I have two Yorkshire Terriers. One which I've had for about 7 years now and the other which I've had for around 4 years. The older one is female. They've always gotten along and been in good health up until around 6 months ago. My younger dog, Nike, has gotten very territorial of me and lashes out at my other dog, Hershey, when I give her attention. It's not all the time that it happens, but has become more frequent in the past couple months. I feel that I give them both fair amounts of attention and they are both trained, well behaved dogs.
Over the last week or so Nike has been acting even worse. They both have kennels in which I keep them in at night, and they are only used for that purpose or when we have someone from Mediacom or someone out of the ordinary come into our house because they get excited. But recently Nike won't get out of his kennel in the morning, or if Hershey is around he sits in his kennel and won't come out, he growls if she walks by, if she comes any where near him he gets very stiff and anxious and growls sometimes, it's all I can do to keep them from fighting, and Hershey has grown quite scared of him.
I'm in a real predicament here because I love both of these dogs as my children and I'm not sure what to do. Being as they weren't always like this towards each other leaves me to believe something can be done to combat this and resolve this issue.
I know I can't keep them separated, and I want more than anything to know what to do for them so they will feel comfortable around each other and we can resume our normal lives.
So if anyone has any suggestions, tips or pointers it would be much appreciated. I plan on talking to my vet in the next couple of weeks but I just wanted to know if there was anything I could do before hand or anything to remedy this situations asap.
Thanks.