Trouble in paradise

As you might already know we have three *, Skibadee (5yr old staff), Meg (18yr old JRT X) and Tali (2yr old staff, skibadee's daughter).

After a slightly rocky start I managed to get them all into some sort of hierarchy and for the last 6months we have had no issues with dominance, everybody seems to know their place. Untill recently.... Tali has been getting a bit too big for her boots and challenges her mother Skibadee frequently. She plays too rough, puts her tail too high and is just in general getting a bit too cocky.

Skibadee is so funny, she kind of rolls her eyes and doesn't submit but will not rise to Tali's silliness just pretty much ignores her and goes on with whatever she was doing. We have never had any problems with her and Meg though, Meg is very submissive and being so old knows she cant fight for her rights any more so usually backs down.

Last night though the girls were given a treat each and Tali finished hers first as usual, she then went over by meg and tried to steal hers. Quite rightfully Meg snapped at her, it was just a warning and wasn't in any way supposed to instigate a fight, with any other dog in any other situation it wouldnt have. However Tali decided to take it way too far and flipped meg over, holding her neck so tightly that she drew blood. This is so unlike her and the only reason I can think of is that shes just being influenced by her age and hormones and is trying to overthrow the other pack members.

We rejected her after she did this, not allowing her any food, warmth or comfort for the rest of the night and she did appear like she understood the consequences of what she had done. I think she got the message but I am worried it might happen again and what I can do to reinforce to Tali that she is the baby, the lowest pack member. Any help greatly appreciated.

That's a hard one. I think all you can do for now is watch very carefully and step in as soon as you see any play getting too rough, or any dominance behaviour creeping in.

Eventually she'll understand that it isn't acceptable, but for now she's pushing the boundaries & you will have to teach her where those boundaries stop.

In the meantime I wouldn't leave them alone together. If something strated & you weren't there to stop it..................

Its the same thing with children, when they get to a certain age, they think they know everything, cop an attitude and start testing all the boundaries (my 7 year old daughter is doing this at the moment - I feel your pain) like Caryll said, all you can do at the moment is step in when things get out of hand and let Tali know her behaviour is unacceptable and definitely not leave them alone together unsupervised.

sorry i have not got any advise, but just wanted to say, hope everthing works out ok

Thanks for the help guys, thats kind of what I thought. Shes just testing her boundaries and needs a firm hand and some stricter rules til she learns her place. I just wanted to ask everyone's opinion as its always better to have an outsiders point of view, its easy to miss things in the pack's structure when your part of it and thought I may have overlooked something.

Weve given her back her privileges now, she slept on the bed with the others last night and was allowed a little piece of daddy's pasty. i think she does generally feel bad about what she did. She went up to meg this morning wagging her tail and Meg turned her head away and tucked in under her paw, Tali left her alone and went and laid down the other side of the room.

Hope things will get back to normal, hopefully it was just a one off. I feel so bad though because Meg is ancient and she is my OH and his ex's dog really. Hes had her for about 6years and shes such a sweet little thing, albeit stubborn as hell! Thanks for replies!