Really assertive pup

[Markpd]

Wow!

[catnut]

hopefully Tilly is just being playful, she is very young and still learning and has alot of energy by the look of it! fingers crossed they will work out and be bbf's

[LilyandDaisy]

betty (or anyone else) I wondered if you could have a look at some recent clips of Tilly's behaviour and give your take on it? The video is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwETXdYnAhw. She's 10 weeks old today and the clips are all from the past few days. She had stopped this behaviour previously but it started up again when I moved them from the tank I did the split in to a larger one. They aren't every incident or the video would have been much longer, just a representative sample. She seems to fairly randomly tackle or wrestle Daisy and I can't discern any obvious trigger, although it does seem to happen slightly more often when Daisy is chewing something, and sometimes when Tilly is startled. To me it looks like dominance spats but Tilly isn't really bossy in other ways. There's never any chasing or mounting, she never disturbs Daisy when she's sleeping and rarely when she's eating. Occasionally there's some grooming of Daisy's face but not very often.

[betty]

Well, I see what you mean - it is almost certainly triggered by the sound of Daisy chewing - but that in itself could be indicitive of attempts at dominance (like when stealing food from the underlings) or confusion of some sort at the sound (as I am sure it wouldn't take too many face-shoves to realise that that sound that triggers them is just cardboard being chewed and stop her coming over) - unless she doesn't want her chewing for some other reason and comes over specifically to stop the chewing?

Strange for the latter 2 if she had stopped them almost before but has now picked them back up in the new set up - unless (possible reason 2) the move has triggered to same confusion when they first met - but she got used to it in the small set up and it has somehow thrown her back out of balance in the whole new set up?

Luckily though Daisy doesn't seem to bothered at all by it. She holds her ground, but doesn't fight back. Lovely lady.

[LilyandDaisy]

I think Daisy has worked out that the less she reacts, the sooner Tilly gives up. Today I've given them a wheel and it's kept Tilly mostly distracted, and Daisy had even been able to chew some cardboard without being assailed.

Tilly reminds me a lot of Rocket in that she seems to have a lot of nervous energy that needs to be expended somehow, and which if not expended is taken out on her tankmate!

I suppose I'll have to see how it plays out over the next few weeks but it's reassuring that Daisy doesn't seem too bothered by it.

[betty]

Yes, poor Daisy has the patience of a saint...

[LilyandDaisy]

Yesterday I gave the gerbils access to the first floor of the topper and everything seems fine so far. I noticed how much calmer Tilly was after I gave them a wheel and more bedding and I think boredom is a major factor in her apparently assertive behaviour. I think it's possible that the reason she got worse in the larger tank was because in the smaller one they had fairly deep bedding, but then I only moved over that bedding to the larger tank rather than adding any new. So it was now shallower and the gerbils had less to do, which was my intention as I wanted to be able to keep an eye on them. It's possible that boredom or even stress from being more exposed had an effect on Tilly's behaviour. She can be quite skittish sometimes and uncertainty/anxiety seems to be one the triggers for her to start pushing Daisy around, especially when the uncertainty seems to be around how Daisy is going to act.

The other night Tilly was in heat and doing the usual heat ritual trying to get Daisy's attention. Daisy was completely ignoring her so Tilly tried to wrestle her. So I think frustration or attention-seeking are another trigger.

I could still be wrong, but now I think this behaviour that appears really assertive and dominant, actually isn't most of the time. I think Daisy worked this out before I did because she doesn't seem to care about it much nowadays, she just shoves her out of the way when she's being too annoying or occasionally pins her down if she's being very rowdy. The other day I watched her drinking from the bottle with one paw on the spout, the other paw being used to smack Tilly's nose every time she tried to interfere.

So I'm feeling quite optimistic about them now but obviously if anything changes I'll update this thread.