MANAGING THE MULTI-DOG FAMILY

Multi-dog Family, Male and Female Dogs in the Same House, Managing Multiple Dogs

My husband and I live on a 30-acre farm just outside of Warrenton NC.  It’s just the two of us now and it doesn’t look like we are going to be grandparents anytime soon.  Somehow the idea of traveling to NASCAR races and exploring the east coast is supposed to coincide with raising German Shepherds.  I’m not really sure how we went from wanting grandkids to breeding German Shepherds, but – here we are.

We decided to buy our breeding stock and develop two lines to cross to rather than stud out our dogs.  In the process we fell in love with two sets of brother and sister:  Charlie and Sahara, and Maxx and Rebyl.  We also have El’le and Skye who are half-sisters, and Reyna and Sirus who are cousins, so when they reached sexual maturity we had too many concerns to allow the dogs to be together.  We keep them apart as a matter of daily practice, we do NOT want accidental litters or fights!  So how do we do it?

First, we have separate outside kennels with covers and dog houses (we will be building dog houses due to availability of these in the future, but this gives you an idea) for each dog that are also divided by open space. For cleaning, to cut down on mud, and prevent digging we put rubber stall mats over the footprint of each kennel.  We bought extra kennel panels to create an area out the front of the kennels that we call the play pen.  . This is the area for running, play and obstacle courses.  We alternate dogs in the play pen.

When not in their kennels our dogs are kept in the house, each in a separate crate or out with us for “me time”.  Any female in heat is kept in a separate room of the house away from the males.  For convenience and inclement weather we have an area off the back porch we call the night kennel that can house a dog and provide shelter if necessary, but that we primarily use for potty breaks when everyone is in the house.

Inside we have the third of our house that we spend the most time in sectioned off with gates*, so that our den, mudroom and kitchen are separate areas.  When we were keeping the dogs in pairs (before sexual maturity) we used three areas to shuffle two sets of dogs.  Now we put each do in their crate and move them through the enclosed areas.  Having the separate areas makes it safer to move females in heat outside in case a male gets out of his crate.

At night we have the females in crates by our bed and in the kitchen.  The males are in their crates in the den.

Before we had to separate all of them we also had one more food bowl then the number of dogs in an area at feeding time and multiples of each dogs’ favorite toys.  Now we feed each dog in his or her crate and have water bowls in them as well.  Each crate is a designated safe and relax zone for each dog.  They know they can go into their crate and be left alone and do not have to defend this space from the other dogs.

Please message or comment on this post if you have questions or would like to contribute your methods for Managing the Multi-Dog Family.

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PS we also have cats and this system helps keep the dogs away from their litter box and food dishes.

*We bought a total of four regalo deluxe home accents 74-inch widespan safety gates to span the odd sized opening in our open floor plan home.  Only one of these had to be modified to fit the smaller opening from the mudroom to the kitchen.  We bought them from Amazon but found them on other sites too.  We like them because they were easy to mount with included hardware, fit odd openings, and had a wider gate and were taller them most gates.