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Hi there,
I wonder whether any knowledgable/more experienced whippet owners than us out there can offer us some advice ?!
We have 3 whippets, a male who is 7, a female who is 5 and another female who is 20 months.
The three of them get on quite well, with the other two grudgingly accepting the puppy over the first few months of her arrival as a puppy. She seems to adore them, particularly the other female who she is often curled up with on the settee. They all play fight regularly and sleep together in a huge basket every night.
In terms of the hierarchy, the male dog has always been top dog, and is good at telling the younger ones off with a quick snarl and a soft bite across the nose when he thinks they are going too far.
However, we have a problem and I'm not sure what is the best way to address it. The youngest female is very greedy (they all are really, but her noticeably more so), and gobbles her food up much quicker than the other two. Then she mooches on over to their bowl to try it on and see if she can get any of theirs. The other female would occasionally walk away and let the younger dog have her food, at which point I would move the younger dog and give it back to the other. More recently though, in the last 4-5 months, the younger dog has been starting fights over food. They sound quite horrific, and the other female has been left with a minor nick on her face once or twice. We started separting the dogs feeding areas, feeding the older two in one room and the youngest in another room, and this has helped enormously - we now never have fights over the food bowls.
However, if we give the dogs a treat, say a dog biscuit, invariably there will be crumbs left over which will attract the youngest dog and will end up in a fight. She actually attacked the male dog about a month ago and it has happened twice since. More surprisingly he was the one doing all the yelping and didn't seem to be fighting back at all.
So now, I feel that giving them treats outside of mealtimes is not an option, and I don't feel that that is fair on the other dogs.
Aside from the fighting, they all still get on quite well. The fights are always stopped by me or my husband, and we do smack the youngest dog, which I realise is probably not the correct approach to resolving this. Please can someone advise what we might be able to do to make all three dogs happy?
I wonder whether any knowledgable/more experienced whippet owners than us out there can offer us some advice ?!
We have 3 whippets, a male who is 7, a female who is 5 and another female who is 20 months.
The three of them get on quite well, with the other two grudgingly accepting the puppy over the first few months of her arrival as a puppy. She seems to adore them, particularly the other female who she is often curled up with on the settee. They all play fight regularly and sleep together in a huge basket every night.
In terms of the hierarchy, the male dog has always been top dog, and is good at telling the younger ones off with a quick snarl and a soft bite across the nose when he thinks they are going too far.
However, we have a problem and I'm not sure what is the best way to address it. The youngest female is very greedy (they all are really, but her noticeably more so), and gobbles her food up much quicker than the other two. Then she mooches on over to their bowl to try it on and see if she can get any of theirs. The other female would occasionally walk away and let the younger dog have her food, at which point I would move the younger dog and give it back to the other. More recently though, in the last 4-5 months, the younger dog has been starting fights over food. They sound quite horrific, and the other female has been left with a minor nick on her face once or twice. We started separting the dogs feeding areas, feeding the older two in one room and the youngest in another room, and this has helped enormously - we now never have fights over the food bowls.
However, if we give the dogs a treat, say a dog biscuit, invariably there will be crumbs left over which will attract the youngest dog and will end up in a fight. She actually attacked the male dog about a month ago and it has happened twice since. More surprisingly he was the one doing all the yelping and didn't seem to be fighting back at all.
So now, I feel that giving them treats outside of mealtimes is not an option, and I don't feel that that is fair on the other dogs.
Aside from the fighting, they all still get on quite well. The fights are always stopped by me or my husband, and we do smack the youngest dog, which I realise is probably not the correct approach to resolving this. Please can someone advise what we might be able to do to make all three dogs happy?
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