06/10/2026
Right, Dogs in same household
I need to talk about the word "alpha", because I'm tired of hearing it.
Every few months i hear someone talk about their dog is "dominant". Or that they need to "be the pack leader". And every week someone else tells me dominance was "debunked by science" and anyone who says otherwise is a dinosaur.
Both of them are repeating something they read once. So let me tell you where it actually came from.
1947. A Swiss bloke called Rudolf Schenkel sits outside the wolf enclosure at Basel Zoo taking notes. About ten wolves in there. None of them related. None of them chose to be there. And surprise surprise, they knock lumps out of each other over who's in charge. Schenkel writes it up, calls the top two "alphas", and that's that.
Fast forward to 1970. An American biologist, David Mech, puts it in a book called The Wolf. The book does well. Dog trainers read it and lose their minds. Eat before your dog. Walk through the door first. Pin him on his back to show him who's boss. An entire industry, built on some stressed wolves in a Swiss zoo.
Here's the bit I love.
Mech then goes and does the work properly. Thirteen summers in the Canadian Arctic, on Ellesmere Island, living next to a WILD pack. And what does he find? A family. Mum, dad, kids. The "alphas" he says are the parents. Nobody's fighting their way to the top. The youngsters grow up, move out and start their own family.
He published that in 1999. He's spent the years since trying to get his own book taken off the shelves. Imagine being so wrong about something that you ask your publisher to stop selling it. Fair play to him.
So were the zoo wolves lying? No. They were doing exactly what you'd do.
Think about it. You, plus nine strangers, locked in a house. One kitchen. Nobody can leave. How long before there's a row about the milk? We see it with love island and watching big brother it is highly entertaining.
That's the difference. Wild wolves that don't get on walk away. Zoo wolves can't. Temple Grandin calls it a "forced pack" in her book Animals Make Us Human, and once you've heard that phrase you can't unhear it.
"But my dog isn't a wolf."
Correct. Good. Hold that thought, because most people who say it then go on to talk rubbish.
In 2010 a researcher called Simona Cafazzo studied dogs living free on the edge of Rome. Proper street dogs, no owners. Did they have a pecking order? Yes. Older dogs generally ranked higher and the rest gave way. Was it held together by constant scrapping? No. It ran on familiarity, and one dog politely getting out of another's way.
The scientists are still arguing about it, by the way. John Bradshaw's team at Bristol said in 2009 that "dominance" is a useless word for pet dogs. A Dutch team led by Matthijs Schilder came back in 2014 and said it describes the relationship between two dogs perfectly well.
Now. Your house.
You bring a second dog home. They've never met. Neither picked the other. Neither can leave. Remind you of anything?
That's a forced pack. In your kitchen.
And this is where owners get caught out, because for weeks it looks fine. "They get on great, they eat next to each other, no problems." Then one Tuesday there's blood on the floor and it "came out of nowhere".
It didn't come out of nowhere. You just weren't reading it. The freeze over the food bowl. The hard stare. One dog hanging back at the door until the other's gone through. The yawning and lip licking every time the other one walks past. That's a dog putting up with something, not a dog who's comfortable. And putting up with things runs out.
So should you do? Stop making them share before they're ready to.
Feed them in separate rooms and shut the door. Food is the biggest thing dogs fall out over, and you're serving it twice a day, side by side, and calling it bonding.
Pick the chews and toys up off the floor. Nothing to guard, nothing to argue about.
Sort the doorways, the stairs, the sofa. One at a time. Tight spaces push dogs closer than they'd ever choose.
Say hello to them separately when you get in. You're the most valuable thing in that house and you've just walked in like a prize.
Give each of them time away from the other, every day. They can't move out, so you build the break in.
Then add the good stuff. Walk them together, side by side, same direction. Let them snooze in the same room on separate beds. And leave play till last, because excitement is exactly what tips two tense dogs into a scrap.
How do you know it's working? They start choosing to lie near each other. They pass in the hallway without going stiff. When there's a grumble it's over in two seconds and they both shake it off. That's housemates turning into family, and it takes weeks or months. Not a weekend.
One last thing, and I'd be lying if I left it out. Some dogs never get there. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association looked at dogs fighting in the same home, and most cases were two dogs of the same s*x, usually two females. If there are puncture wounds, if it's getting worse, if one of them has started hiding, more cuddles won't fix it.
Here is what not many people will also tell you; Some pairs need managing for life.
That's fine .What isn't fine is pretending they're best mates and thinking they should share everything like they're kids. They're not. They're animals that once upon a time would hunt, kill and tear apart other animals to survive.
You need to be ensuring safety measures are in place throughout their life. I often tell owners crate and rotate, feed 2 doors apart for that extra protection, don't let them fight over the sofa or over you and i would be lying if i had not told people to re home there new dog after 6 months especially if there is a severe safety risk i know its not ideal but thats the truth and some people need to hear it.
We have 3 dogs in this household blizzard bing and siren. They are chilling with me right now but i have siren on her bed, blizzards in the back garden he chooses to lay out there and bing is in graces arms. Some mornings they play together. We always feed them in different rooms. We have 2 crates to rotate them sometimes so they do not get on each others nerves. Its not a training problem and no dog is trying to be "alpha"
If yours have started falling out then safety is first
