We have a nearly 11 year old dog who we've had since a pup, and two years ago we adopted an 8 month old rescue, who is twice our older dog's size.
Initially they got on well, but then one day, something happened, possibly triggered by food, and the new dog attacked the older one. We broke it up but it was terrifying, it wasn't a friendly play fight, it looked like it might have been a fight to the death to be honest.
We've tried everything since then, we worked with a trainer on how to get them to co-exist alongside each other, how to make the rescue less anxious, but nothing seems to work and sporadically they will get into fights with each other and it's never any less terrifying.
The rescue is an absolutely lovely, intelligent but anxious girl who clearly wasn't socialised at all before she came to us, and whilst she's fine with just us, as soon as anyone comes to the house she's a nightmare, and she's also pretty awful out on the street if she doesn't like the look of someone (and there doesn't seem to be any sort of reason as to why she'll take offence and some people and not others.) The last two years have been incredibly stressful, as we're always having to be hypervigilant about where the dogs are in relation to each other, it's almost impossible to have guests as she is very aggressive towards them, which is awful for everyone involved.
Things have come to a head in the last couple of days - we've had some time away with just the rescue dog, and I don't know if that's made her feel like the only dog in the world and more territorial, but in the last 24 hours she's gone to attack a dog three times - when we visited family (in a house where she's previously spent time, and is comfortable) and was only stopped as we'd kept her on the lead (but she wasn't scared, this dog is small, so it was almost like prey drive.) Then in the 12 hours since we all got home and had both dogs back together she's gone for our older dog twice, so the frequency is really on the up all of a sudden.
I don't know what the reason is, but I worry we don't have time to work through it with another behaviourist before something awful happens; I'm so anxious that it's just a matter of time before she really damages our older dog (or worse), and potentially my teenage boys who will often dive in to seperate them. Older dog now has a shit quality of life as he's just terrifed all of the time, and I can't see a way round it other than to very reluctantly rehome the rescue.
The thought is devastating, as we all love her to pieces, but life is incredibly difficult trying to manage all of this on top of everything else and we're at our wits' end. We could speak to the charity about it, but I'm a bit wary as they tend to publically shame people on Facebook who rehome dogs - not that that should impact our decision, and no one can say that we haven't tried incredibly hard in the face of what seem to be insurmountable challenges. I expect they'll tell us to work with a vet/behaviourist, but financially we're struggling and if we throw more money that we don't have at this situation and it still doesn't resolve, what then?
Sorry for the absolutely enormous ramble and thank you for reading this far. I don't know if anyone has any experience of turning around a fear aggressive dog in a situation like this, or do we need to accept that she needs to be in a house where she is the only dog? 💔