Resource guarding tennis balls getting bad during sit

Sitter Questions, Advice & Chat
1

Long post for details.
My partner and I are currently on a sit with 2 GSDs for a few months. It’s been a couple of weeks. At first everything seemed fine. The owners are retirees and just go on drives most of the time and play fetch occasionnally. We think they mostly potter arond the property and the dogs were content with that. They don’t seem to get other stimuli.
My partner and I work from home and can play fetch when the dogs need interactions and activity.

Now our problem is with tennis balls while we’re not playing fetch:

Dog 1: is pretty passive. She seems to not want to run after the ball but after the other dog, snarl at her and try to get her while running a bit after the ball. She seems to really enjoy this and wait to throw the ball to do this again. She’s not aggressive toward the other dog at all. Here’s where it gets tricky… if she gets the ball, she won’t drop it. Doesn’t want you to take the ball and will walk away if you approach. But she’ll still “play” fetch and continue to chase the other dog. She gets really excited about this.

Now Dog 2: seems to enjoy balls a lot. She’ll just chew on them most of the day and carry them around a lot of the time. She loves to play fetch and really runs after the ball, brings it back and drops it so we can throw it again. A good fetch dog.

However, when we’ve finished playing is where the problem has started recently:
When we arrived here a few weeks ago, when we were done playing, dog 1 will just hold onto her ball, and dog 2 will also hold onto the ball, both come inside, chew and they’re both happy and eventually lose interest.

A few days ago, dog 2 would get aggressive with dog 1 when she had a ball and they didn’t , she’ll bite at the scruff until dog 1 lets go. It only lasts a second or so but it seems so violent. Even if there were other balls in the house but dog 2 just didn’t see them or forgot about them.

And now, twice today, dog 2 doesn’t even want dog 1 to have a ball once they’re done playing. She’ll get very aggressive and make dog 1 drop it even if she already has one herself! She grabbed dog 1 by the scruff and wouldn’t let go. This lasted easily more than 5 seconds, which is a long time to fight over a ball that was already dropped.

We tried confiscating the balls so no one had them, dog 2 just got aggressive with dog 1 for no reason, though it was just before breakfast so maybe they were just hungry (?).

We don’t have experience dealing with resource guarding dogs and we’re afraid the issue could get much worse in the 2 months left we have.

The HO never mentioned this could be at all an issue.

Is dog 1 the problem? She doesn’t want to relinquish the ball at all, ever so dog 2 has had to resort to being aggressive if she wants it?

We don’t want anyone to get hurt and it’s becoming stressful. We don’t want to contact the HO yet and worry them if we can sort this out.

Does anyone have advice?

Edited to remove identifiable details due to the posting terms

2

That’s a really difficult one. We had two dogs who fought on a sit once and you really could tell the difference between play fighting and these proper spats although they never did any damage. GSDs are big powerful dogs though- I think I’d be really nervous if they were acting aggressively. Ask the owner? Are they nice? Ive read that you dont want to punish the more dominant dog because it encourages the more passive one to stand up to then and escalate. With the two we had we avoided triggers where possible which really helped. Owner advice was to separate them by their scruffs - strongly don’t recommend that!

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I would ask the owners especially since it’s a long sit - it’s possible that the dogs have behaved like this before and they have suggestions on how to manage it . Also
If either dog becomes injured during the scuffle it would be better if you had already mentioned to the HO that they are behaving in this way .

You could record a video of the behaviour if it happens again so that you can send it to the HO .

It is a possibility that the owners are aware and have not mentioned it to you previously, as pets that have attacked other pets are not permitted on THS …

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@BlueLily it is better to check in with the owners.

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Hi there
I don’t have any specific advice but just wanted to express sympathies. I know it can be stressful when you encounter unexpected issues with dogs at the outset of a long sit, especially something like aggression between the animals. We did a sit last year where two very small female dogs got into a couple of fights, and even then, they were pretty intense and upsetting. So I can only imagine the stress of worrying about this with two big dogs. Best of luck and I hope you find a resolution.

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I feel for you @BlueLily as you have a long way still to go on this sit. You do need to contact the owners as they may well have experienced this type of behaviour from their dogs and can give you some advice. If you don’t, the situation is likely to continue and even worsen. What if you are seriously bitten or attacked? What if one or both dogs are seriously injured and you have to take them to the vet, including an emergency vet? What payment arrangements have the owners made for this as you could well be asked to pay upfront and hope the owners would reimburse you? They could also be upset/annoyed because you hadn’t raised the behavioural problems with them. Sometimes we have to acknowledge we don’t have experience with dealing with this type of aggression and that the dogs’ owners are the ones who know their dogs and can help in this case.

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@BlueLily I agree with others about asking the owners, but what happens if there are two balls? Could having multiple balls defuse the extreme value of each one… or is it more that fact that one dog hates it if the other one has any ball?

I suppose I’d just eliminate the balls from the list of activities (and try to make up for it with walks, etc.). Or, if possible, separate them for “fetch” sessions"

Do they have Kongs? Maybe one could be given a frozen Kong with goodies in it in an enclosed area while the other fetches for a bit, then visa versa. … ?

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Thank you @temba . We contacted the owners and this is a new behavior. We’ve decided to confiscate the balls completely, and they seem to be fine without access to them.
Thankfully, as with all sits we do, we did discuss vets in the event it’s necessary and they have an account and credit there so we wouldn’t be out of pocket.
Your advice and words were helpful, thank you. :pray:

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Thank you @Silversitters . We did end up contacting the HO and it is a new behavior. We’re confiscating the balls and we’ll see how it goes. They seem to be fine outside of play time.

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Thank you @DogMomster. We did have several balls, and Bandit won’t tolerate Milly having a ball anymore even if she already has one.
So we have decided to eliminate the balls from play. They also don’t like to be separated at all for any activities. So playing seperately wouldn’t work, unfortunately.

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This sounds like a bit of littermate syndrome! We found this when we sat for two pups from the same litter. It felt like they got a lot worse with us than they were with their regular owners and that you’re maybe experiencing the same - I wonder why! Unless both owners either don’t realize or don’t want to disclose how much of an issue it can be