Body Blocking

[Guest HoundWorks]

So my original concern upon bringing Siri home was that Dexter our whippet would not be respectful of her space. He learned quickly after he jumped on her as he was chasing down a fly (posted about this earlier). He is now very respectful of Siri and won't come close to her if she has a toy, food, or if we are petting her.

 

One thing Siri has started doing a lot of is body blocking. She tries this with me and my BF when we walk her or move around the house. After reading up on it we have used the technique to keep moving slowly in our desired direction. She seems to be getting it and isn't tripping us as much on walks.

 

The problem we are having is that she does this to Dexter. She will slam herself into him and she is a bit larger. When she does this he gives her more space and tries to get out of her way.

 

The major problem this has caused is when I am giving Dexter attention/pets or he is sitting/lying close to me and Siri comes in and moves him out of the way. Dex will growl and try to nip at her. Luckily I have been ready for this reaction and it has not caused a fight yet. So Dex seems to be resource guarding my attention made worse by Siri bumping him out of the way and not repsecting his space.

 

So does anyone have suggestions on how to handle this? Any ideas welcome. I feel like I need to work with both dogs... I've never had two dogs at the same time so I'm finding it to be a challenge to work with them both especially since Siri is so new and I'm still working on the basics with her.

[Sambuca]

If they are arguing over you, then walk away. They will learn that neither gets attention if they don't share nice.

[JJNg]

If I'm giving attention to 1 dog, and another comes up and is pushy about taking over the attention, I turn my side/back to the pushy dog, ignoring him completely while continuing to give attention to the original one. If needed, I'll shift my position so I'm between the 2 dogs. If the dog originally getting attention gets nasty about it, I'd follow Sambuca's advice of walking away from both.

 

On the other hand, if another dog approaches nicely and asks for attention too, then I pet both dogs. You can try to facilitate this by inviting them over for petting (or invite the other over when you are petting one), with one on each side of you, initially trying to stay between them as much as possible. If you can stay between them, it will decrease tension. And as they get used to getting attention together, they may become more relaxed and be able to be next to each other. Pet both as long as they are being calm and not showing any negative behavior toward each other. Whoever is being pushy or not nice gets ignored. And if both are not being nice, then walk away.

[a_daerr]

They say that dogs don't have the capacity to have feelings like humans (i.e. jealousy, spite, vengeful, etc). But whoever said that lied! My guys definitely get jealous of each other. They compete for my attention sometimes, so I pretty much do the same thing that the above posters talked about. Give them both attention, or if it gets too pushy, walk away and give neither attention. I've found that they also compete for each other's attention. If I take them both to the dog park and Truman takes interest in another dog, Henry will body block and try to push Truman away and start a bitey-face game. It's almost like he's jealous and says, "Hey! Play with me!"

[silverfish]

If I'm giving attention to 1 dog, and another comes up and is pushy about taking over the attention, I turn my side/back to the pushy dog, ignoring him completely while continuing to give attention to the original one. If needed, I'll shift my position so I'm between the 2 dogs. If the dog originally getting attention gets nasty about it, I'd follow Sambuca's advice of walking away from both.

 

On the other hand, if another dog approaches nicely and asks for attention too, then I pet both dogs. You can try to facilitate this by inviting them over for petting (or invite the other over when you are petting one), with one on each side of you, initially trying to stay between them as much as possible. If you can stay between them, it will decrease tension. And as they get used to getting attention together, they may become more relaxed and be able to be next to each other. Pet both as long as they are being calm and not showing any negative behavior toward each other. Whoever is being pushy or not nice gets ignored. And if both are not being nice, then walk away.

 

That's pretty much what I do. Sid has become very jealous of the 'new' dog Jeffie, partly because he needs more attention for his teeth and general health (being older) and partly because ... *Sigh* ... Jeffie needs almost twice as much food as Sid in order to maintain a half-decent weight, and Sid being a tripod must NOT be allowed to get fat.

 

We do as JJNg does, and I find it works well and nobody gets snarky.

[Guest HoundWorks]

It does seem like they get jealous! I've been practicing this whenever someone gets pushy and we have had no snarky-ness lately! Thank you for the suggestions!