If you’re anything like me and most owners of this breed are, you’ll own more than one American Bully. I call it the bug. Once you own one, something inside of you makes you want to just fork out the cash to get a second or even a third. The only thing is that once you do get a second or third dog, well now it’s a pack. I know, there’s a lot of research to confirm or debunk that dogs see their owners as part of the pack or as pack leaders. I choose to believe that they do see me as a pack leader and so I always act accordingly. If you don’t agree with me that’s fine, but even if it’s a placebo effect and my thinking inadvertently shows my dogs how to behave and teaches them respect does that even matter? So, back to this pack thing. One of the most common mistakes that people make when owning more than one dog is how to handle the situation after a fight. In this article, I’m going to explain in detail exactly what you need to do and how you handle the situation.
For the sake of my Sunday night, I’m going to cut the commentary short on how the dogs started fighting in the first place. Either you’re in the house and the pack is outside unsupervised or your outside when it happens. First thing you need to do corral the dogs that aren’t in the tussle because they can easily get involved if they are not handled first. The second thing is quickly stopping whoever is the aggressor or whoever has the best hold head from shaking. The shaking of the head is how real damage occurs. There aren’t any real effective ways to break up a dog fight other than minimizing injures and waiting until the dog lets go. Growing up my father tried using water which never ever worked. Anyways, this article isn’t about how your beak up the fight but how to bring the pack to being balanced.
Now you know that both dogs need to be separated from the pack to cool off so to speak. What most people don’t realize is that you must reintroduce both dogs back into the pack as soon as possible. When I say as soon as possible I mean within a reasonable time after the incident has happened. This doesn’t mean to try to reintroduce them while your heart is still pumping. If your unbalanced and you’re supposed to be their leader, how do you think they will interpret those feelings? If it was a bad fight it’s going to take some time, if it was a little scuffle you can do this quickly. First, reintroduce the none aggressor back into the pack. Give him or her some time. This time needs to be spent paying close attention to the body langue of the dog and the pack around them. If you see dominance, agitation, back hair raised quickly correct and exit said dog. You may even want to have a lead on the dog at first.
Next is the dog that was the aggressor or instigator of the fight. This dog needs to be introduced to the dog he got into a fight with. If you want, you can keep him or her muzzled and collard at the time of reintroduction. This is all about control over the dog, control over your feelings towards the dog, and control of his feelings towards the dog you’re reintroducing him too. Make sure that both dogs don’t meet eye to eye, make sure body langue is neutral and there are no signs of dominance or aggression. Only this time if you see those you will correct and redirect his attention. He needs to understand this behavior is undesirable. This is also why this needs to happen when the dog is calm, so his senses aren’t in a heighten state or else he won’t be affected by corrections.
Once you see that both dogs are fine around each other they can be reintroduced together into the pack. The only thing is now both dogs must be monitored while they are out there with the pack for a while. Your job is to supervise this and make sure temperatures aren’t flaring every so often. To have a well-balanced pack you must follow these steps or something close to them. All too often I see people must keep two dogs separated in fear of what will happen if they allow both dogs out at the same time again. These situations happen all to often when they are avoidable is proper care and tactics are applied after the incident happened. If you’re going to own multiple dogs you must be prepared to handle common situations and 1 off situations at any time. I hope this helps you understand a little bit of what steps need to be taken after a fight occurs at home. If it’s a fight while you’re at the dog park, well your SOL because I told you to stay away from there anyway.
