Heartworm Update and Dog Fight

Tony seems to be surviving the fourth week of his heartworm treatment just fine. Feeling sorry for him but wishing to follow doctors orders, I've been letting him sit with us in the living room for a few minutes each morning on leash. He pretty much sits quietly, but its a nice chance for him to socialize with the other dogs.

Yesterday I ran my Akita Naomi and two German Shepherds (Brandy and Jake) up to Sharon's house, which is on five acres. The dogs love going up there. Its all fenced in so I let them off leash and they run til they drop. Sharon has two dogs, a mastiff/bulldog cross named Mojo and a coon-hound named Holden.











Holden the Hound

Mojo's name is well deserved. He can be pretty vicious with dogs and people. One day a friend dropped by and Mojo saw her and ZOOM came in and bit her right on the crotch. Luckily the bite was all blue jeans and superficial, but you can see that this dog has some issues.

He has been getting better with time. More exposure to people and pets has helped. But with dogs he often wants to assert his authority! What this involves is pinning the new dog down on the ground for about 10 seconds, with lots of growling and barking and bared teeth. When the dog submits then Mojo becomes agreeable.

The problem with my dogs is they aren't interesting in submitting to Mojo. I mean, Akita, German Shepherd, do I have to say anything else? So far, this hasn't been much of a problem. The first time they met Mojo he tried his little game but a small display of dominance from my dogs put a stop to it. Since then Mojo has just accepted that he can't dominate my dogs and they've gotten along great. Until yesterday that is.

For some reason Mojo and my Akita Naomi (shown here) were not getting along yesterday. When I first showed up Mojo tried his dominance thing but Naomi ended up pinning him down on the ground. That didn't last all that long but it ought to have sent a message. Anyway she let him up and off we went to play and run around.

Things were fine until a couple of hours later. Sharon showed up and Mojo got in this defend Sharon mode and attacked Naomi. With some corrective commands from me I was able to keep them from really getting in a tussle. But things were tense. I should have taken Naomi at that point, but stuck around and they got in another little fight. Mojo was unable to pin Naomi down (Mojo is big, 120 pounds, but Naomi is big too!). But he ended up biting Naomi on the head before I was able to break them up. At first it looked like he bit her eye! It was bloody red. I started to kind of panic at that point, but it turned out to be a superficial wound on the skin above the eye.

I hope this isn't the start of a trend. Mojo has been getting along great with my dogs until yesterday, and he seems to ignore the others. I hope he isn't planning (well do dogs plan things out?) to assert his dominance again.