Need some advise

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Hello! We have taken on a 9 month old female spaniel from a domestically unhappy situation, to go with our 6 month old neutered male lab. (she has mainly male human issues and no training!)

We researched it before to see if they would be ok together and all the pages we looked at said they should get along well.

We introduced them on neutral ground and they where ok, got them home and lucky the spaniel settled well. However, our lab - Sprite - has taken to attacking her, pinning her down, nipping her ears, dragging her by the throat etc. Hes drawn blood on one occasion, but then again they get on pretty well when not arguing (like now, both are asleep at my feet). We love them both dearly but cant understand why Sprites being so mean.

We know they need time to adjust to each other, but is there anything we can do to help this phase reach its climax??

[firewatch]

we searched for seven weeks to find a breeder we liked and could provide back history for his dogs. Were approached by puppy farms and said no. Sprite has been hip and eye scored and we will doing the same with lucky. Sprite has early onset lens problems in one eye, but its under control and hes in no pain at the mo (other than when lucky is nipping him). They are less augmentative today and lucky is becoming top dog as predicted.