Hi all, I am wondering if anyone could offer any advice on our new situation after adopting last week! Sorry in advance for a long post, just wanted to include all the details I could think of.

My boyfriend has had our 6 y/o neutered male husky/malamute mix, for most of the dog's life. I moved in with them about a year ago, and fell in love with him of course. He is a chill, quiet guy who loves to go for runs and hikes but also likes to laze around at home. He has historically gotten along with almost all the dogs he’s met and never is an aggressor on the street when we’re out for a walk. He lived happily and peacefully with my bf’s family and their 3 other male dogs (not malamutes/huskies. Not exactly sure of the breeds but it was two smaller dogs and one dog about his size).

We wanted to expand our family, so last weekend we adopted a new guy, a 3 y/o neutered male malamute, from the humane society. He is absolutely wonderful and incredible with humans. He’s a snuggly, affectionate guy which won us over. He is very high energy on walks and in our outdoor space. He was a stray prior to ending up in the shelter, and they didn’t have notes on his interactions with other dogs, which in retrospect should maybe have been a red flag to us, but he was one of a few of the dogs in there who didn’t bark or lunge at the other dogs when they were walked out, so we took that as a positive sign.

When we first brought him home, we definitely introduced them too quickly, that is entirely our fault. The shelter did not give us a ton of advice on how to do so and we had not done our research (I have now done a bunch of retroactive research to know that we did it all wrong). We had them both on leash outside of our home and let them see each other, but our mistake was letting them sniff each other rather than just immediately taking them on a walk together. They sniffed for a few seconds, and then our new dog lunged at our resident dog and then snapped at each other. We went on a walk after that and they were relatively fine. Our new boy is kind of an anxious guy right now as expected given that he’d been in the shelter for a month and is learning us and our neighborhood.

We kept them separate for the rest of the evening and the morning the next day, but then introduced them in our outdoor space (not where the previous incident had happened) and they bit at each other again. After the second incident, we met with a behaviorist/trainer who essentially said they’d need a month of training at the very least, including time boarding at the training center. We unfortunately do not have the money to invest in that cost at this time. We’ve been keeping them separate since then when in the house, and then taking them on distanced walks every day. We have been letting them wander around our outdoor space too but both on leash and have avoided allowing them to get too close to one another while also trying to avoid having the leashes tight because we've read that that will trigger them to feel like the other dog is dangerous. We had them sit and chew bully sticks near each other yesterday too and neither barked, lunged, or snapped at each other, which has us a bit hopeful.

We are struggling with what to do now, because we are not sure if we just screwed up the introduction too much for them to ever get along, or if with time they could end up being buddies. I’ve been doing research now on same-sex aggression and resource guarding, and I’m just worried that it may be something they can’t work past. And I've also read that sometimes it's just a personality or energy-level mismatch. We spoke with the shelter from which we adopted the new dog, and they said they could take him back because our resident dog’s safety is priority. I appreciate their support in that especially after reading about other folks’ bad experiences being shamed for making such a decision to return a dog at other shelters. But at the same time, I’m falling in love with him and would be torn apart seeing him go back into that environment. I know he could find a family, probably one without another dog, who would love him to pieces, but I'm just perhaps selfishly holding onto hope that he could work in our family.

Basically, I’m wondering if anyone has any insight into whether the situation is reparable and if they might have the potential to get along, or if we messed up too badly by introducing them how we did, or if there's a chance they just would have been incompatible no matter what. I think we are in a position where we could put in time to make it work, but we don’t have a ton of extra money to pour into intensive training or behaviorist support. Apologies again for the long post and TIA for any thoughts/advice.

I have my 2 year old Alusky since he was 8 weeks old and he had a biting issue. Normally bites when he wants something, or mainly is just to go outside when the door is closed. I actually don’t mind the biting in fact I love it. His bite are actually gentle and never has bite hard enough to break skin. Wondering if anyone else enjoys the biting.

Happy New Year!!

Really cant understand why people think he is a husky when he is gigantic. I'm 6" tall and he is as tall as me when standing on his back legs, like yea he dont have the "standard" malamute look, but a husky 😂

Can any of you suggest a mostly chew proof/semi indestructible rug? Our boy has destroyed everything... Lol

Help! I have a male Husky/Malamute mix who recently turned 3 yrs (spayed/vaccinated) and usually he has always been very friendly towards people/other dogs. In the last few months we've noticed aggression towards strangers/kids. I plan on taking him to some dog training classes but was wondering if anyone else may have tips I could try to work with him.

Moving from Wyoming to West Virginia we now have a new problem…ticks. We give the floof his tick and flee meds every month but today we went for a hike and 4 of those little demons were trying to fight through the fluff. Does anyone use a specific comb to look for those after hiking? We have a few combs I tried to use but nothing really gets through the sea of hair.

We will all be in a diet this New Year 😂

So, following up on Mr. Thundernuts here, we're keeping him.

I seem to recall from his veterinary file (he was seen by his long-time vet about a month before his owner passed) that he was maybe 10 pounds overweight. Mainly we keep greyhounds, and being on the opposite end of the canine spectrum, we're a little unsure as to how to gauge when the malamute is at appropriate weight.

When viewed from above, there's a definite "taper" from chest to abdomen, but it takes quite a bit of pressure to find where the most distal ribs are.

He was probably free-fed with his previous owner, and he's been a bit picky here despite being offered food twice a day; we can't just leave food laying around because of the other dogs.

As per my previous post, he's not so much better about getting his nails trimmed, but we're much better at distracting him; rubbing his face with a hand over his eyes is normally enough of a distraction I can get in a few nails at a time, then treats for all the dogs.

Obligatory image of the vacuum cleaner killer.

She is sporting Furberry 😂 Trying to dress just like mommy

Boy I have never argued with a dog more In my life! So I was making "Christmas candy" (its almond bark and m&M's on pretzels) and he thought it was all for him. He sat In front of me sitting all nice throwing his paw up and when I didn't give him any he started to yelled and me and then his favorite thing is to " tattle" on me to my mom about how mean I am! 🤣 Just a fun story He is also part Alaskan Malamute/Husky/pitbull and German shepherd I just thought maybe it would even out and he wouldn't talk as much nope🤣 I love him and I love his talking it super funny!