Two male puppies fighting--advice?

[Guest]

I'm posting this for my next-door neighbor, who does not have a computer. Her husband gave her two Cairn male puppies recently. She has had several different dogs in her life, and is used to the training issues. Her two pups are now 4 months old, and just recently started fighting. (I assume this is to decide who is top dog?)

I saw them go at it today, looking out the back window. For such small, young dogs, they seemed pretty ferocious! One now sports a cut on the back of his neck, and the other has a limp. My neighbor has her hands full w/these two, and the new fighting behavior is discouraging her a bit--she isn't sure she will be able to keep them.

She will be starting obedience school w/them soon, but I wanted to check in here and see if anyone had any suggestions on how to smooth things out in her household between those two cute little guys. (And they are cute--I know all puppies are cute, but I have to say these little fellows are one of the sweetest little breeds I've seen.)

[Guest]

I've never experienced this because I've always had one dog at a time, but I saw something on tv about a couple dogs that were seriously fighting for dominance in the household, and it got quite vicious.

The suggestion in that program was for the owners to always treat the more dominant dog as top dog -- feed it a treat first, pet it first, talk to it first. I guess the rationale behind that was that by feeding the second dog a treat first, you were undermining the top dog's dominance, and it felt the need to fight to reassert its dominance.

I hope it's just puppies being puppies and playing rough, though, and that they will grow out of this behavior.

Take care! Susan