ho boy poor shadow....

well my mom is talking to my dad right now because we need to do something about shadow, no she has not done anything worng, the problem is that the other dogs have lost all respect for her, and this afternoon the other 5 all young and agile attacked shadow at once, she is nearly 8 years old, she is strong enugh to fight off one dog at a time but 5 dogs at once was horrable, she screamed and finally managed to escape under the bed in my moms room, and now she has been following my mom around all day. we all think it would be best is shadow moved in with my dad, she would be an only dog, and get lots of attention plus she loves being with him. only problem is dogs are not allowed in his appartment. now the biggest problem is that shadow was taken away from her mom too early(she was found in the streets very very young) so she has not learned pack behavour from her mom, she has no idea what the signals in dog language are, because she never learned them. :( I will let yas know what my mom and dad decide(shadow is my dads dog remeber)

Oh no, poor Shadow:( It's heartbreaking to think of him being ganged up on:( I think being with your Dad would be great. If only he can work out the "no dogs" issue! Please keep us updated. HUGS to you Shadow!

oh no! i'm glad Shadow is ok. poor thing. i hope you get it taken care of.:(

Oh no :( poor Shadow i hope your Dad can work somthing out. Please keep us updated with how everything goes.

You may want to take Shadow to the vet for a checkup. If all the young dogs just started attacking her out of the blue, they may have sensed her being weaker from sickness. Or it could just be older age. If she was previously alpha, she is probably getting challenged for that position.

Its scary that your dogs have pack behavior like that. I realize it happens in large groups of dogs, but they should all be looking at the humans as alpha. They should listen to you if you tell them to stay away from Shadow. I would keep Shadow but not leave her unsupervised with the rest of the dogs. I would also work with the other dogs individually to build stronger bonds with the humans than the other dogs. Their own species is so much more interesting, so when you have a lot of dogs, you really have to be careful.

Oh how terrible:( Poor Shadow. Please let us know how things progress.

actually my dogs all have very close bonds with us, its little complicated to explain how our "pack" works, bat basicly I am the alpha of happy, misty, and Ripley, these 3 follow me, and sleep with me, and look at me as alpha. shadow, perky, and blair, are all follow my mom, and sleep with my mom, and otherwise regard her as alpha, now they all listen to me as well as my mom, and there are no conflicts between the 2 groups. now out of the dogs themselves shadow is top dog, and has been since she was 4 years old, they have all chanllaged her leadership at one point in time, and not one of them has come close to taking over shadows alpha postion. what I meant by shadow not uderstanding pack behavoir is that she did not learn how to communicate, she has no idea that rolling over showing belly is submissive behavour, she does not know what the warnings are in doggie language. I know shadow is healthy she is just getting older, there is one more thing that I gotta say for you to understand the situation properly but I gotta go to school right this instant lol

ok here is the rest, I really gotta start waiting till I have time to explain in full when something like this happens it would really help stop misunderstandings lol

ok see when one dog starts fighting, others see it as fun and games, so they join in, my mom is thinking it was her fault because when blair was younger when he got in shadows face, she told shadow to leave blair alone, my mom made a big mistake doing this because, shadow was never allowed to put blair in his place when he was younger, now he litterally hunts her down to fight, he creeps over to differnt places of the house, gets in fight mode, jumps to where he thinks shadow is, and she aint there, funny to watch, but when he does find shadow he attacks because he thinks he is allowed to do whatever he likes to shadow, and shadow is not allowed to stop him(thats his veiw, not ours or shadows) problem arises when he attacks and the other dogs are around, they think oh fun and jump in :eek: I hope I got verything this time :o

that's so horrible. i hope whatever you guys decide works out well.