Okay so it's happened three times now. Chucka and Chaos have snapped at each other and gotten into it.. They are not aggressive to anyone or each other, just these three times and twice it was food and the other was a toy? They don't growl, they don't act differant.. Would getting one of them snipped help with this? One of the times Chucka got caught with some teeth to his mouth and bleed a little. Im not to worried about it, but had to ask cause the wife was a little worried. I figure it's chain of command type shit.
ok, well..... you've entered into a world that could be a big, big problem with your dogs over time. Unfortunately, castration may not be the be all/end all that some people think it is. To put things as simple as possible, I try to break it down into the "three drives" model: prey vs territory vs reproductive. Castration will virtually eliminate reproductve drive, will decrease territory drive, and may blunt prey drive, but won't eliminate it. Once dogs start fighting, it becomes a complex interaction. Sometimes simply letting the dogs "work things out" can solve the problem. Unfortunately, you won pitbulls. Depending on the dogs, their innate prey drive can override common sense in a fight situation and this can actually make things much worse. They aren't afraid to fight other dogs by breed design, so once things start, getting them to stop can be an issue.
I owned a male pit that was a rescue (I got him as an intact male at about 5 years of age) for several years that was what I'd consider "very" dog aggressive. Once we figured things out, he lived in my house with 4 other dogs (including another pitbull and a male boxer that was castrated as an adult) with no real problems for years until he finally died from cancer of the spleen.
The not growling/not showing typical dog "leave my stuff alone" but just suddenly exploding into a fight is a key thing. You need to pay extremely careful attention to your dogs to see if you can detect any sort of signal that a fight is about to occur. I wrote things down when I was dealing with my male and his aggression issue. Its very unusual for a dog to just start a fight without telegraphing that they are thinking about it. That said, the signals may be EXTREMELY subtle. In Teddy's case, he'd start looking sideways out of his eyes and tighten up his neck. If I saw that happening, he was immediately isolated from the other dogs into a time out and stayed there for 20-30 minutes, then allowed back with the dogs. If he did it twice in a row, he went to his kennel and stayed there for a couple of hours. Remember, pits respond to positive rewards. Beating them and throwing them into the kennel won't do anything. We isolated them where they had their toys, had food, everything, it was simply a means of breaking up that visual contact until he got over whatever it was that was setting him off in the first place.
You must identify what is causing the aggression, what the dogs are telling each other before the aggression, and what is going on immediatly up to the point of the fight. The dog that you think is causing the fight may not be the actual problem, instead that dog is responding to body language from the other dogs or some other type of anxiety. Watch for that.
Second, we instituted "miltary school" before teddy went to his "room" he had to go through all of his tricks. Sit, down, shake, stay, down, etc. He then went to the kennel. He also did all of that the minute he came back out from his kennel. This did two things. First, it kept me as the human, in control of the dog. He wasn't given a chance to think about fighting because we were having him do commands. The same thing when he came out of the kennel . It also gave a positive one on one human interaction. If you give a dog a chance to think, they stand a chance of doign something stupid in a situation like this. Don't let them think bad things. While I was putting Teddy up, my wife would be putting the other dogs through their paces with basic commands too. That way, they weren't allowed to think either. It takes too people, but one person can do it, if you are able to close doors and you have dogs that don't get excessively jealous.
Third, anticipate your dogs. I've had to lock my dogs in kennels during feeding for years. My female pit can get stupid about her food bowl. All of my dog eat in their kennels, and often times we'll practice me taking their food, my touching them, petting them, etc while they eat. That way you dont' ever let them become food aggressive towards humans. If they are out, I pick up the food bowls. Over time if dogs are food defensive and they are fed side by side (ie kennels are next to each other) it can build to cause problems. Thats what happened with my female pit and the dogo. She built for months until one day she snapped at him over the food bowl. Unfortnately the dogo isn't a dog to take that and he bit the shit out of her and shook her a bit, resulting in me holding both dogs by their scruffs cussing, more military school time, and ultimately their being fed out of eyesite of each other. Moving her kennel away from his solved all of the problems.
I also wouldn't make a big deal out of toys outside of a kennel. Introduce new play items in teh kennel where the dogs can enjoy them by themselves. And consider duplicate play items. Dogs can get to be very protective, jealous over toys. Don't give them the chance.
I hope that helps. let me know if it didn't.
