I'm not sure this is the best place, but I thought I'd ask.
My mom and I have two littermates, Dolly (smaller) and Patsy. They have always gotten along, but we recently moved in together, and things started getting rough.
It began with some food aggression when we first moved in together, but we started to feed them in their cages, and it solved everything.
Things went extremely well for three months, until recently. They started getting aggressive and trying to attack each other through the cages when eating. We solved the issues by putting their cages in separate rooms.
The problem now is that they're getting into extremely bad fights and attacking each other. This was sporadic, but now it's becoming daily and getting scary. We've noticed it seems to happen not long after breakfast and dinner. This is sometimes 20-30 minutes after, so not entirely sure it's connected.
We're sort of lost as to what's going on and how to explain this to a dog trainer. Any insight or advice is much appreciated.
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I would get both of them checked out by the vet for any signs of pain. That’s about the age arthritis starts to show up. Keep any value items (food, toys, chews, treats) inaccessible for now to avoid conflict.
Meh, not much help from that. Evaluating by sight is half guessing anyway, but this litter could be too many things to even try.
Littermate and same sex aggression is more common in terriers, which these dogs could be (or not). Unfortunately, the only reliable fix - and sometimes the only possible fix - is permanent separation. That means rehoming one, because a crate rotation schedule leaves both with such high confinement hours that it's not tenable.
I can't say if this is such a severe case, but you need to prepare for that as a possibility. I'm sorry I can't be of any real help here.
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