my mom haveing to do with the fighting?

ok, Rusty and Blair are always fighting,Rusty hates Blair, he wears a harness as a "handle" to make it easier to pull him out of the fight if they get to eachother. now typcally its Rusty doing the attacking, however BLAIR is the one who wins the fights, in the most recent fight Blair was winning big time when we broke it up, and ever since, Rusty would start snarling at the first glance of Blair. now here is what I noticed today....I had the day off, but my mom worked so I was alone with the dogs. Rusty and Blair were loose together all day and nothing..not even the slightest hint of aggression from Rusty, BUT the second my mom walked in the door I grabbed Rusty because he immedietly started snarling at Blair, and I mean the split second my mom walked in the door Rusty turned Nasty at Blair again. and when I think back, every single fight Rusty and Blair have had, was when my mom and I were home, or when just my mom was home, but NEVER when it has been just me home. so I am wondering, could my mom having soemthing to do with the agression somehow? and if so..what?

Is Blair mostly your mom's dog? Does he stick to her a lot?

Quite possibly Rusty notices that and is jealous?

It sounds like Rusty is jealous.

YES! Ivy does the SAME thing. She never fights when there is no human there. But as soon as a human enters the picture, she snaps and attacks. If you think about it, a human is a very high value resource. We give love, pats, play, walks, and food. We are the beholders of everything good in their lives, so it makes perfect sense that our presence would incite scuffles amongst competing dogs.

Ivy is a number 2 dog. She's very dominant towards Lucky and Gis but extremely submissive towards me. Whenever I see her stalking Lucky (which will lead to an attack if I don't intervene correctly), I recall her and put her into a long Down-Stay. When you see Rusty about to attack, don't reach for him or Blair. If you reach for him, he will most likely attack. Instead, distract and recall him. If his recall isn't reliable enough, keep him on lead. Once you recall him, place him in a Down-Stay. It sounds like Rusty's trying to exert his dominance with unnecessary force. He probably knows you're alpha, but you need to let him know that fighting over humans/resources is not allowed. So anytime you see him getting into that 'mode' (usually head down, hard stare, stalking position), distract, recall, long Down-Stay.

That should do it. Since I figured that out, we've not had an attack between Ivy and Lucky for months now (of course, Ivy and Gis are another story :rolleyes:).

I was confused about the jelousy thing though, because Rusty doesnt even LIKE my mom, thats how he became my dog in the first place. my mom was the one who wanted to keep him, not me, but when it came to deciding who's dog he would be? I said he was mine because I am the one he likes, anytime he has to spend time with my mom because I am away he completly ignores her and acts all put out about having to be supervised by my mom at all. to me it seems like if anyone outa be jelous its Blair as my mom favours Rusty over him lol

What is the pack dynamic like? Is Rusty very dominant over the others? Is Blair?

that is a tough one. before Rusty the pack dynamic was obvious and straght forward, but since we got Rusty I have been able to foger it out at all. for example Rusty will submit to Happy, yet Happy has always been the lowest in the pack, and Electra will submit to Rusty, but is Dominant over Ripley is is one place lower then Misty who is head of the pack bur Electra submits to Misty. the domiance scale doesnt make sense anymore. I know that makes no sence whatsoever lol

lets see:

Rusty submits to Happy and Misty, and Electra
Happy submits to everyone but Rusty
Electra submits to Rusty and Blair and Misty
Ripley submits to Electra and Misty
Misty submits to nobody but me.. usually
Blair submits to everyone..usually
Perky submits to everyone but Happy.. Usually
Misty sometimes submits to Perky

its a total round about that keep making us go "huh?"

before Rusty is was very straight forward it went:
Misty
Ripley
Blair
Electra
Perky
Happy

here were no exeptions, it was just permantly straight forward and obvious lol. but now its like everyone just randomly submits to random dogs, no matter where in the pack they used to be.

I would just supplement what Giselle wroye by adding:

If you mom spends time alone with the dogs, then SHE needs to learn how to handle this as well. The whole distract, sit, down - stay, as Giselle said.

Jealousy doesn't apply to dogs which is why it probably doesn't make sense. With dogs, these things are totally environmental whereas jealousy certainly is not, making them too totally different behaviour types. People assume it is jealousy because it can physically resemble the emotion that we suffer from but that doesn't mean it is. Jealousy is perculiar to humans plain and simple.

Misunderstandings like this can only serve to make the problem worse because if you tried using the same methods you would use to remedy jealousy, it would in fact, make the behaviour much more severe in dogs...go figure....

I'm suspecting that your Misty has a similar disposition to what our old Mist used to have. She was a Smoother coat BC and was always head of the pack. :D

Her and her daughter Jess who I still have went through a bad patch at one point. Jess used to often try and challenge Mist. It started with the addition of Tess, younger sister to Jess and daughter to Mist, to the equation and Mist always playing with Tess all of a sudden and both of them Ignoring Jess when she tried to join in who felt like her nose had been put out of joint. She started to cling to me and then Mist would come back and lay into her knowing what she was obviously up to something and she was just as willing to fight back...like she was deliberately wanting and waiting for it to happen.
I had to stop taking Tess with them to start with, they wore muzzles for a while and things settled down. I also had to treat Mist as higher ranking than Jess and do everything with her first. I knew thats what kept things in order because if I made ONE small mistake like putting Jess on the lead first, she would go straight for Mist but she wouldn't if I put Mist on the lead first.
This only happened when they were out on a walk...they were fine on their own in the run at home so it was definitely the influence of outside aspects that caused their issues.
After a while when things calmed down a lot, the odd mistake here and there didn't seem to matter because the dogs perception of themselves in their heirachy was more engrained and developed and it would take a few more things than that for them to start thinking any differently. It was while things were still delicate...like an open wound, that you had to be very very careful.

BTW, Tess was my brothers dog but because he couldn't be bothered to exercise her, I tried to take her with mine but had to stop when the problems started.

It is wiser to try and get a dog behaviourists opinion over this because there are probably important details involved that you may not have noticed or mentioned or maybe didn't think it was significant and didn't take any notice and it would take for somebody to actually see how the dogs interected with yourselves and each other in the home with their own eyes. It could prove a bit dangerous just guessing and giving advice over the internet because we only know half of the story.
It's obviously a spat over resources but it is a case of finding out the specifics before figuring out how to deal with it.