How Best To Treat Pugs After A Fight?

I know there have been many reccomendations for how best to seperate pugs after they've started a real fight, but I feel like with my two it's a bit different. I'll try to keep this short.

Reggie is almost 6, Bella is almost 4. Reggie is alpha over Bella. Quiet, but definite. When they play, she is always on her back, he urinates over where she does, she'll wait to eat before he does (and will let him eat her food so we feed seperate twice a day in their kennels)...etc. Here's our issue. In the so many years we've had them, we've had maybe 4-5 real fights break out. Unfortunately 2 of those have been in the last two weeks or so. Most fights are over chews, well all have been except one which involved a box of crackers falling on the floor. So we've eliminated all high value chews, but they stopped selling the ones we bought so there have been less recently in the house (and now zero because of the fighting).

Here's the issue; Bella has severe anxiety. We've been dealing with this for a year or two now, and have come to the point where she is on a mild anti-anxiety medication. Her anxiety is released through insane spinning/yelping, and unfortunately sometimes attacking Reggie. They are crated when we aren't home, but her triggers are so odd. Whenever someone leaves the house/enters, picks up keys/puts on shoes, doorbell on tv, noises on tv, loud noises in the house, etc. She also every once in a while will go into this trance and will just pounce Reggie. (And I know it sounds like her triggers could be seperation anxiety, but they're both angels and calm when we leave them home).

I feel horrible for him. 99.999% of the time he just takes it. Ignores her or jumps up on a kitchen table chair where she can't get him. The other .001% we've had a bad and serious fight break out. Here's my dilemma with this, Reggie is the most well behaved pug we've ever had, and when Bella is all in a tizzy, she cannot hear a single word anyone says. Nothing breaks into her trance, and this is part of why she is on a mild sedative (there was no other possible way of getting her to hear us so we could work on training). So, when the fight breaks out and we grab one or both, I can say Reggie's name and a firm "Enough!" and he listens perfectly and stops, no matter how vicious the fight was. Bella, on the other hand, hears nothing and keeps going. So then you end up with a screaming vicious Bella pug who can't even see straight at that point. She won't bite us, but wants to eat Reggie.

So my question is, what do we do? Put them both in their crates afterwards even though Reggie was just standing his ground? She then just barks and barks and barks and does not relax if we do this. Neither will relax very much if we're home and they're in their crates (unless they have chews, treats, or are receiving a meal). I feel it's not fair, though, to then cage her and have him not be. Oh, and after writing this and realizing we've had an increase of her starting fights and whatnot, I just realized it matches up pretty perfectly with his increased marking in the house...

I am sure you are doing your very best with her and following the treatments suggested scrupulously, but - may I ask, what are you feeding them please?

It has happened before that, as in some ADD children, a food intolerance can cause behavioral issues that can be misdiagnosed. I have seen wild pug behaviour turn to calm pug behaviour with a change of diet...

And I would never punish/crate Reggie for self-defence JMO. I would be crating Bella only and putting a blanket over her crate to make it dark until she calms down.

Puggered wrote:I am sure you are doing your very best with her and following the treatments suggested scrupulously, but - may I ask, what are you feeding them please?

It has happened before that, as in some ADD children, a food intolerance can cause behavioral issues that can be misdiagnosed. I have seen wild pug behaviour turn to calm pug behaviour with a change of diet...

And I would never punish/crate Reggie for self-defence JMO. I would be crating Bella only and putting a blanket over her crate to make it dark until she calms down.

Wow, can't believe we've never thought of the blanket over Bella's crate...that could definitely help the situation. Yeah, the alprazolam is prescribed by a vet I've work for when I'm home. Bella is a special little girl. We tried every last resort before the meds. Even taking extra extra long walks to try to get rid of some of her energy didn't help.

The dreaded food question...actually I'm just fine answering it because I stand by what we feed for a few reasons. A few years ago, we tried some of the fancier kibbles like Innova Evo, but it was then that we realized Reggie had severe food allergies, and mainly/hugely to beef. We're at a not sure if he's allergic to chicken (he has some other seasonal Fall allergies). A vet started him on prescription Royal Canine Limited Ingredients Diet Potato and Venison, and Reggie does amazing on it (he went from consistant ear infections to one maybe every 6 mos). Addmitedly it is easier to feed them both the same thing, and that probably stems from way back when they were fed together outside their kennels. Also, I am now a sophomore in college a couple of states away. I can get the food really cheap (as in $25 instead of $56 in stores). I am more than open to hearing more about possibly changing Bell's food. It is kind of a difficult subject since my dad was just laid off and my mom doesn't work. I've always been willing to pay for a food for them that's worth it, but it's hard being in school and being hundreds of miles away. Although, if we find something that works better for Bella, I could always stock up before I go. I also struggle with my parents because they think I'm "starving" the dogs just because when they get less exercise, they get less food, and I always 100% measure the amount of food, but this also means we can't do anything with *too* much protein or high fat levels.

Sorry if that's jumbled, I somehow deleted my post halfway through...but thanks for the response and I'm interested in hearing your thoughts!!

Someone on another forum switched their 6 month old pup to raw and the difference in behaviour was notable. She put it down to the pup maturing. However, recently, for travel reasons she put the pug back onto kibble for a while. Bad behaviour returned, and went away again when they got home and started back on raw.

It sounds a lot like our house! Lucy is our anxious spinner. With her though, she's never really "attacked" Nell while in the middle of a spinning fit but Nell gets in her face sometimes while she's spinning and that aggravates her. Our girls' two main triggers are food and jealousy. We can easily remove the food issue (as it sounds like you've already done). They eat separately and we don't ever give any chews/high value treats except in the rare instance when perhaps it's a nice day outside and I'll put one on the deck to chew and leave the other in the house.

The jealousy trigger is a little harder to manage but now that we've been dealing with it for a while, we can pretty much avoid situations that we know will cause an issue. In the beginning, we always viewed Nell as the aggressor but the more I watched their behavior, Lucy can be pretty snarky herself. She just always ends up on the short end (she's always the one that ends up getting hurt if there are any injuries) because Nell has a weight/strength advantage. I usually just separate them in different rooms. I'll put one in the kitchen and one in the living room with the baby gate between them. I don't know if that's the right thing to do as far as canine dynamics go but with our girls it seems to work. They stand in the rooms and "bitch" at each other for a while then I lift the gate and let them go back together and Nell always tends to do alot of sniffing and licking of the area where she bit Lucy. By default, Lucy tends to get the "special" treatment after a fight because if there's any blood drawn, I obviously have to pick her up and tend to that.

The good thing with our girls is they're absolutely fine to be left alone. We've never ever had just something random or unknown trigger a fight. They're actually safer when we're not around then when we're here. LOL Luckily we haven't had a fight in a while but the posturing and snarkiness is definitely always still there so it's a constant issue of having to be aware of what you're doing so you don't push them to that next level.

I don't think this was probably any help to you at all. LOL Just wanted to share that you're not alone. When we had Hoover and Nell (without Lucy), Nell was very very pushy with Hoover but we never once had any fights. He was just the type to roll his eyes at her and let her do what she wanted. Lucy just doesn't take any crap so the whole fighting thing was new to us when she came along even though we'd already had Nell a few years.

My youngest skin child was ADD and uncontrollable when certain colours or flavourings, even in miniscule amounts, were in his food...I had to learn stuff like vanilla ice-cream has heaps of colouring. You had to watch easily accessible sugar, too, and until he finally grew out of it I had to bar pretty much all sucrose and his sugars mainly came from fructose (honey was ok though for some reason). None of which helps Bella, sorry!

The point I am trying to make is that it's really hard to know what the food triggers are in an individual and the safest thing to do would be to start with the PUREST, most unprocessed foods you can find and then if that helps you can start trying litle bits of commercial diets to see if you can identify what she is reacting to. It is most likely a tiny ingredient like a stabilizer or artifical flavour or something.

So the food you are currently using sounds great for Reggie, but is not helping Bella - IF she has food intolerance behaviour issues (which might not be the case, but it is worth trying IMO).
Personally I feed no more than 10% kibble in the diet, the rest is varied fresh meat, fresh bones, semi-cooked and raw vegetables (just for bulk), canned sardines and mackeral and plain low-fat yoghurt plus supplements flaxseed (edible linseed) oil, kelp powder and horse vinegar.

I understand that you can buy commercially prepared BARF or RAW dog food but that it is fairly expensive. I find that by preparing my own and freezing into meal size portions that it is neither expensive nor time-consuming. You do need a fair amount of freezer space, though!