We are combining five males and two females. Here's the breakdown:
My dogs:
Roxy-seven year old Border Collie/Australian Shepherd, rescued at eight months old, female, 60lbs
Enzo-six year old American Pit Bull Terrier, rescued at five years old, male, 65lbs
Nigel-four year old Skinny Brown Dog, rescued at 10 weeks old, male, 40lbs
Scott's dogs:
Kaida-four year old Rat Terrier, from a breeder, female, 5lbs
Charlie-three year old Rat Terrier, from a breeder, male, 9lbs
Bruno-three year old Saint Bernard, from a breeder, male, 140lbs
Rufus-three year old Saint Bernard, from a breeder, male, 130lbs
Bruno and Rufus are litter mates.
Scott's dogs are classified as The Bigs and The Littles. The Littles and my dogs all get along well. The Bigs met my dogs for the first time this weekend. Scott and I and my friend Laura (who is an experienced dog handler) met at my training studio to do "neutral territory" introductions. We started easy with Nigel and Rufus. Rufus was on-leash, Nigel was not. Piece of cake, no problems other than Nigel being a little scared of Rufus because he is huge. Next we took Rufus out and brought in Bruno on-leash to meet Nigel off-leash. Piece of cake, no problems. Then I put Nigel away and brought in Roxy off-leash with Bruno on-leash. Roxy curled her lip a litte when Bruno got too close too fast and Bruno backed off. Good boy Bruno! Bruno was swapped for Rufus who was completely fine with Roxy.
Now it was time for Enzo and Bruno to finally meet. I had Enzo on-leash, on a Halti and Laura had Bruno on-leash. We made wide circles in the room gradually getting closer together. The boys noticed each other but I had chicken jerky so Enzo's focus was on me. We finally got close enough for the boys to sniff and Enzo slammed his face into Bruno's chest trying to rub off his Halti...oops. Should have seen that coming, BAD TRAINER! Bruno appropriately snapped at Enzo, telling him he was being rude and Enzo snapped back half-heartedly. We widened the circle, I removed Enzo's Halti and we started again. Enzo did a half-bark-lunge at Bruno on our first pass post-Halti, which Bruno ignored, and we slowly made the circle smaller again. After less than ten minutes, the boys were sitting next to each other taking treats. We then brought Rufus back into the room, on-leash, and tried all three together. Again we circled wide moving closer together and within a few short minutes all three were sitting nicely by each other taking treats. Enzo was taken out of the room (on a super positive note) and we let Roxy and Nigel out off-leash. They were all getting along so well that we dropped Rufus and Bruno's leashes. All four were coexisting peacefully, off-leash.
They all did so well that we decided to take all three of my dogs to Scott's house and give it a real life trial. The Bigs have their own room in the house so they stayed there and the Littles and my three roamed the house for about an hour. After they all settled in, Rufus came out briefly to say hello to everyone and all was well. We didn't want to push our luck so the Bigs stayed separate for the rest of the evening.
Phase 1 was a success! I was surprised at how well they all did and am looking forward to our next session. Hopefully one day we can all live peacefully together but for now we have separate rooms and separate yards while all the pooches settle in.
