[darbyhooch]

Hi my name is James I am from Ireland.I have a GSD his name is "Chance" and he turns one tomorrow he is a lovely friendly dog and is great with my two boys who are 6 and 10.My concern is I also have another dog she is a west highland terrier (cassie)and she is 13 years old the two dogs mix and play together all day everyday but when it comes to the GSD getting close to us when she is there or when they get their food she would growl at Chance and he use to walk away but as of lately he is fighting and bitting back to the point where there is alot of noise and teeth but no real damage contact when it happens .( if that makes sense ).and as soon as I get involved or speak it stops .I was just wondering is this normal ?Are they just showing domanace or do I need to address this further and do something .I could really do with some advice thanks for reading james

 

[dogma13]

Cassie is bossing Chance around and he's had enough and is standing up for himself.I would feed them in separate rooms and don't allow her to get away with it.If it continues Chance could easily hurt your old gal.Please intervene as soon as Cassie even looks like she's thinking of moving toward Chance to guard someone from him.I
I have owned several terriers and love their fearless feisty attitudesBut it gets them in trouble sometimes.

 

[LRP]

Our male started to do this -

We have 2 GSD puppies who do love each other but all of a sudden our male started to show teeth when they were eating to stop our female from being able to go to "HER" bowl. I put a stop to it REAL quick. Started separating them and the min our male tries to stop our female from doing anything I correct him. "NO"... hard nudges to refocus him... Just try to remind him I am the boss and he does not get to tell her what to do.

They both get separate training and when together they both get corrections. If the behavior persists they get crated, separately and away from us as a "time out"
The concern for you is your GSD could do serious harm to your older dog so you do need to separate them if you cant get control of this.

 

[Jchrest]

This isn’t aggression from your GSD. And if anyone should be corrected, it should be Cassie. She is resource guarding, both the food and the family. But since she is old and seems to be getting grumpier, I would crate the GSD when it’s Cassie’s turn to chill with the family, and crate Cassie when it’s the GSD’s turn. Feeding in separate rooms works, it’s what we used to do when it popped up. Now the can go around each other’s bowls without issue because they know I’ll handle it if one of them tries to eat from the others bowl. We still separate the pups from the older guys, and they are fed with distance between them, but they all eat at the same time just fine now.

As for your GSD starting to bite back, it’s a good idea to separate them, just because your senior is so much smaller. You’ll also need to supervise any time together they have together, and always be ready to step in when the size of your GSD gets to be too much for your small senior.

Lots of luck!