[jcamaro]

Just going to say the obvious first, sticking your hand between two fighting dogs is not the way to get them to stop. All they see is something else fleshy to bite and don't care who it is. But she's probably not to blame since your dogs have never fought before.

I know that just about anything can set off two dogs to fight. We had a chocolate lab a while ago and ended up staying with some friends for a few weeks while we found a house after moving back to Oklahoma. Our chocolate lab was the friendliest dog you'd ever met. Our friends had 2 dogs, both mixes that I couldn't really tell what they were. They got along just fine for a while but then one day their dog Pepper started to get in to it with our lab (Goliath). We still don't know why but we had to keep them separated from then on. And for the rest of his life, Goliath never had any trouble with any other dog.

My suggestion would be to look into training and instructions on how to integrate two dogs together. And it may sound really stupid, but check into the Dog Whisperer show. There is probably an episode where he deals with a situation like this and you could learn a few pointers. If you don't want this to end with one of them having to be put down, then you'll need to make an effort to train them to live together.