We lost our beloved 12 year old lab just 4 weeks ago after a very sudden illness and we are learning to live with the big gap she has left in our lives. Our 8 year old remaining lab is learning what it is to be an only dog for the first time in her life, and she seems to be settling. When left on her own though she barks more, and I think she is anxious so we try not to leave her alone for too long. She has a problem behaviour though in that she barks excitedly at every other dog she sees out walking and will appear aggresive if approached up close by strange dogs. She has never bitten another creature, but has been attacked in this process. I can distract her from this behaviour with food. She is fine with other dogs after getting to know them though. I would like to get another puppy, and train her to be a well socialized dog from the start, by taking her to puppy classes and dog obedience. Would the bad habits of the older dog rub off on the new pup? Is it too late to retrain the older dog?
Hi there, and welcome to the forum. So sorry to hear about the loss of your older dog. I'm not sure that there is a definitive answer to your question but I think it is important that you are considering the potential problems An experienced behaviourist that was able to assess your dog first hand would be able to give you a better idea of how well they might respond to therapy. In general it is usually possible to make some improvement with dogs that are very reactive, it can be time consuming though, and you'd need to concentrate on the older dog If you exercise the two dogs separately, at least until the older dog's reactivity had improved, and socialise your puppy very thoroughly indeed then there's no reason why your puppy should not grow up to be confident and friendly. If you exercise them together and the puppy is frequently exposed to the older dog being reactive it's possible that the puppy will find this upsetting and associate that with other dogs. It sounds as though your best bet might be to work on improving the older dog first, and then make a decision whether or not to bring a puppy into the mix
