue Remedy is the most commonly suggested flower essence product, and herbs such as Valerian, Kava Kava, and St. John’s Wort are all used as calming agents. For more extreme cases, pharmaceuticals prescribed by your veterinarian may be indicated. Natural remedies, while usually less risky than prescription drugs, can have unwanted side effects; we recommend that you and your training professional work together with a veterinarian well-versed in complementary medicine to determine if and when drugs or natural remedies are appropriate. (See the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association for a listing of holistic veterinarians around the country.)

10. Be realistic

Quality of life is an important consideration for all the family members. If dynamics in your pack are stressing you or your dogs so much that your quality of life is poor, and if your efforts to improve relationships aren’t helping, then it’s time to consider other options. The worst case scenario – euthanasia – might be the best option for a dog who is so troubled that finding an enjoyable environment is unrealistic. Finding one or more of the troublemakers new homes may alleviate the stress for the rest of the family, although finding homes for difficult dogs can be a challenge. Alternatively, you may choose to keep the more difficult ones and place one or more of the easy-going or vulnerable dogs with friends or family members. This could be a win-win for all, creating an extended family for your canine friends while making everyone’s life more peaceful.

Pat Miller, WDJ’s Training Editor, is also a freelance author and Certified Pet Dog Trainer in Maryland. She is the author of, The Power of Positive Dog Training.

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Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, grew up in a family that was blessed with lots of animal companions: dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, goats, and more, and has maintained that model ever since. She spent the first 20 years of her professional life working at the Marin Humane Society in Marin County, California, for most of that time as a humane officer and director of operations. She continually studied the art and science of dog training and behavior during that time, and in 1996, left MHS to start her own training and behavior business, Peaceable Paws. Pat has earned a number of titles from various training organizations, including Certified Behavior Consultant Canine-Knowledge Assessed (CBCC-KA) and Certified Professional Dog Trainer - Knowledge Assessed (CPDT-KA). She also founded Peaceable Paws Academies for teaching and credentialing dog training and behavior professionals, who can earn "Pat Miller Certified Trainer" certifications. She and her husband Paul and an ever-changing number of dogs, horses, and other animal companions live on their 80-acre farm in Fairplay, Maryland.

16 COMMENTS

  1. We recently added a new dog to our one dog home and they are lovely together.
    Can you suggest how to feed two dogs separately when one is a grazer the other a guzzler.
    We are away all day and the dogs are good buddies for each other. Were just worried that the feeding balance is out of whack.
    We do not want them to be separated during the day.

  2. Great read, I’ve def read something’s I’ll put into practice. But if anyone can help, I’m trying to Google/ find out some tips to ‘helping 1 dog (pug who is only 2 years older than her pups [dogs 2 & 3]) out of 3 lose weight. She has gotten more stubborn lately, down right rude, refusing to go on walks, just doesn’t listen like she used to and is totally fixated on food, tries to eat the other dogs…well I’ll leave it at that. Any advise or even the proper Google search terms would help, she is a sweet dog, I just want to help her as best I can, thanks

  3. As a a ethologist and more importantly someone who actually loves dogs I cannot wait until the horrendous and lazy fad of crating is over. You are actually suggesting to keep a dog in a tiny cage for up to 8 hours. If it were perfectly ok they would not use a euphemism for the word cage. No one who finds crating acceptable should own a dog, period. Get a goldfish if you want to constrain an animal totally unnaturally, immobile, for hours day after day. May as well keep your kids in cages when you can’t be bothered with controlling their behavior. There is no justification, so don’t even try.

    • I use crates to protect a vulnerable dog from the other dogs when I can not be in the room. I leave crates with open doors so dogs can go in of their own accord. Most of my dogs like the separation it provides at times and I don’t shut the door. Nighttime is a bit harder to decide on. I used to let all 4 or 5 dogs sleep on the bed with me but was so uncomfortable I crated each in their own cage and gave them a beddy by treat. At this point I no longer have large dogs so all the little dogs sleep surrounding me on the bed. I think crate/cages can be used with discretion. Leaving dogs all day long in crates is terrible and all of my dogs are loose when I leave the house. If I have a vulnerable dog it gets a room of its own.

      • Yes I do the same I have a 4lb disabled dog bryan and a normal 7lb dog Jimmy but year ago rescued a puppy from a friend who was being neglected Frankie who grew up to be a close to 30lb mini Australian Shepard so he doesn’t realize powerful he is so I must kennel him some times when I’m not around but he is learning not to pounce or sit on my 4lb disable dog bryan so in conclusion kennel helped plus with Frankie being neglected and abused as a puppy he has some behavior issues & can’t imagine my life without him

  4. Hello. Thank you for this great article. We recently adopted a Husky-Malamute female who is around 2 years old. She is crate trained and enjoys time in her crate throughout the day and even over night. We also have a Schnauzer-Poodle neutered male. We adopted him from a rescue when he was under 2 years old. He is now between 13 and 14 years old. He is willing ot go into his crate but doesn’t go in without being asked. He will take the Husky’s toys and trys to control her food. We have solved the food problem by feeding them in separate rooms. The question I have is how to keep him from going into her crate. He is really sneaky, and maybe this is too big of an ask, but I feel like he could learn this. As he knows not to get into the trash and not to get on the table etc. Do you have any suggestions? When he goes in her crate it really upsets her. Thanks, Shelley

  5. I have met people with multiple pit bulls in the house. This article is wack for tryong to single out Pitties like that. Immediately, I stopped reading this biased post. How is it that dogs are pack animals but Pitbulls are not?

    • Pitbulls have been bred for dog fighting, their natural instinct is often to be dog aggressive. I have a pitbull mix that I love to death and gets along with other dogs but if she were a purebred it might be different.

    • This my first thought as soon as I read the first pit bull sentence. I have a pure bread pit, a pittie mix and a cane Corso. Up until the pandemic they did great with dogs. I could take them to the dog park let them run around and they love each other. Typically they have normal dog snarls Or barks but they have always gotten along. I didn’t have a problem bringing the cane Corso into the house after we had had the two pit bulls and I still don’t have problems. It’s king of garbage that a lover of animals writing this blog post pontes our pit bulls as bad.

  6. Both of my dogs are almost 2. I added the second dog about 2 months ago. She is very insecure and needs constant attention from me. She has separation anxiety and pees or poops in the house when I’m gone regardless of whether or not she is crated. My other dog is great. She will correct the new dog if the new dog is doing something bad, like jumping on the coffee table. I finally got a handle on walking the two of them together. Now I need peace in the house. This article gave a lot of good suggestions. Thanks!

  7. I have three dogs- two pitbull mixes and a terrier. The terrier got bit when she tried to intervene in a dispute between the two pitbulls. My question is how do I train the terrier to not intervene? She always gets agitated when the other two have anything above calm energy.