A serious issue has arisen -- actually, two serious issues merging into one -- and I'm seeking advice on how to deal with it/them. If Ruby the Corgi Pup (about 9 months old now) is to keep her home here at the Funny Farm, I'm going to have to find a way to cope with this stuff. If not, Ruby is going to have to find a new home.

Right now she's at my son's house. Even though Ruby and Charley the Golden Retriever adore each other and get along well, he does not want two dogs. Especially not when one is a walking vet bill, as Ruby can be, thanks to her recurrent UTIs. So, within a day or so, she'll be back here.

I have now been through three surgeries, each more painful than the last. A fourth is scheduled in three weeks, and if that fails as the others have, then I will be enjoying a mastectomy. In either event -- successful re-excision or mastectomy -- the soonest this horror show will end is somewhere in mid- to late December. Success will mean four weeks of debilitating radiation therapy; another failure will mean a more drastic surgical procedure with a longer recovery time.

Meanwhile, Ruby the Corgi Pup has about beaten Cassie the Corgi into the ground. I had always thought of Cassie as pretty dominant -- she certainly had no problem making herself the Head Dog while we were doing doggy day care during Charley's puppyhood. But that assessment apparently was wrong.

She has knuckled under to Ruby from the first day Ruby toddled in the front door. At first it was cute that Ruby would jump on Cassie's back and grab her by the thick ruff around the neck. I figured that when Cassie lost patience with that, she would bring a stop to it. But that is not what has happened. Instead, Ruby has become increasingly dominant -- to the extent that Cassie hides in the back bathroom and won't come out. When she's not chewing on Cassie's neck, Ruby grabs Cassie's toys and won't let her play with them, even if I try to break the two dogs apart so Cassie can get at the toys. They have to be fed separately and out of sight of each other. Even when Ruby is fed in her X-pen, as has been the case now for weeks, all she has to do is LOOK at Cassie to scare Cassie away from the food I've put down for her. If Cassie can see Ruby while they're feeding, Cassie will not finish her meal.

A day or so after the latest surgical procedure, they started to go after each other. Fortunately, even though I was in a drug haze that did little to dull the pain, my feet were on the ground and I managed to grab the pup and lift her away from Cassie, after which it was into the crate with Ruby. At that point I asked my son to please come and get the dogs, because I realized I was too sick to handle them. He took Ruby but left Cassie, who's the next best thing to a stuffed animal.

In the week or so since, Cassie has begun to return to her old self. She's stopped cowering in the bathroom and she's back to playing with Ball and generally bossing the human around.

Within the next day or so, my son will return Ruby.

I'd originally thought, when I asked him to take her off my hands, that if he wouldn't keep the dog I would simply return her to the breeder, since it will be another three months or so before I'll be well enough to deal with an obstreperous pup under the best of circumstances...and with a dog fight brewing, we clearly are not in the best of circumstances.

But now I'm feeling some second and third thoughts about that. In the first place, shortly after I got Ruby, the breeder purchased a large haybarn-like outbuilding (she lives in a rural tract out in the creosote flats west of town). This she air-conditioned and then tricked out with a passel of kennels, where she intends to house her breeding stock and show/working dogs. So...if Ruby goes back there, she will go from her happy home to a cage. And that breaks my heart.

Additionally, I've sunk more money into this dog than I can count -- the latest being $850 to install a fence to keep her away from the pool, which I have not been able to train her to navigate because I have not been permitted to get into a pool or otherwise get wet since the ongoing horror show began last June. Between the cost of the dog and the puppy gear and the special food and the fence and the endless vet bills, we're talking thousands of dollars, with nothing to show for it. While I realize cutting my losses would probably be the best strategy...still, I'm a cheapskate and it frosts my cookies to have all that cash just disappear into the ether.

So, I would like to give Ruby a second chance. And that is what I need your advice about: What can I do to bring a stop to the female/female dominance behavior, head off future fights, and make it possible for Cassie to coexist with this animal without being miserable?

Ruby was spayed in June, when I first noticed a locomotive bearing down on me.

I have a few ideas, but I do not know if they will work. Here they are:

1. Simplify feeding. If my son has switched Ruby to Charley's kibble (he probably has -- he thinks I'm crazy to feed my dogs real food), then keep her on the kibble as the path of least resistance.

2. Feed Ruby in a back bedroom or outside the kitchen door, thereby getting the nuisancey X-pen out of my family room.

3. Put Cassie's food down first and make Ruby wait to get hers. (I've been using the food dish to lure Ruby into the X-pen, which of course means Cassie is the one who's had to wait.)

4. Use the down/stay command to keep Ruby in place while food is set in front of Cassie, so she can see Cassie being fed first.

5. Keep Ruby off the bed. Only Cassie goes on the bed.

• Place the hinged pet/kiddy gate across the bedroom door.
• Get a Costco dog mattress and place it in Ruby's crate (which is right next to the bed)
• For about three weeks, lock Ruby in the crate at night.
• Then leave crate's door open for about three weeks, with the hinged gate closed so Pup can't run loose in the house at night.
• Then remove the crate, leaving only the dog mattress in its place, thereby getting another piece of impossible-to-clean-around junk out of my house.

6. Keep the dogs separated at all times when I'm not at home or inside the dwelling.

• Once the dog crate is gone, use the hinged gate to confine Ruby to the bedroom when I'm gone, with Cassie at large in the rest of the house.
• Teach Ruby to use the dog door and confine her, using the hinged gate, in the room with the dog door, so she can go in and out to do her business, allowing Cassie access to her favorite nest in the master bathroom.
• When the weather is clement, leave Ruby outdoors while I'm absent, thereby eliminating the kiddy-gate waltz.
• Confine her indoors only when it's too hot, too cold, or too wet to leave her in the yard.
• When she must be indoors, confine Cassie and Ruby in separate spaces.

I have no idea whether this set of strategies will work. I've been told that female/female rivalry can be a dangerous and intractable problem. On three occasions in the past, I've had two female dogs living in the same house uneventfully, so this is the first time I've had to confront the behavior. Since it's instinctive, I don't feel very confident about the chances of eliminating it. 

I do know how to teach the down/stay command, although I will say I've done very little in the training dept because most of the time I've been too sick to function. And that is likely to stay the case for most of the upcoming three months. I cannot afford to hire a trainer -- between the dog expenses and the Mayo Clinic, my checking account is swirling down the drain, with a great sucking sound. An obedience training group frequented by corgi owners (I'm told) will resume this fall as the weather cools; I'd planned from the outset to enroll Ruby in that, but as a practical matter, it remains to be seen whether I will be well enough to participate.

Got any other ideas? Does anyone know if it's even possible to control female/female dominance behavior? Would it be wiser to give up and re-home Ruby, to protect Cassie and to relieve Cassie from having to hide in the bathroom? Cassie has been much better in Ruby's absence, and it's clear that she's been very unhappy with that little dog beating up on her all the time. Maybe trying to socialize Ruby is a forlorn hope? Should I try this, or should I just cut my losses now?