I belong to 4 German Shepherd discussion groups, and in one of them, I just told a woman about a trick I learned, to be able to VERY quickly break up a dog fight.
I rescued FOUR german shepherds at the same time, and two of the females were particularly aggressive towards other dogs (and each other). It's taken a long time for me to figure out how to keep them from fighting, and although there's no magic cure, I've figured out a great trick to break up a fight QUICKLY if it DOES happen.
I've been meaning to do a post about this, so I am going to just copy and paste what I said to her. It's so easy to do, you'd think ALL dog owners would know this by now, but few people do, so I'm trying to spread the word.
------------
What I wrote:
I have to share a FAST, EASY, SAFE way to break up a fight (that I wish someone had told me a lot earlier)... grab their tail and pull them backward (and/or sideways), off the other dog. The aggressive dog will almost instantly let go. At least, it's worked for me every time I've done it with my Shepherd-Husky mix. It took me 2 years to figure that out, and it's a life saver. WAY better than trying to stick your hand in the middle, in which case you can get seriously injured. It never occurred to me to do this, because we're taught, as kids, DON'T pull the cats' or dogs' tail. But for anyone who would dare to say that's cruel, I can tell you NO, what's CRUEL is letting both your dogs continue to get injured and bloody, fighting each other with their teeth. I've used this "tail trick" about 5 times so far and it hurts the dog enough to get them to STOP very quickly, but that's it, doesn't seem to cause any lasting injuries, no blood, nothing. Just a good lesson. Pain really can be the best teacher. If one of my dogs is acting like they might get aggressive towards another, I will lightly pull her tail as a reminder of what will happen if she continues ,and she actually backs down! It works so well, I even started to wonder, is this the real reason why domesticated dogs all have tails? Because people throughout history NEEDED this effective little fight-breakup tool, to keep our dogs in line? Cause think about it, the ones that can't be stopped, will be most likely to get put down and not contine to breed. Just saying. I realize, tails have a lot more use than that, but you never know, it could be a factor. Whatever the case, I'm jst glad it WORKS!
I just learned one more trick about how to break up a dog fight. You can see the method here: