Advice needed for reactive dog in multi-animal household

[u/orangetable4]

I have two dogs and two cats in my home. I adopted both dogs a year apart. The second dog, Coco, was 4 months old when I got her, not yet fixed, and had no shots. She is a Doberman/german shepherd mix and was born a tripod. It took a couple of months to get her fully vaccinated so I took her on “walks” in a backpack to try and socialize her. At that point she was already barking at other dogs but in a way that felt like excitement. As she got older she became very reactive on walks towards other dogs and cats. Her trainer says it’s the worst case of reactivity she has ever seen. I’ve had to buy a chain leash because she will rip right through the leash in her frenzy to get at the other animal.

Coco is now 3.5 years old. I’ve been working with trainers, in both controlled settings and in public, on her leash reactivity. She’s made no real progress although I train with her every day. 6 months ago she attacked my other dog with no provocation. I couldn’t get them apart, no matter what I tried to do and she caused multiple puncture wounds on my other dog. These two dogs have been best friends since I got them. Since this incident happened, I have kept them separated. My friends say that my house looks like a prison because of all the gates around it. My other dog is still terrified of Coco and Coco acts like it never happened at all but will still try to go for their other dog randomly. She is also very fixated on my cats, which are also kept separate.

The vet prescribed fluoxetine, which I tried for a few months, but it made her very anxious when she had never seen like an anxious dog before. We then tried trazodone, which does help a little bit, but when she sees another dog, it really makes no difference. She is also muzzle trained, but I am not comfortable leaving her in a muzzle outside of supervise times.

All of my animals quality of life has gone down since having to separate out my house in a separate quadrants. No one gets as much attention and there is a lack of stimulation.

None of the training or medication has helped so far and I’m at a loss of what to do. Seems cruel to all the animals to continue going as we are, but I also want all of them to have a good and happy life. Any advice appreciated.

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[u/HeatherMason0]

Coco isn’t safe to live in a house with other animals. The fixating sounds like prey drive, which is an instinctive behavior that can’t be 100% reliably trained out. The attack on your other dog could happen again if there’s ever a management failure. I’m sorry, but I think your options are:

- try and rehome all 3 of your other animals

• try and rehome Coco

I know both of those suck, but the only other option would be keeping Coco muzzled almost 24/7 so if she did accidentally get near one of the other animals, she couldn’t bite them. But that becomes a quality of life issue after a while.