Dog meets Dog

There is already a dog at Holden Farm, a little danish/swedish farmdog, very territorial. How all the dogs would get along has been our biggest (our only, actually) worry. On our first day here, I met Anne Sofie in the wood shed, and she shared some concern regarding the dogs. Apparently Kaisa had been bitten by a visiting dog a couple of years ago, and has had a tendency to react aggressively towards strange dogs sinced then, especially on her own turf. Topsy has never really gotten along with other dogs, though she usually will avvoid them. Lucy takes her cue from Topsy, and tends to be aggressive, especially when Topsy is around, so I had planned to seperate them for their encounters with Kaisa. This however was not to be.

They first met a couple days after we moved in. I had just opened the door to take the dogs for their walk when Kaisa ran right up to the front step. As a chorus of defensive snarling errupted, I scooped Lucy up in my arms, pulled Topsy back inside and shut the door.

The second meeting came the day after we returned from Folldal. Husband was walking the dogs, and as he passed the barn, Kaisa came barrelling out of nowhere and went straight at Topsy's throat, which immediately resulted in an all out dog fight between the three of them. Kaisa doesn't wear a collar, but eventually the kids were able to collect her, while husband got a leash on Topsy. Lucy was already on leash.

The third meeting occurred today. I was returning from our walk when I saw that Kaisa was outside by the barn. I clipped the leash on Topsy, but let her drag it and we walked slowly by making a show of avvoiding the barn. Kaisa followed hugging the barn walls. However as we started up the driveway, Kaisa following a ways behind, Topsy started growling and wanting to hang back. I took her leash and while continuing to feed Lucy to keep her attention on me as I had ever since we saw Kaisa, we made our way to the house. Kaisa just went to her own house and sat down on the front step. It looks like, with a little encouragement from us, the dogs can be prevailed upon to avvoid each other. They seem to have started to understand that Kaisa has her house, our dogs have theirs, and thet the yard is more or less divided between them. The area around the barn will likely be the biggest bone of contention.