We adopted two female littermates from the same foster when they were 5 months old. At the time we lived in separate places and were able to keep them separated for about 10 months. We would bring them together about once a week during those 10 months and mostly never had issues. Occasionally they would show signs that they were about to fight but we were usually able to separate them without an actual fight breaking out. At this time we did a lot of reading about how to train littermates in separate homes so they don’t become pair bonded and to reduce the likelihood of other “littermate syndrome” symptoms from occurring.

About 6 months ago we moved into the same house. For the most part they are great together, however we have now had 3 separate instances of a major fight breaking out resulting in mostly minor wounds to both sisters. The last event was such a bad fight I thought they would kill each other and ended up with a major bite to myself while breaking up the fight.

Separately, they have both individually shown territorial aggression towards other dogs inside the home when it comes to guarding their space or us.

As of now we have implemented an airlock system where we have two doors between them at all times within the house to keep the separated until we are able to get them properly trained.

We know that we need professional training help to fix this problem if we are going to keep both dogs. We are desperately looking for a trainer in the Phoenix Az area that can help us with this problem.

If you are a trainer that specializes in working with adult same sex littermates or if you have any recommendations for us in the Phoenix area please let us know!