Hi Everyone,

Kaiser GSD is now 12 months and Max X GSD is 12 years.

When i was preparing their food yesterday Kaiser has dried food and Max has mixture of dry and wet i thought i heard Max growling when i turned round to tell him to stop i realised it was Kaiser that was growling.
I put Max's food down first as normal and then gave Kaiser's his, Kaiser is always first to finish and then waits for Max to finish his, if there is anything left Kaiser then cleans Max's bowl, anyway Kaiser had finished his and then went over to Max who was still eating, i told Kaiser to sit and wait which he did but then all of a sudden he starts to growl and Max who then growled back and world war 3 started. They ended up having a proper fight, poor Max has ended up with a couple of bike marks on his head.
I have just fed them both this morning and when Kaiser had finished i mad Kaiser sit and then i stood in front of him until max had finished, again Kaiser turned around and growled at Max at which point i let Max out of the kitchen and shouted at Kaiser who knew that he had done wrong.
Am i as a owner doing something wrong or is this just normal behaviour, i am getting really worried as Kaiser now weighs 37kg and towers over Max who only weighs 26kgs and is a old man.
Any help and advise would be much appreciated and sorry if i have waffled on.

I have two males, a Doberman and a shepherd/collie mix. I am very, very careful not to do anything which could provoke a fight, as Dobermans and terrier type dogs very very prone to male x male aggression. I've never had a fight between my boys, but that’s not to say it will never happen.

I never feed them together; I would recommend feeding them in completely different rooms, out of sight of each other. You dont want them to see each other as competition. I also never give 'high value' items while they're with each other, this includes toys, chews, bones ect. I rarley leave mine alone together either, they are separated by a stair gate when home alone.

The problem with this is that it can be straight away, or take a few years to develop. They'll be best friends, then one small thing can make them hate each other for life I would seek the advice of a professional behaviourist, as it could easily get out of control. A crate and rotate situation wouldn’t be good for anyone, and its not soemthing which can really be trained out of a dog.

My short term tips would be:

-Do some research on same sex aggression
-Feed them separately
-Dont give high value items together
-Dont leave them alone together
-Make preparations on how you would break up a full-blown dog fight.


Best wishes!

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from my point of view your mistake was they can eat from the other ones bowl. they should eat together, but the one who finished first should leave the room or at least the eating aria.

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It maybe that Kaiser just has no food manners.

Can you put his food down and ask him to leave it untill you tell him to eat?

Does he beg or try to get as close as possible to your food when you are eating?

If you accidently drop food on the floor will he leave it, if you tell him to? (or is it down his throat before it hits the ground)

Food manners are easily trained and may help the situation.

Certainly if they have really fought over this, you should feed them separately, even if this means the younger dog being fed outside. It is not something you want to risk.

I would also wonder why one has dry and wet and the other has just dry. Would you want to eat just dry biscuits, when there is some nice juicy wet in the next bowl? I would also try adding a little wet to the younger dog's food.

No, it isn't a sign of dominance. It is normal dog behaviour when there is food about, especially food that is more tempting than his own.

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THis is resource guarding and perfectly normal and usual.

Dogs are hard wired to resource guard and the propensity in some dog/breeds is higher than in others.

Food is a high arousal activity.

Bearing in mind that GSD are prone to GD and/or GDV I would want my dogs to be relaxed as possible around food.

Stress can trigger bloat and you do not want food time to be a competition where he who finishes first can then help himself to someone else's food.

Wet food is usually more aromatic and tasty than dry food so it is natural that it appears of higher value to a dog than the dry food.

Whether a dog has impulse control with humans when being given food has absolutely NO relevance with inter dog resource guarding, your dog could sit in front of his bowl all day, it won't stop him trying to guard his food from other dogs.

I feed my dogs in separate rooms as food is of extremely high value to them (I want that for training purposes), they will actually eat in the same room however if I am there, however as I have two breeds both of which are predisposed to GD and/or GDV I choose to make meal time as relaxed as possible for both physican and temperamental purposes.

It is simple to resolve.

Good luck

I feed my dogs separately because they all eat at different speeds. It seems commonsense.
Dominance is an outdated theory that doesn`t apply to dogs.
Your youngster is trying to pinch food. It`s not exactly unnatural behaviour, is it? You get the same with young humans, cats and no doubt meerkats.

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I feed my five all together. Each dog has a different colour bowl so they know whos is whos lol

I tell them all to sit wait, put all the bowls on the floor then call their names one at a time then come to their own bowl.

We don`t have aggression however Charlie will wolf his down then try to edge closer to someone elses bowl really slowly watching to see if they are going to object. He is not allowed & i call him back to sit but he would given the chance eat the others food as he is greedy. The other two males would just walk away from their own bowls if he went to it....its the females who growl at him & he backs off. So in this case it isn`t a male - male thing. Its more a case of who is possessive of their food.

I always supervise meals for this matter as i dont take the chance that those growls could escalate. However Charlie is very passive in trying to get more food and backs down if he meets objection.

In your case if Kaiser is the one being dominant in trying to get Maxs food I definately think, as others have suggested its time to feed them seperately.

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Hi everyone,

Thank-you all for your input and advise.

To answer some of your question:

I can put Kaiser's food down and then tell him to sit and wait, he will not move until i tell him that he can have his food.
Kaiser is on dry food as i wanted to keep him on what the breeder was feeding him which is Wainwrights.
We have always fed Max butchers wet food from being a pup, but as he was getting older we found that he was having diarrhea quite often, so after some advise we have put him on senior dry food but also mix a little wet food in with it.

They have both always been fed together from when we brought Kaiser home at the age of 8 weeks.

I think i will however start to feed them seperately from now on.

Once again thanks for all your advise

As smokeybear said resource guarding is 100% normal behavior (no, its not a quest for dominance or trying to move up in rank). Its basically that you have a “pup” who has really awful food manners. Would you like someone staring at you while you eat waiting to wolf down anything you leave? I know I wouldn’t.
In the dog world, not giving another dog space while they’re eating is exceedingly bad manners and your older dog was quite right to correct the younger one, except I would have backed the older dog up by moving the younger dog out of his space at the growl stage. That way Max knows he doesn’t have to escalate, and Kaiser starts learning some manners.

I agree that for mealtimes they should eat separately, and I also very much agree that with a breed prone to bloat, mealtimes should be quiet and relaxed. No worries about getting done in time to clean up left-overs or having to finish before your food is stolen out from under you.

However resources don’t only come in to play at meal times, so you’re going to have to lay some ground rules about acceptable behavior. I think the best place to start with teaching self-control is default leave-its (aka doggy zen or its yer choice). Basically teaching the dog to exercise SELF control around food. From there you slowly increase the criteria, add proximity to the other dog etc. But that’s a ways off I would say. For now separate them to feed and work on some default leave-its with Kaiser especially.