Helping Two Dogs Get Along with Clicks for Looks

For this Omaha dog behavior follow up session we used a click for looks method to help 3 year-old Kevin (right) stop starting fights with his roomie, 8 year-old Dachshund Horton (top). Mowgli hanging in the foreground saying “what about me?!?!”

In our previous session, I shared a number of tips to help the dogs feel more relaxed around each other and with their humans.

For this visit, we built on the progress the dog’s humans had made over the last several months using click for looks rewarding. This involves rewarding Keven when he looks at Horton, creating a positive association with him.

You can learn how to use click for looks to help a pair of dogs get along together by watching the free positive dog training video below.

If the guardians practice this click for looks tip to help the dogs feel good around one another, they should see the dogs relaxing together. This will allow them to practice with the dogs being in the same room together without fighting. This is key when you want to stop dogs from fighting each other.

At first the dogs should practice being together for 10 minutes with no tethers or barriers. But with practice, they can push that time to 15 min, then 20, etc. This needs to be done without any outside influences that may stress out the dogs or high value items they may fight over. The important thing here is this time is spent supervised so the humans can intercede at the first signs of distress or conflict (staring, pacing, stiffness, etc).

The more time Kevin and Horton spend together in a positive way (no staring, growling, pacing, etc) the less likely they will be to fight again. It will take practice, but eventually the dog fights should be limited to memories.