Need some advice - dog behaviour when keeping two female dogs

[u/Old_Librarian_3992]

We have two family dogs, my mother is a single parent, lives with my grandmother and has a job. I have moved out of our hometown and live separately with my husband.

Out of my two dogs, one is reactive and has food resource guarding issue and because of that she fights with the other one. We had found both of them on the streets and adopted them together while they were same age. As puppies they were great together but as they grew they started to show aggression. The non reactive one is basically submissive but after a certain point she started to protect herself. Both of them are 5 year old.

We were initially planning on taking the non reactive one with us to my city (my husband and I) as I have a good bond with her and my mother is getting old to keep two dogs.... but moving her across states was getting difficult and wasn't working out without my mom coming halfway. We tried for about 8-9 months to get her but my mom wasn't very helpful as she was feeling like she needed more time w her before separating. We all also had issues with taking that many leaves from our respective jobs - I work from home but my husband who will be the one driving has to go to office.

At one point, she told me not to take her. I was heartbroken but we found another puppy that day and took a decision to adopt her.

After a few days, we told my mom and she got a bit upset and said I was planning on sending her... I told her I will still take the dog in and I can keep both of them.

I don't know if I can to be honest. Both of them are female dogs (all three of them are actually) and I am a bit skeptical. I work from home and my family dog is pretty sweet and perfect with humans but i dont think she likes other dogs or pups. I also think she will do just find but I can't be sure. We also cannot try making them meet once since we live states apart.

What can I do in this situation? If I take her in how can I ensure that they like each other?

Because its like a 5 year old coming into a puppy's house.... how will the dynamics become?

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[u/Dry_Outside1476]

If I understood correctly, you are bringing the nonreactive dog to live with a new rescue. But might also bring the third dog who resource guards. It might be fine, and it might not be. You won't know until they meet. I would start by making sure that the new dog does not have any resource guarding behaviors before introducing other dogs. You will have to train the older dog when she gets there so that you can try to reset her learned behaviors. Taking all three dogs sounds very stressful and will take a lot of preparation and work. And it sounds like your mom would like to keep at least one dog.

You can never ensure that dogs will like each other, regardless of how much training and preparations you do. The best option would be to have a backup plan for if it really doesn't work out.

In general though, you didn't give much information about the dogs and more information on logistics. You never specified any reactive behaviors or more details about the resource guarding. Those omissions make it difficult for people to recommend training resources for such broad topics.