In December, my boyfriend and I adopted Violet for free. She more of just ended up in our care, but we welcomed her in and do love her very dearly. We also have a border collie mix, Ambrosia, and the two originally seemed interested in being friends.
They bicker a lot, and Ambrosia's the one who generally starts it, but Violet is having a harder and harder time letting go and has full capability of "stopping" it in a very dangerous way. We have attempted to work with them, but it's hard to really separate them to give them time to cool down and work one on one with them. Violet has always seemed kind of distant, an effect of her past we assumed. Not particularly interested in toys, not eating very much. She is still quite thin despite us trying to feed her more and alone, deworming, exercising, etc. She really likes to try to play with Ambrosia, but Ambrosia is often giving her the cold shoulder most of the time.
She definitely wants to play with other dogs, which Ambrosia will do with any other dog. She is not, in our experience, dog aggressive except with Violet - and it's not that it's particularly aggression so much as a sibling rivalry.
Beyond the Violet vs. Ambrosia aspect, while she's very smart, we're having some issues with pulling on the lead. We are doing our best to train her out of this, but we both have only owned dogs starting at puppyhood and totally underestimated the difficulty of training a large dog with a another dog. It really is a pressing matter, as our front door is twenty feet from a major highway. Ambrosia is 100% on recall and training in this aspect, and can even be trusted (as much as one can trust a dog) off leash.
Overall, I feel like she maybe isn't a good fit for our family and I feel as if she isn't happy being with us. At the same time that I don't want to rehome her as she is a super sweet dog who we do really love, but if she's not happy maybe the best thing is to let her go. I'm not sure how to rehome a dog in a way that I would trust (I do NOT want her to return to her previous owners or do a sketchy craigslist thing.) and I'm hoping that all of you will have some wonderful insight on either that or how I might be able to remedy this situation without rehoming her.
They bicker a lot, and Ambrosia's the one who generally starts it, but Violet is having a harder and harder time letting go and has full capability of "stopping" it in a very dangerous way. We have attempted to work with them, but it's hard to really separate them to give them time to cool down and work one on one with them. Violet has always seemed kind of distant, an effect of her past we assumed. Not particularly interested in toys, not eating very much. She is still quite thin despite us trying to feed her more and alone, deworming, exercising, etc. She really likes to try to play with Ambrosia, but Ambrosia is often giving her the cold shoulder most of the time.
She definitely wants to play with other dogs, which Ambrosia will do with any other dog. She is not, in our experience, dog aggressive except with Violet - and it's not that it's particularly aggression so much as a sibling rivalry.
Beyond the Violet vs. Ambrosia aspect, while she's very smart, we're having some issues with pulling on the lead. We are doing our best to train her out of this, but we both have only owned dogs starting at puppyhood and totally underestimated the difficulty of training a large dog with a another dog. It really is a pressing matter, as our front door is twenty feet from a major highway. Ambrosia is 100% on recall and training in this aspect, and can even be trusted (as much as one can trust a dog) off leash.
Overall, I feel like she maybe isn't a good fit for our family and I feel as if she isn't happy being with us. At the same time that I don't want to rehome her as she is a super sweet dog who we do really love, but if she's not happy maybe the best thing is to let her go. I'm not sure how to rehome a dog in a way that I would trust (I do NOT want her to return to her previous owners or do a sketchy craigslist thing.) and I'm hoping that all of you will have some wonderful insight on either that or how I might be able to remedy this situation without rehoming her.