Better match...two females or female/male?

[jo_]

Here I am again daydreaming about a second Cairn. Jagger our female turned one in July. ***IF*** we decide on a second we'd likely adopt a 2-ish year old from a rescue. From your experience are two females or a male/female combination more compatible?

[KShep]

Male, I think. Idaho's Sammi and Bonnie get along swimmingly but that may be the exception to the rule. You can have 2 males, a male and a female, but 2 females could be incompatible.

[kjwarnold]

We have two boys (neutered, who get along great), but friends have two females and they've always gotten along just fine.

[Idaho Cairns]

There shouldn't be problems with females together--assuming that the dogs are neutered, as ours are. Around here the humans are always Alpha so any serious fighting is stepped on quickly and completely. Our girls are pretty darned mellow with each other, in fact, I often see what I think is real affection between our two girls. Certainly there is a dependency between the two.

[Tracy A.]

I have two boys, both neutered they get along fine. They are 6 years old now.

[cairnrescueleague]

Male/female. Two females can get along, but if they don't, it can be serious.

[Lynn in TN]

It doesn't matter what sex they. I have known people with a male and a female that had problems. I've knew someone that had 2 males that had problems, same with 2 female. I personally haven't had that happen we always had female dogs when I was growing up. We had 3 females one time they weren't spayed and we had no problems. They were drop offs they just showed up at our home. ( People didn't have dogs fixed in this area when I was a child). If Jagger gets along with other dogs I wouldn't worry about it. I would choose the sex you prefer the dog to be.

[Dempsy's Mom]

Jodene - I daydream too about having another Cairn. Matter of fact I put in an app last week to adopt a three year old over in Minnesota, but he was adopted already. That would of been two males about the same age. ..... Someday.

[Hawkeye]

I've read male/female is best, but to be honest I have had two females in the past and now have two males. No problems here. Like Idaho, the human is alpha in our house.

Lori it sounds like we will be hearing an announcement sometime soon. Good luck!

[KerryJayne]

We have 3 females here but all different breeds so I don't know if that makes a difference but I'm pretty sure they all love each other :-) they're all quite young too so maybe that helps . They do sleep seperate over night but they all curl up in a pile in the living room through the day :-)

[bradl]

To me this sort of question falls into a bucket fairly common with dog topics: much of the time, when things go right, and they usually do, it hardly matters at all; a decision becomes safer or riskier in hindsight only if things happen to go wrong, which they probably won't. Hence the common and I think reasonable "rule of thumb" recommendation "one of each."

Why? For the reason cairnrescueleague pointed out. Taken over a long period of time, with large numbers of pairings, a number of people have observed that the relatively rare but intractable cases of mortal grudges seem to have been more often between bitches than between males or mixed pairings.

That says nothing about whether any particular pairing is going to be successful - it's not necessarily *because* it was a two-bitch pairing that there was trouble, it was that *if* a grudge develops, the bitches seem less likely to achieve a lasting detente.

The only dogs I've had to take to the vet for puncture treatments? Bitches.

How many bitches have we got? Two.

[Idaho Cairns]

I still believe the most important critical factor is the human in the situation and not the gender of the dogs. Domesticated animals must be domesticated in all respects and since these domination behaviors start young and immediately, the quicker and firmer they are dealt with, the more likely they are to be a non-issue in the future. I'll wager that most of the female/female conflict between dogs was foreshadowed by early behavior that was not addressed by a human. The only incident we have had was just that sort of thing--my daughter's very possessive bitch who grew to be an adult dog without correctional guidance from a human--you could see what was coming like a train wreck but the owner chose not to deal with it and, in many ways for many reasons, almost encouraged the possessiveness. We live and learn.