YIPES! How to Safely Break Up a Dog Attack???

That just scared me to pieces...of course being the resident adult and alpha female I can't let my kids know...But I don't understand quite what happened a few minutes ago...

I threw some peanut butter biscuits on the floor for the dogs like I usually do. An equal number for each a distance from each other. Sophie usually picks up her share and carries it to the living room while Callie sits where he is and scarfs whatever is in front of him.

Suddenly there was the gawd awful sound of Sophie becoming Cujo. We are so blessed that with her Callie will not fight back. He's far stronger and it could be really ugly if he were another dog. But from day one he lets her have her way.

She gets tweaky about special treats like rawhide and will walk up and steal his, then lay on top of hers and try to hoard both before I take one away. But he'll just drop his head and let her do it. But what happened a couple minutes ago was weird. She was growling and lunging at him.

Of course I did what you're not supposed to do...I barked too "SOPHIE WHAT THE **** DO YOU THINK YOU"RE DOING ******" and so on. But she stopped and she was trying to paw at something in her mouth. I felt around afterwards and her teeth and gums seem normal. My son said maybe she bit her cookie and hurt a tooth.

Or did she hurt herself nipping him? His neck and shoulders are solid...come to think of it I better check him out too. She almost bite through the paw of a dog we tried to adopt, that dog was a much slighter build than Callie but gah, poor guy was trembling after we got her out of the room.

So my elderly neurotic nutjob. How do I guard against that kind of thing in the future? I hate to even imagine...if she were to seriously hurt him or one of the house cats it would be time to make a very difficult choice. But I don't want that to happen of course. Thoughts please?

You'll need to clarify a bit, how to forestall it in the first place or how to deal with it if they get started? Naturally your simplest solution is to remove the object of contention and seperate them when they have treats. You're far from alone with this issue.

Sounds like resource guarding.

You know your dogs, far better than we do, as far as breaking them up. Past a water bottle, I could not give a good choice.

Personally, I NEVER physically intervene unless I can do so absolutely safely. Far better is to prevent the fight occurring in the first place. However, fights do and will happen, however careful we are, and when it is dog on dog aggression IMO it is better NOT to intervene, unless one can do safely WITHOUT using hands. You will almost inevitably get bitten if you try and drag dogs apart, and it will almost always be inadvertent, neither dog means to bite you, but the red mist has descended and they are temporarily deaf and blind. If at all possible, water is always the best way to break up fighting dogs, but rarely would that be conveniently available, so I personally use my body to try and get them to separate - not hands, not feet, but being a tall and sturdily built woman, this can do the trick but not always. For safety's sake, you sometimes just have to let them get on with it. I own a very male aggressive 45 kilo dog, Ben, but he has never inflicted serious injury ever, it is all just sound and fury - his worst bite was just a skin split under the elbow, nasty but not serious. 99 times out of 100 it sounds awful, looks horrendous, but is usually just full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Filmed and slowed down, a dog fight is often all posturing and as I say sound and fury ... unless you are talking about bull breeds, mastiffs and the guarding breeds like GSDs, then it can be more serious.

Well there are ways of handling dogs apart with relative safety, the 'wheelbarrow' method probably being the best but they call for at least one person per fighter. I could never recommend going in single handed, prevention indeed before cure in these cases.

Now that I've had some time to think...prevention by actually having Sophie in another room when they get treats. As far as breaking it up, with Sophie it's putting her in a headlock and hustling her out of the room. Works with her but certainly not for most dogs.

I used to have two dogs a while back that would very rarely get into actual angry fights (the same one always started it). What I ended up doing was taking a baby gate (same one I used to keep them out of certain rooms) and gently but firmly push it down between them to separate them. You need to be careful not to break any bones in the muzzle/jaw or any teeth, so don't slam it or anything. It worked for me though.

Sounds like some sort of strong distractions might work. Open an umbrella in their midst, or drop a frying pan on a tiled surface. My guys stop anything they are doing and run to the gate if I yell "Hello". That's a little more dignified than yelling.

Yes the distraction definitely works with me. Soph even in the midst of a psycho break will listen to me if I get her attention quickly. With the kids-not little, they're teens...I told them to toss water on her if I'm not home.

Hopefully she won't get herself as worked up if I'm not around. They say she spends most of the time I'm at work waiting by the front door anyways. She's always been a moody dog. Just seems more so as she gets older.

It might be worth looking at the underlying cause for the scraps as well as a reactive approach.
You indicate that you take treats away from Sophie if she steals them from him.
The fact that she feels she needs to assert herself is a sign that the pecking order is not firmly established, even if he's submitting to her.

The fact that you "back him up" (and I don't know how protective you feel / act towards him because he's the one getting picked on) might be a reason for her to feel she has to keep reasserting her position.

You could try and treating her as number 1 to see if that makes a difference.
I had a 9 year old male border collie who was introduced to a very exuberant GSD female. It was not love at first sight by any means and initially my instinct was to protect her. But as soon as I acknowledged he was in charge as the established dog in the house, fed him first, let him go out first etc. the situation improved considerably.

Just a thought!