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Hi Sue!
Congrats on the marriage! But sorry about the fight!
Maintaining calm leadership and only positive based training would be the way to go with your new hubs to establish the right relationship and trust – but that seems to be the least of your problems.Source of fight definitely dominance related. Brindi saw as unclaimed possession rushed in – Toby either saw as already claimed or like you said got nicked and did appropriate least amount necessary aggression (showing good inhibition). What happened with Brindi is that her initial decision to show aggression was normal giving the possible two different ways the dogs saw it (Brindi seeing it as a challenge and Toby only meant defense) – normal miscommunication. The fact that Brindi locked on liek such is unfortunutely a matter of genetics. Low inhibition with types of fights can be common if there is a background of a fighting breed in a dog. Not all of them but some – and can be within anyline of any breed – so not picking on pitbulls. But kind of comes with the territory of owning one. I always kept my bully breeds seperate when i was not home/supervising and made it a religion to make sure there were no possessions or food to fight over when they were together – because the few fights I had to break up were very similar to your description.
The training and control obviously helps if you can see something before it happens – but all that is worthless mostly once the fight is on. I would definitely suggest keeping up with what you are doing of muzzling for now until tensions subside – and seperate when you are not home.
if you want to rehome – which is nothing to feel like a failure about we can work on it. Sometimes we just have a mismatch. Since she is fully trained we can put her on my site. If you want to do a youtube for her we can do that too. From there it is patience and hoping…
Let me know what you are thinking.
