Okay so Sheba is in the 3rd week of her heat. My first question has to do with her heat, so that is why I put that in.

So last night my boyfriend left the door to Sheba's kennel open last night which is something he isn't supposed to do. He is not supposed to do that because Sheba is over protective of her kennel and she guards it from Kennedy. The problem is that it was Kennedy's kennel first, so Kennedy doesn't see why she isn't allowed to enter as she pleases anymore. So what I have done with Sheba is I will call Kennedy over to the kennel and every time Sheba lets her enter without puffing up or growling, she gets a high value treat. However when she does growl, she gets a strict "NO" and I lead her away from the kennel and we try it again. So far it has worked pretty well. Then last night happened..

Like I said, the boyfriend left the kennel door open and Sheba had a Himalayan Chew in her kennel, so things escalated very quickly. I wasn't watching, so this is what happened to the best of my knowledge..
Kennedy and Sheba both walked into the bedroom at the same time and all hell broke loose in a matter of seconds. I don't know if Kennedy tried to grab the treat or if Sheba just had a knee jerk reaction and went after her. Kennedy went for Sheba's neck and started thrashing her around and Sheba went for her front leg. It was a fight, and it scared me. After I got them broken up, Sheba went into her kennel and started to lightly woo and cry at me, and Kennedy was limping and licking her leg. Kennedy had broken skin on the top of Sheba's head but no skin was broken on Kennedy.

What I'm wondering is if this is a training issue, or if it was caused by Sheba's raging hormones, or both.

Okay so the second question I have has to do with toy guarding. This started when she was younger and I thought it was just dogs being dogs, but know I feel like I let it go on too long and I'm afraid I messed up.
When Sheba was a puppy, she would constantly take toys away from Kennedy and I had always had it drilled into me to "let dogs be dogs", so I didn't do anything about it. Well now we are at the point where Kennedy is afraid to play fetch if the toy goes anywhere near Sheba, and Sheba will actually lay on toys and put her hackles up and bare her teeth. I know now that I messed up. But where you do draw the line between letting dogs be dogs and work stuff out, and knowing that they are going past that line. Oh and advice for fixing this! She lets me take toys for her and we do trading games all the time, so that isn't a problem.

I have a few questions for you - I am not training guru, I prefer nutrition, but I have some experience in resource guarding with my two.

1. Why is Kennedy not given Sheba's crate and Sheba takes the new one?

2. I do not give chews or bones until after dogs are in crates and secure, then I'll pass them an antler or chew. This will help curb the opportunity for jealousy. If they don't see it in the crate, that should help.

3. Take away all toys and slowly introduce them. Whenever Sheba shares, treat her. even if that means You sit on the ground and pass the toys back and forth and treat them every time they don't growl. Only allow them to have a toy while supervised and while being civil. I know that I curbed this with Delilah by treating when Cato was a puppy and going over to her, grabbing the toy and giving it back to Cato if she took it. Then I would treat her so she knew it O.K. for him to have a toy. Now, they share and even have their own toys that the other doesn't take. Delilah has Lion that only she gets to play with, when I give it to her and Cato a giraffe.

You can get through this, but you will have to dedicate time to it and so will your boyfriend. If he doesn't they could revert and a fight very well could start. This is resource guarding and in my experience, not something to take lightly. Dog fights can even be worse than you experienced. Start practicing Nothign In Life Is Free training and be dedicated. Good luck and I hope I helped a little bit.

I have been trying to do the NILF training, and this is really the only problem area.

1. Kennedy does not need to be crated, so I thought it was logical to just give Sheba her crate because it hadn't been used in months so I really didn't see the point in buying a new one. Now I'm thinking that might not have been a good idea.

2. I haven't ever had a blow up like this before and I had never had a problem with antlers and such. They actually trade back and forth when they have chews that last awhile like antlers, so I never really saw this coming.

3. I will start doing that immanently. After the whole fight over the chew, I had passed it back and forth between the two of them and praised Sheba every time she let me give it to Kennedy with out bearing her teeth. We did this for about 5 minutes until Sheba lost interest in the whole exercise so I stopped and it was bed time.

If it's high value, they may fight. Are they used to having himalayan chews?

If a dog has known resource guarding, I will remove all toys when doign a play date. Delilah is a recovering resource guarder, but I still pull up all toys and chews whenever we have company (or when we first got Cato).

There was one week when Niraya (Ceara) came over and brought Bella. The first 2 or so days we had no toys, but after they were acclimated and we introduced them slowly they did fine with toys around the house. Delilah and Bella never had a single problem. It can be curbed.

They have only had on and off for about a week, so probably not.

I will start doing this right away. Thank you!