Fence Fighting?

[SquishTheBunny]

We have a yappy little sh*t next door to us who ALWAYS starts the fence war. I will admit, one of my dogs will bark back, the other stands back and watches.

MY barker now wears a bark collar (citronela) whenever he goes outside, if he barks back, he gets sprayed. So, now he has learned to not even go to the fence. The other dog will still yap away, but my dogs do their own thing.

The best part is, the neighbors complain that MY dogs are the noisy ones…um…theres a difference between a lab bark and a shih tzu bark my friends! Aint no lab barking anymore!

[irkenequine]

Youve gotten the general culmination of solutions here, but I have to add onto one in particular.

My neighbors who have three large unspayed bullies, recently had to euthanize one because of fence fighting with my dogs. Theirs live outdoors full time and so naturally, WAIT next to the chain link fence for our kids to come outside so they have some stimulation.

I have an old one, a deaf one, and a bully with a propensity to start crap–if they all go out together, the bully will trot off with the other two and ignore it. If the bully goes out alone, he’s happy to rip roar along the fence with them, so needless to say I monitor it CAREFULLY. I just happened to watch the entire fight…I let my three off, they galloped off to the other side of the yard…three girls on the other side of the fence were running up and down waiting on the bully to run with him, but he wasn’t buying it…he changed direction and went to sniff a tree, and two of the neighbors dogs slammed into each other. In that much running/intensity it turned into a full on lockup fight. In the time it took me to get my dogs inside, get my cell phone and get over the fence to break it up, one of them was on the way to being destroyed. Didn’t have his number, ended up muzzling both girls and taking them to my clinic and footing the bill on my own because I couldn’t just let them lay in the yard until he got home. One girl made it, the other didn’t. It was AWFUL.

Anyway, neighbor agreed to fix the problem by doing what was aforementioned, adding a chickenwire fence 2’ in around the yard and planting bushes. When the bushes are full enough to be obstructive, I’ll pull the chickenwire down. Its worked beautifully so far…but I wish we’d done it sooner. I hope your solution fixes itself ASAP. If you have any type of relationship with the neighbor, I’d tell him a sob story to convince him to do something on his side too. Even dogs who get along well can trip/slam into each other and turn into enemies in that much barking and activity.

[threedogpack]

Irken I’m sorry that this happened to the dogs, the flashpoint between aggression and arousal is often very slim.

That said, I would not count on the bushes being enough to prevent further incidents if there is more than one dog over there, your dogs you know well enough to know if they can or will respond to verbage from the neighbors dogs.

This is why I stress so often that training an alternate response to high arousal is in the best interest of dog owners. Put an = between the trigger and the behavior and change what the trigger means to the dog.

We cannot control others dogs, we can only train through the arousal/aggression presented by our own dogs and hope, that the other parties learn to respond in a more appropriate manner.

[meupatdoes]

[QUOTE=threedogpack;6421652]

We cannot control others dogs, we can only train through the arousal/aggression presented by our own dogs and hope, that the other parties learn to respond in a more appropriate manner.[/QUOTE]

I agree.

Irken, that’s a terrible story and I feed bad for the dogs, but aside from living in generalized terror of ever letting my dogs out, there’s not much I can do about the neighbors dogs.

So far, getting MINE “re-triggered” and calm has been working for them, and the neighbor has expressed moderate interest in maybe working with his dogs as well.

I feel bad for the dogs in your story (starting with “24/7 outside dogs”) but life is too short to be generally terrified by other people’s problems that might happen.

[irkenequine]

I feel bad for the dogs in your story (starting with “24/7 outside dogs”) but life is too short to be generally terrified by other people’s problems that might happen.

Yeah agreed, being proactive on your end is the best solution. Glad its working out. I too hate the situation with the now two dogs who are still outdoors. My roommate and I are both vet techs so you can imagine how often our evenings turn into rants over their situation :rolleyes: Of course, wasn’t like that until they had a baby, etc etc.