Problems with Athena again

I'm sure most of you don't know me, but I've posted about my pit bull, Athena, here a couple times before.

The cats and pug are hundreds of miles away, but there is another dog around now, her name is Patches. The other dog is a mix of pit bull and something else, I'm not sure. She's a bit older than Athena (around seven, while Athena is only about three). She has been professionally trained and she's a good dog, but very timid, very unlike Athena.

The two dogs can't be out of their crates at the same time because Athena will go after Patches. It used to be just a food issue, but it has been becoming worse, and a couple days ago I was holding Athena by the collar and Patches came running in from outside. When Patches got to the top of the stairs, Athena tried to go after her. Fortunately I was holding Athena so nobody got hurt. I put Athena in her box but Patches acted very scared. Today Patches has been acting terrified. She's afraid to leave her box and when we do get her out, she walks around the house slowly and with her tail between her legs. She was even hiding behind the couch, but Athena was in her box the whole time.

So now Patches is terrified. We even moved Athena's crate to another room, completely away from anywhere Patches can get to, but she still acts afraid.

That's definitely the biggest problem right now.

Are you keeping Patches? Is rehoming her an option?

She isn't my dog, she belongs to my roommate. It isn't an option.

I would suggest keeping both dogs out of each others' sight at ALL TIMES until you can get a training plan in place. Make sure their crates are not in the same room, and make sure they don't have to walk past the other's crate to get outside.

Next I suggest you read "Click to Calm" by Emma Parsons, it's an excellent book about reactive dogs but it also has a chapter about two-dog households.

I ALSO suggest finding a good trainer/behaviorist who can come into the house and work with you with your dogs. Often problems like this are caused, or at least made worse, by us, an changing a few small things will make a huge difference in the behavior. That's why it so helpful to have an outside party come in and observe the problem. You can check out www.appliedanimalbehavior.com, www.apdt.com, or www.ccpdt.org for trainer searches.