Good News and Bad News

First the bad news: We had originally scheduled a private training consultation for Friday evening, but due to a scheduling conflict with the vet, our consultation has been moved to Tuesday. This means yet another weekend of either trying to deal with an overexcited Badger or the crate and rotate routine. Sadly, we find it all too easy to just keep both of them crated, because Mushroom growls at Badger when he's out of his crate. We really hope the training consultation on Tuesday will help us be able to help them get along.

Now the good news: Mushroom is going to the vet on Friday to make sure she is heartworm-free and receive her health certificate! This will bring us one step closer to finalizing the adoption. Also, she is no longer under exercise restrictions, though we might wait for our replacement Gentle Leader to arrive before taking the dogs on walks together.

Since Mushroom is cleared for exercise now, I'm really tempted to let them both loose and "sort things out themselves". I've read in multiple places that this is a bad idea, but I've also read that humans get way too worried over harmless dog play. The problem is, Llamaentity and I can't tell the difference between playing and fighting, plus we would prefer to stop play *before* it escalates into a fight. Currently, the behaviors for which we stop play are: Badger knocking Mushroom down and standing over her for an extended period of time, Mushroom gnawing on Badger's leg, and Badger's continued refusal to listen to commands during playtime. So far, neither dog has drawn blood, which makes me wonder if we're being too overprotective. What would you do?

When It's Not All Rainbows and Unicorns

"How are the dogs?" my mom asked over the phone. "They're fine", I answered, "Mushroom hasn't had an accident since her first day."

Wasn't me - the other dog did it

Okay, so I fibbed because I didn't want my mom to be worried. Mushroom may have succeeded with housetraining, but the dogs are anything but fine. It's been two weeks since their first meeting, and their interactions with each other leave much to be desired.

When they are playing with each other, we have a hard time getting Badger's attention. We can call Mushroom away and make her sit for a treat, but Badger will continue trying to play with her. Additionally, bowling-ball Badger is considerably larger and tougher than the petite Mushroom. He easily knocks her over and proceeds to stand on top of her, while she's reduced to gnawing on his ankles. Since he doesn't listen to warning growls, she has started biting him to get him away from her. While these bites have not broken skin, they have torn out small clumps of his fur. The other day, a bite from Mushroom aggravated Badger enough to start snapping at the air. Since then, we have stuck strictly to crate and rotate.

Two seconds later, they were fighting again

We're quickly running out of ideas, but here are the ones we haven't tried yet:

1. Use extremely high-value treats, in the hopes that Badger will respond consistently when we call him out of play. Badger has gotten less treat-motivated in the past few months, though.
2. Buy a baby gate to allow them to both be out but not playing. Neither of us has any idea how to train dogs to respect baby gates. Also, the dogs are already capable of being quietly crated next to each other with little effect on how well they play together.
3. Go back a step and only allow the dogs near each other if leashed. Badger pays much more attention to us on leash. The downside is that they cannot play at all on leash, because their leashes get tangled, and Mushroom gets upset.
4. Hire a professional trainer. We've been holding off on this option because of the cost involved, but we know this is our best bet. I did a trainer search on the APDT website and am going to start contacting trainers over the weekend. A private session looks like it can range anywhere from $50 to $250, depending on the trainer and the location.
5. Finally, if all else fails (or if we run out of money to pay trainers), we would put them permanently on a crate and rotate routine.

 Has anyone faced a similar situation? Has anyone tried any of these tactics? And last but not least, does anyone have comforting words or a success story?