My family and I have 2 dogs. One is an English Bulldog (jager pronounced like the drink) 3 yr old male and a Chocolate Lab (porter) who is 4 yr old male. We got porter at ~12 weeks old and jager at ~20 weeks old. For porter, he's only been with my family, for jager we are his third family, I don't fully know the story behind why the 2 previous families didn't keep jager, he was a surprise, parents didn't tell us they were getting him.
Jager gravitated towards my sister and porter gravitated towards me. For the first 1 - 1.5 year of having both of them, they got along just great, they weren't amazing buddies but they played with each other and got along. Then it was like a light switch, jager would just attack porter out of nowhere with no warning or indicitiative body language that we could pick up on. My biggest concern is that their is no warning of him attacking, no growling, snarling, lunging, showing teeth, hair standing up, staring, nothing, if I was able to pick up on the warning signs I would intervene. I mean it could happen in the kitchen when foods is around, which I can at least understand why but, it also happens when they're just walking by each other in the hallway, chilling in our rooms, I was doing some school work one day listening to music with porter sitting under my desk and didn't hear jager come in and the next thing I know is both are fighting. If jager is in the family room, porter will not come in but porter will go into jagers room (sister's room) quite often to look out the window to watch people walk by and everything is just fine, I don't think it's territorial, at least not solely. Building off that previous statement, jager will quite often stand at the doorway to my room, where porter usually is and just stare at him for a solid 2 - 3 minutes. That could be territorial but personally, I think it's more than just that.
my sister tried introducing jager to her boyfriends dogs a pitbull/lab mix ~ 5 yr old and 2 pitsbull both are ~ 4 yrs old. I've personally met all three of the dogs and they are just all great dogs. Sidenote my sister's BF is more so helping out a friend going through a divorce who "owns" the pitbulls, BF is trying to rehome them and is struggling to do so, a FB group accused them of selling bait dogs, they weren't asking for money to rehome them, thats messed up. I wanted one of them but got shut done by my parents. I truly hate the stigma that breed has gotten because of horrible people. Back to the story, jager ended up fighting with all 3 of her BFs dogs, this is the main reason sister hasn't moved out, she can't take jager to live at BFs. My sister then went to go meet BFs parents, who have 2 dogs, I don't know the breeds but, their both over 10 yrs old for sure, I think one is almost 14, and jager started fights with them too.
I'm just not sure what I can do. No disrespect to English bulldogs when I say this, but it's hard to read their emotions, behaviors or ques because of the breeds characteristics. No disrespect when I say that.
This isn't an everyday thing but routinely happens at least once a week. The family has had 2 dogs in the house before (different from jager and porter) and they've fought but it was only a couple of times a year. To me that is normal, but once a week, I think that's too much. Am I over reacting, or is this something that needs intervening?
Jager gravitated towards my sister and porter gravitated towards me. For the first 1 - 1.5 year of having both of them, they got along just great, they weren't amazing buddies but they played with each other and got along. Then it was like a light switch, jager would just attack porter out of nowhere with no warning or indicitiative body language that we could pick up on. My biggest concern is that their is no warning of him attacking, no growling, snarling, lunging, showing teeth, hair standing up, staring, nothing, if I was able to pick up on the warning signs I would intervene. I mean it could happen in the kitchen when foods is around, which I can at least understand why but, it also happens when they're just walking by each other in the hallway, chilling in our rooms, I was doing some school work one day listening to music with porter sitting under my desk and didn't hear jager come in and the next thing I know is both are fighting. If jager is in the family room, porter will not come in but porter will go into jagers room (sister's room) quite often to look out the window to watch people walk by and everything is just fine, I don't think it's territorial, at least not solely. Building off that previous statement, jager will quite often stand at the doorway to my room, where porter usually is and just stare at him for a solid 2 - 3 minutes. That could be territorial but personally, I think it's more than just that.
my sister tried introducing jager to her boyfriends dogs a pitbull/lab mix ~ 5 yr old and 2 pitsbull both are ~ 4 yrs old. I've personally met all three of the dogs and they are just all great dogs. Sidenote my sister's BF is more so helping out a friend going through a divorce who "owns" the pitbulls, BF is trying to rehome them and is struggling to do so, a FB group accused them of selling bait dogs, they weren't asking for money to rehome them, thats messed up. I wanted one of them but got shut done by my parents. I truly hate the stigma that breed has gotten because of horrible people. Back to the story, jager ended up fighting with all 3 of her BFs dogs, this is the main reason sister hasn't moved out, she can't take jager to live at BFs. My sister then went to go meet BFs parents, who have 2 dogs, I don't know the breeds but, their both over 10 yrs old for sure, I think one is almost 14, and jager started fights with them too.
I'm just not sure what I can do. No disrespect to English bulldogs when I say this, but it's hard to read their emotions, behaviors or ques because of the breeds characteristics. No disrespect when I say that.
This isn't an everyday thing but routinely happens at least once a week. The family has had 2 dogs in the house before (different from jager and porter) and they've fought but it was only a couple of times a year. To me that is normal, but once a week, I think that's too much. Am I over reacting, or is this something that needs intervening?
