Bringing a second Chow home

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Mandy
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Bringing a second Chow home

Post by Mandy »

Hi All-

I just wanted to know if you would be kind enough to share your experiences with bringing a new chow into your home. Chewie is 1 yr old now and he REALLY needs a friend. We are going this weekend to look at a 4 yr old female (actually she is Chewies aunt) that needs a forever home. Chewie gets along with every dog, child, & adult he has met (that includes vets!) and has a bubbly playful personality. He plays with us any time we are around and I know he would love to have a friend during the day. We have read all sorts of material on the things to do when you bring a new dog home (meet at a nuetral location, take the new dog around the neighborhood, bring her scent into the house, have them seperated for a while, etc) and I was hoping you could all share some stories of things that worked and things that didn't. We plan to take Chewie with us to meet her this weekend and we will see how it goes. If we do get her, it won't be until next month. I throw a big halloween party and would hate for her to be stressed out so soon after moving in. If you have the time, please share! Thank you!

Hugs,
Mandy & Chewie
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Victory
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Introducing new chow

Post by Victory »

First let me say that getting a friend for your boy is a good idea, I will never ever own another Chow by him/herself, I will always have two. They just in my opinion do better together. That said here is what my experience was and is now:
I got Darkwind about four years ago, he's a pretty easy going guy, and then I adobted Firesong about nine months later. I introduced them on neutruel ground and they kind of ignored each other, sort of sniffed each other and then looked at me like "yeah, now what?" In other words it wasn't an immediate "wow! another dog let's play!!!!" They continued to get along well, though I watched them closely. Darkwind is very aloof, very stoic, a very sweet but typical adult male chow chow, Firesong is a lapdog, she follows me everywhere, is hyperactive and extremely playful, two very different personalities. Everything was fine until mealtime and then I discovered that Firesong was food aggresive with other dogs, she actually snarled at Darkwind when he went to eat. It took about a month of me standing between them during their meal times to break her of this habit, I would just stand there and if she went towards him, I said no and pointed her back to her dish. (Part of this was that she was under weight having not been fed proberly by her first owner). After a month she stopped and they get along just fine now, in fact they are very close to each other, so close that I don't seperate them for anything, because the whine and cry for each other.
Because you will be introducing a 4 year old female and a year old male you might have a few domence issues. Both will feel that they are dominant, him because it's his house and he's male and she because she's older and wiser. The trick is to only mediate when it is really necessary, snarling, growling at each other is not to be tolerated and that's the message YOU have to deliver, but rough housing and other forms of play that will settle things are okay.
Of course if the female is used to other dogs and has lived with a male chow, this may not be an issue.
Common sense and the belief that things will work out are the keys for this, meal times are the greatest problem. If you free feed your boy I wouldn't do that for a while until you are sure there will be no issues over food.

Good luck!
Victory, Darkwind, (our angel), Firesong, and Dreamdancer
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Thank you SweetPea!
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Mandy
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Post by Mandy »

We do free feed so that is great advice! We will be careful to watch them at meal time. The dog we are looking at has lived with a large group of dogs (male and female) her whole life and according to our our breeder gets along well with other dogs. But we have also been told that she does exert her dominance over all the male dogs including the 90 lb male of the group! It should be interesting. Thanks so much for the advice!

Mandy & Chewie
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kingalls
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Post by kingalls »

It's good that you are going the male/female route. I got advice on this site plus some reading about having a better outcome with opposite genders. My female, Shiloh (mix) was almost a year old when we brought Mr. N home at 9 weeks. Like yourself, we wanted a companion for her. Because of the ages, it worked out perfect....until Mr. N got a little older and he is food aggressive. We have to monitor the breakfast feeding times. Shiloh is very submissive so if Mr. N comes near her food, she will just let him help himself. However, she is also very smart and has developed a few techniques to take advantage of Mr. N when he's busy with other things - she is busy eating hers and sometimes his food :D .

I have read several opinions/articles that Chows do well in a one dog family situation. Because of our schedules, we thought it would be better to have a companion. It has worked out very, very well for us.

Karen
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