The Dog Fight
Our two male dogs got in a fight this morning in the doorway of the office. I'm not sure how I got out of the office and into the hallway since they were between me and the door, but I wasn't about to try and pull them apart or pull them away from the guitars cases or the printer. Last time I tried to save a piece of furniture I got a nasty bite on my stomach. All I could do was watch while the guitar cases came crashing down on top of them as they apparently tried to rip each other's ears off. I remembered Theo's complete fear of the "can of air", those cans of compressed air that I use to blow the dust out of my keyboards, and I tried that, but it didn't work. Most likely because Sullivan doesn't give a damn about the can of air and Sullivan was definitely winning the fight. I decided to throw the water out of their water dish on them which I know never actually works to stop a dog fight, but it was a way to express my frustration, fear and anger about the battle before me. Naturally the water didn't phase them, but when I waved the empty water dish above Sullivan's head it distracted him just long enough for me to get the office door closed with Theo on one side and Sullivan on the other. I'm sure the water dish had nothing to do with it other than perhaps Sullivan had decided he had "won" and was now thirsty.

There are no major injuries that I can see. There are plenty of shallow cuts, both of them are rather stiff and sore and there's a bit more ear shaking than I'd like to see so I'll be checking the ears again tonight, but I think we can skip a trip to the vet this time. The first fight was much, much uglier than this one and this time I'll place the blame squarely on myself and Rob. The first fight was Sullivan's adolescent move to topple Theo out of the top dog spot. Since Sullivan was clearly the winner, we modified our behavior accordingly, but I think we've been slipping and occasionally favoring Theo again. Well, here's our wake up call because not paying attention to pack hierarchy is a dumb thing to do when you have two large male dogs living in the same house. When it comes to dog training, it's usually the owners that need the training, not the dogs and apparently we're no exception, sigh.