Dogs

We got a new puppy. He is a beautiful furry ball of energy that doesn't bark. Hes a cross between a Chow-Husky mix and a German Shepard. We named him Bear like my husband because his paws look like baby bear paws.

Picture of Bear

The problem is our other dog Buddy. Now the reason we got the puppy was, since the one cat we had that was willing to play with Buddy died, Buddy has seemed so sad and lonely. I thought a puppy would help matters because dogs are pack animals.

The problem is that I didn't realize exactly how aggressive a dog Buddy really is until we brought Bear home. Now that I stop to think about it, I can see it but I always saw his aggression as trying to protect us. That's before I found out hes killing the Possums that live around here.

We realized he was actually killing the possums and not just dragging them up instead of just finding road kill to play with the same night we brought Bear home. Hubby pulled up in the drive with the puppy, handed the puppy to me and grabbed Buddy's collar. He then looked at the possum and saw that it was breathing. So we have proof that hes killing them.

In that light I have to look back over the last week. He attacked the neighbors dogs that came up the driveway. He nipped at Tristain bad enough his side was red for a few minutes but not bad enough to break the skin or bruise. He killed the Possum. And he tried to bite the puppy twice the night we brought it home.

That was Monday. Since then He has bit my oldest daughter twice, attacked the puppy again twice. Neither of them are bad enough to really hurt but with the puppy it could have been. He has regressed to jumping up on everyone again and barks entirely to much. He keeps jumping the fence around the compost pile. If I can't trust him to not attack the puppy how do I know he won't attack the chickens once they are old enough to go in the coop.

With the way his back leg is hurt (It got hurt before he showed up here) I can't put him in a carrier and he won't get into the van to go to the trainer so if I can't find a trainer to come to him I don't know what we are going to do. I'm not going to make Bear stay in the house because Buddy is mean. But, I can't leave Buddy on the chain all the time either. If we took him to the pound they would end up putting him down due to his aggression. I don't know how to fix it.

I do know that Bear is a few weeks away from being able to leave around Buddy unsupervised anyway but, at this rate, I'm not going to be able to do it until Bear is 6 months old and then he will be big enough and strong enough to fight with buddy for pack position and perhaps run him off, but I don't want that to happen. The idea was that Buddy would be the pack leader but maybe he doesn't have pack leader in him.