ok, now I'm a little worried.

[Rott-n-GSDs]

Originally Posted by iBaman

Sheldon was at my feet, and Duke was standing next to the couch. him and Sheldon were sniffing each others mouths for a good minute or so. All of a sudden, Shel lunges at duke without warning. Thankfully, I was right there and able to grab Sheldon's collar, while my dad grabbed duke. After everything settled down, they were great, playing again, acted like nothing had ever happened. About an hour or so later, Sheldon was laying at my feet, duke was all the way across the room next to my dad, and Sheldon starts growling and barking at duke, trying to get at him for NO reason at all. Is he resource guarding me and my family?

If there was a lengthy sniffing that occurred prior to the "attack," there was likely a lot of things that were "said" in that time period that led up to the attack, so I wouldn't say it's without warning. Try as hard as we may, we don't speak fluent dog language, so we aren't entirely sure what transpired. (I try to get this through my hubby's head all of the time, as we have numerous skirmishes that occur between our male Rott and male GSD... hubby always thinks the Rott is attacking unprovoked, but doesn't see some of the rude language the GSD sometimes offers prior to the Rott's snarkiness).

How old is your dog? The incidents between our Rott and GSD didn't start happening until the Rott got to be about 2.5 years old.

[iBaman]

He's about 7.5 months, where as Duke is like 8 years. Duke is pretty dominant (he humps and used to have issues with marking people). Sheldon generally takes this ok, and is fine with being low man on the totem pole, so I don't know if he decided he's going to be man in charge, or just didn't like duke's energy and got a little scared from being cornered.

[kiya]

Originally Posted by iBaman

. him and Sheldon were sniffing each others mouths for a good minute or so. All of a sudden, Shel lunges at duke without warning. Thankfully, I was right there and able to grab Sheldon's collar, while my dad grabbed duke. After everything settled down, they were great, playing again, acted like nothing had ever happened. About an hour or so later, Sheldon was laying at my feet, duke was all the way across the room next to my dad, and Sheldon starts growling and barking at duke, trying to get at him for NO reason at all. Is he resource guarding me and my family?

Any issues between Lakota and my other dogs have come up after this behavior. She acts submissive kissing thier mouths, then bam she'll go into gremilin mode. If I pull her off by her collar she gets worse. So I try to call her off before it gets to that point. I also watch her to see if she's looking for trouble just as Sheldon & Duke were probably giving each other the dirty eye from accross the room.
Lakota learned resource guarding from Apache, but took it to a higher level. He only guards his food from the other dogs. She guards everything, including me.

[Rott-n-GSDs]

Any time I notice one of my dogs getting too "focused" on another one, I always interrupt. It's like the calm before the storm... if things get quiet and the dogs get still, trouble might be brewing.