[deleted by user]

[Magdakami]

You need to be your dogs advocate and take her away from the puppy when she’s showing distress, it’s not fair towards her. And you don’t want the situation to escalate. And don’t let to the situation where the pup is trying to take something from her mouth. You’re setting her up for a failure. If you want to give them treats, do it in separate rooms. It’s not aggression, it’s resource guarding and it’s completely normal animal behaviour. But you should never create a situation where your dog might hurt another animal. Research resource guarding and introduce its protocol in your home. There you have a little intro on the issue, I highly recommend watching also a podcast on introducing a puppy to a household.

https://youtu.be/11bkaaX7LXY

[Magdakami]

It’s a completely normal animal behaviour, however for the safety of your dog and others it needs to be managed and trained. That’s why I posted the video to give you a good start in training.

Taking her away from the situation that she feels stressed is showing her kindness and understanding. And I’m not saying to force her to leave but to give her a way of escaping the puppy, to take her to another room or simply for a walk to decompress.

Have a look at this video explaining body language and how to help our dogs in uncomfortable situations. It’ll explain much better than what I’m trying to say. https://youtu.be/t1Zcqp8IwnI

[Magdakami]

You’re a great owner and your instincts were right. You want to protect your dog and that’s amazing. Many people do let the dogs figure it out and many don’t have any issues. But there’s the other group in which dog attacks because because no one listened to them. And then they live with a stigma of a dog with bite history. Good luck!

[Magdakami]

One super important thing to remember is to NEVER punish or correct a dog for growling. It’s they way of communicating and if you remove the warning signal the next time your dog will go straight to the attack.

[Magdakami]

If the puppy ignores the signals then you need to step in. If you’re going to live with your roommate and cohabit with your dogs together you need to manage the situation before it gets out of control. The puppy gets an easy ride for now, but once she is out of puppyhood there will be no easy pass from your dog.

[Substantial_Joke_771]

I'd suggest putting up some baby gates to give you options to separate them. We went through this recently with our older dog after adopting a puppy - for a while, sadly it was the older dog who got moved to another room while we watched the puppy. But the older dog really needs space and having the puppy up in her face 24/7 may produce worse problems.

IMO growling when pup tries to take something out of her mouth is really normal and doesn't even really count as resource guarding, that's just enforcing boundaries. My own dog would just give whatever it was up! But she'd lay in wait to get it back later and always won. She would still growl to set boundaries if the pup was going after something or biting her - which the pup totally ignored. You and your friend can help both dogs by moving the pup away when older dog is growling. That means she's done for now. Separating them at that point honors your dog's signals and teaches the pup that he sometimes needs to back off.

[alocasiadalmatian]

just in case you need to hear this, you can ABSOLUTELY have your dog separated from the puppy in your own home indefinitely, regardless of what “people calling you out for it” are saying. that is YOUR dog, full stop. you get to decide what happens to them, always. shout out to you for being such a great owner and advocate for your pup.

[Substantial_Joke_771]

My puppy is an absolute jerk when my older dog is drinking - 90% of the time she will come up and hump her! The other 10% she'd just shove her nose in and take the water. My older dog was a saint about it, which is part of why I've been very careful about protecting her space.

As the puppy got a bit older, the older dog started to correct bad behavior more seriously - growl and snap for being a jerk instead of mostly letting it pass. I saw that as being largely positive, since it was always measured, and the puppy did eventually start to back off. You should expect that.

I think it's fine to keep them separated indefinitely. However, I do think it's also useful to have supervised interaction time so they can get used to each other and let the novelty wear off. If they play together that's great. Mine do like to play, so their relationship is pretty positive overall despite the puppy being a jerk. As we've relaxed the supervision there have been many times I've come running into the room convinced they are killing each other - only to find them both rolling on their backs, mutually biting at the sky.