We had a very scary situation yesterday where our GP was resource guarding and attacked our other dog.
We adopted our GP Maggie in July of 2024 from a rescue. The rescue got her from a rural pound and we were told that she was brought in (at approx 8-10 months I’d guess) with severe wounds in her neck from an embedded collar. They thought she was on her own for a long time. She was brought in with another GP who they assumed was a litter mate. She’s been mostly the chillest dog ever. We didn’t have real experience with the breed (not counting our other dog who has a sprinkle of GP in him). She loves being outside and is in and out all day long. She and my other dog Xander (a 6-year-old who’s part Golden, part GP, and a lot of other stuff) get along great. She’s always been submissive to him.
Yesterday she rang the bell to go outside shortly after coming in, which is not unusual for her at all. I thought I heard a weird crying noise but checked on her and she was fine. She was on our deck and when I went to check on her and let her in, she faked me out and ran back into the yard, which I didn’t think anything of. Then my other dog asked to go out, so I let him out too. Seconds later, I heard a lot of barking and snarling (not super unusual because my other dog, Xander, who is reactive, fence fights with the neighbor’s dog, who is also reactive. It’s a whole thing.) I immediately head outside to break it up but what I’m hearing is more dramatic than usual and my neighbor starts screaming at my Maggie to stop. My neighbor also heard the weird crying sounds from Maggie and went out to investigate, so she saw all of this firsthand.
Maggie apparently discovered a nest of baby bunnies on the other side of our fence that had been killed in the night (not by our dogs, probably by a wild animal). The neighbor said Maggie was fully locked in on this nest and trying to squeeze her 97-lb self through the fence to get to it. She was making absolutely insane crying noises we hadn’t heard before. When Xander approached to investigate, Maggie turned on him. He tried to fight back for a second but then tried to flee and Maggie just kept going after him. She bit him all over his back. When I went out there and distracted Maggie, Xander bolted back into the house. I was able to herd Maggie into the house, but I was honestly afraid she was going to bite me too.
As soon as we got back inside Maggie tried to run up to Xander and greet him like nothing happened and he was absolutely terrified of her. I separated them and checked Xander for injuries. I couldn’t see anything other than slobber all over him (and I saw a hunk of his fur in her mouth), but I called the vet anyway and they said to bring him in to get checked out because puncture wounds can be hard to see. They ended up shaving about an 8X10 rectangle in the middle of his back and there are small scratches all over that area. The vet said that dogs have extremely thick skin and that luckily it didn’t break all the way through. She said that she knows from experience it’s probably worse underneath - like a crush injury - and that he’ll likely be in more pain the next day. And we know from experience that Maggie’s play bites can hurt, so I can only imagine her being for real aggressive.
I’ve never seen Maggie be food aggressive or do any kind of resource guarding, but I understand she was probably hunting her own food when she was living on her own and that the bunny nest was particularly high value. What, if anything, can I do to avoid something like this happening again?
TL;DR: My 2.5 year-old GP found a nest of deceased baby bunnies outside of our yard and attacked our other dog when he got too close.