Despite training, dogs might never get along

We have two 3-year-old dogs, a silky terrier and a Maltipoo, both of whom weigh about 15 pounds. The silky was an only dog in our house and the Maltipoo is our son’s, who lives in our house. The dogs got along fine for a month then something happened — we don’t know what. Now they hate each other. We have since converted our home to a twofamily, and we have an ongoing problem. A gate separates the two units. The dogs will charge at each other and fight at the gate. The fights that happen when someone leaves the gate open are fierce. Can you give us any advice? Neither dog is overly friendly with other animals but both love humans.

A question like this is a brutal reminder that no matter how much we love our dogs, they are, in reality, still animals, some of whom do not like each other and cannot resolve conflicts when they are evenly matched and forced to cohabitate.

A professional dog behaviorist may be able to help out here by putting muzzles on the dogs and letting them interact doing fun things in a neutral setting over a long course of time. If the dogs do enough fun things together and no longer have the opportunity to confront each other, then an uneasy truce may result. But the situation will always be delicate, and you and your family will always be walking on eggshells around the dogs as a fight can still erupt. This may be one of those pet-keeping situations in which you wave the white flag of defeat and either resign yourself to the situation and keep the dogs apart or do your best to rehome one of them.