How to Manage a Multi-Dog Household

Do you live with two or more dogs? Are you fostering or pet sitting? I have fabulous multiple dog household tips  for you! And yes, it’s possible to expect polite dog behavior even if you have a furry gang.

As a dog trainer, my home has fluctuated having between 2-4 dogs for the last 20 years. While each dog and situation is different, there are a few really good best practices to follow. Here are mine!

Provide each dog with his own area for eating

Preferably, it’s best to feed dogs in their crates with the door closed and latched. While some dogs may not have an issue, some dogs can resource guard (protect their food bowls) so an ounce of prevention is worth its weight in gold!

Don’t allow bullying behavior

If one dog is constantly bullying, scaring or pushing another dog around, don’t allow this to continue or let the dogs work it out amongst themselves. This almost always makes the behavior much worse. Instead, step in and teach dogs how to behave politely to each other. I recommend tethering the bullying dog. It’s not fair to the bullied dog, as I would not want to live with a bully for my entire life.

RELATED: Supervised Dog Tethering

Leaving dogs alone at home: When leaving dogs alone, always crate your dogs.

• Leaving one dog loose: My older dog usually earns big girl privileges, which means she can safely be left loose in the house. I always crate my other dogs. Basically, only one dog is left loose in the home while the others are confined. When dogs are crated, I put visual barriers between crates to prevent any arguing when I’m not home. Visual barriers can be a wall or blanket covering one side of a dog’s crate.
• Prevention: As a dog trainer, I’ve encountered numerous situations where multiple dogs can co-exist peacefully alone and loose in their home until a thunderstorm or doorbell (usually from the FedEx, UPS or solicitor) causes stress and they begin to fight. I remember one case where three dogs lived together for 5 years with no issues. Then a terrible storm passed through and two dogs killed the other one (no one was home to stop the fight). Yes, it can happen. Remember that ounce of prevention. 🙂

Training multiple dogs is much easier than you think!

• Separating: When teaching new behaviors, I use treats and a clicker. To prevent one dog from outperforming the other dog, I confine one dog in another room with a luscious food stuffed toy. Then, the training dog and I practice for 2-3 minutes. Then, dogs are switched out until all dogs have had a few rounds of training.
• Training together: The dog that sits first gets the treat and the dog that comes back to me the fastest gets the treat. Or, the best treat goes to the first performer, and the others get Cheerios. If you have an older dog, it’s not fair to assume a 12-year-old dog can outperform a 2-year-old dog so keep it fair. If dogs fight over treats, use praise and only train one dog at a time.

Exercising two dogs

• First, teach both dogs how to walk politely on a leash separately. Use this time for training sessions and end it with a nice leisurely walk offering plenty of sniffing opportunities for your dog. Until your dogs learn polite leash manners, make sure each dog has his own handler so each dog has a different person holding his leash. Example: two dogs are walked with two people and so forth.
• If your dogs become too excited and turn their over-the-top excitement on each other (start fighting), keep them separated by walking one dog at a time. Never allow this behavior to continue, it will only get worse. Focus on teaching the excited dog calm behavior. Once the excited dog learns calm behavior, then add the other dogs but only with their own handlers to hold the leash. If the excited dog has an excited moment, the other handlers should move away from the excited dog.

RELATED: Crate Training

Play sessions: Keep these under control  

Even the best play sessions can become chaotic. Have you ever watched two young boys innocently wrestling? Eventually, one boy becomes upset because he was accidentally hurt, then a fight begins. This can happen with dogs too!

• Too rough play: When dogs’ play session quickens or an increase of growls and snapping occur, split dogs up. You can stop dog play by making a loud repeating sound, such as smooching sounds, or calling dogs by their names. When they stop playing, call them to you and give them both treats. As a rule of thumb, when in doubt, split them up. 🙂
• Bullying dog play: When one dog runs away from the other dog usually with his tail tucked, stop the play. It’s not fair to the scared dog to be constantly bullied by another dog. Tether the dog that is doing the bullying. He needs to learn this is not polite behavior and good things end when he acts rude. If you don’t step in, you are asking for a dog fight. This is a perfect time to teach consequences of behavior. If you’re rude, no more play. If you play nicely, play continues. And yes, dogs totally understand this game. 🙂
• If a fight breaks out: Refrain from screaming, as this will only make it worse. Dump a bowl of water on the dog doing the biting or grab the biting dog’s back legs (by the hocks) and leave them up — kind of like a wheelbarrow — until the biting dog lets go. By lifting his back legs, he loses his balance and must let go. Still holding the dog’s back legs, grab the dog being bit and put him in another room to assess and stop the fight. Many times, if you let go of the biting dog’s legs, he will go right back and attack the other dog. It takes a lot for another dog to attack and bite a dog so I highly recommend contacting an animal behaviorist to prevent the biting dog from doing this again.

Provide each dog with his own special time with you

Provide each dog with special time alone with you. This can be individual training sessions or a walk in the park with you and one dog.  Strive for individual time three to four times a week.

Toys

Now, I’m able to leave toys out at all times. Before, my four dogs would fight over who can play with certain toys. It was not pretty.

• Fighting over toys: While I know you don’t want to hear this, but this is the only way to prevent fights: remove all toys. Toys are not worth having fighting dogs period. Instead, increase daily walks to 30 minutes per day and provide food puzzles while crated.
• Offer food stuffed toys daily while all dogs are confined: This provides plenty of enrichment and confinement prevents fights. Use visual barriers between crates, as this prevents resource guarding. Yes, dogs can still resource guard when crated. My Rottie never ate the food out of his Kong toy. I videotaped him when I left and my Bull Terrier would growl and lunge at him through her crate, mind you, whenever he tried to lick his Kong. I was mortified! I put visual barriers in between both crates and now my Rottie enjoys his food stuffed Kong. 🙂  Yes, I confirmed it with multiple video sessions and I still check to make sure this does not happen again.

Please share a multi-dog household tip in the comment section below!

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