Tag Archives: dog aggression

One Day at a Time

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Emotions. Why do we even have them? What’s the point? They just create unstable, unbalanced feelings that we act on, and then make decisions based on what we are feeling in that moment. Had a good day? Great, reward yourself with a high calorie, sweet treat from the ice cream store. Because that just makes things even better. Feeling depressed? To the bottle, yay! Feeling frustrated? Start a fight in a bar! Overwhelmed? Just throw your arms up and give up on life. Feeling sad? Mope and watch sappy, stupid movies while eating chocolate and drinking wine.. Alone.

Alright, maybe not everyone does those exact things, but I’m just saying we act on them. So, because when I’m overwhelmed, and possibly turning my entire life around AGAIN (yeah, I know. Sounds like me, right?), I take on a foster dog. I really like this kid, and if he fits in well in a month or so, he may just join my pack. I don’t know yet though. So far, he’s shown quite a bit of improvement in just a couple days. I’m on a roller coaster, and I can’t get off. So many things, so many situations, so many decisions. I can handle it, I can’t handle it. I’ll be ok, I’m going to puke. I think I’m almost off, then we start to go up again. And I wait for the fall. When does this end?! Overwhelmed, frustrated.

End of My Leash great Danes Aggressive

Haven and Tank (Boarding School clients)

I also just had a de ja vu experience with a great dane (yeah, another one. This has nothing to do with the breed, I promise) who reminded me a lot of Ryder’s situation. Her name is Haven. She is a beautiful black dane who is unpredictable around dogs, people, and sometimes food. When the owners were talking to me about her, I had a sinking feeling that reminded me of Ryder. It’s been almost a year since I put him to sleep. This new dog had similar traits that sent up red flags and made me take a step back. I observed, I did an evaluation on her, and still had a feeling about her. During the eval, she gave me absolutely no reason to feel like I couldn’t handle her. She was responsive, sensitive, and showed zero aggression towards me or the other dogs. I asked for advice from more experienced trainers, and I was told to let the past go, learn from it, and give her a shot. Try her out for a week. I still had a feeling about this, but it was only because of what the family was telling me. Feelings of … caution.

Anyway, I took her as a Boarding School client, and we started training. Two weeks (out of the four weeks she is supposed to be here) go by without an incident, and she is responding to training beautifully. One day, as I was letting the dogs out, our streak was broken. Over the course of two days, she went after four different dogs. The only warning I had was a feeling I had before letting her out of the kennel. No real warning signs that I could see. It isn’t like I haven’t handled ‘aggression’ before, but this is different. I wasn’t comfortable. And I was emotionally attached, and saw Ryder, not Haven. I called my trainer friend and explained the situation and said I couldn’t work with her – she was too much dog for me. I cannot begin to explain how guilty I felt. Thoughts of failure, guilt, sadness, loss, and how I had let down Ryder flooded me. I was again overwhelmed with a sense of complete failure. I couldn’t help this dog. I have been told time and time again I cannot save them all. It sucks when this happens, but it does happen. I know that, but it doesn’t suck any less, and I’m too fucking sensitive for my own good. So, feeling of heartbreak.

Project K9 Pitbull Foster Dogs

This is Rocko

Last time, I chose to continue working with Ryder, even though he was quite a bit of dog for me then. This time, I asked the owners to pick her up, and referred to another trainer. I handled it the best I could for the situation. It’s messy, and I feel like again – I couldn’t help. What if I had been training for 40 years, or if I was the best? Feelings of doubt.

So, now I’m here. Thinking about all of it again. Overanalyzing. Learning. Advancing. Yes, I have high standards, and for some reason, I feel like emotions make us weak.

So, I’m choosing another emotion. Numb. Let’s try that one for a while.

Difficult Dog Workshop

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Difficult-dog-training-utah-county-k9-lifelineLast week, I had the opportunity to attend a difficult dog training workshop hosted by K9 Lifeline. Heather Beck and her staff taught us how to handle aggression, stubbornness, and over-adrenalized behavior.

Of all the things we talked about (which was a lot, it was a 4 day workshop), there was one particular thing I wanted to highlight that has changed the way I train. It was completely life changing.

See, when I started out, I was positive techniques only. Now, I realize that if I want to work with truly difficult dogs, I need to adjust the way I train. Happy go lucky dogs benefit from positive techniques, but they also learn to be over-adrenalized and can’t learn to calm themselves down. So, you also introduce another problem with using only positive techniques.

Now, one of the major things I learned that I need to work on is adjusting how I feel when working with a difficult dog. I preach patience, patience, patience, but I wasn’t practicing unconditional patience with the dog I brought to the workshop. After the instructor pointed out I was tense, I realized … I was! And I found myself frustrated as well because I felt like we weren’t getting anywhere. So, I adjusted my attitude and instead of thinking, “I’m going to stand here and wait until you realize we aren’t going anywhere until you give up.” to “Let me show you what I want, and we’ll go from there. Whenever you get amped up, we stop and I apply pressure. Once you calm down, the pressure goes away. I’ll wait so we can set you up to succeed. We’ll take as long as you need.” I learned to have unconditional patience, and I also realized that when we are training, I can’t stop until we make it a good note.

dog-training-utah-county-newfoundland-difficult-dogLast night, I was training a 6 month old Newfoundland puppy. We have been training for a few weeks, but I saw aggression yesterday while we were training. We haven’t seen this before from him. This is the ‘fight’ stage, and we need to work him through it (carefully so no one gets hurt). We were practicing working with the Halti with the family, and I was having the younger kids work with him to learn how to use the pressure appropriately. Well, one of the kids didn’t want to be there (we’ll call him Kid B), he didn’t want to train, and it seemed he didn’t like the dog either. So, as soon as he took the leash, he was a bit heavier with the corrections, and the dog turned on him and started nipping, jumping, growling, and barking at him. So, I corrected the child, and we worked the puppy through it. He eventually calmed down, and then we did another round with me, then mom, then then Kid A, and then back to Kid B. The dog again, got aggressive, so I took the leash because I was worried the kid would actually get hurt (this is now a 70 lb puppy who is biting, not nipping anymore). I corrected him softly with just pressure from the Halti, and he took a good 15 minutes to calm down. I got bit a few times on the hand, but then he jumped to bite towards my stomach. No blood, just bruises, but that surprised me. I’m applying what I learned at the difficult dog workshop, and we didn’t give up until the dog was calmed down and on a positive note. We can’t stop when he’s being aggressive because he will learn that’s what he needs to do to get people to do what he wants.

So, I assigned the family to have just the older kids (2 more kids who weren’t here for today’s training) and mom work with him for now since he does bite hard and is fighting so much. This is the first step of learning a few technique. FIGHT – and that’s exactly what he’s doing. So, we need to work him through it.  I checked how I felt while working with him. I was concentrating on not getting mauled, and I was working on my feelings. I’m not scared of getting bit, it’s going to happen at some point. I want to avoid it, but I’m not scared. I felt… calm, relaxed, but focused. I was concentrating on focusing that energy towards him.  He did eventually calm down and we could end the training on a good note and kennel him to process everything he learned.

So, just a few days after I learned how to calm my own mind, I’m learning how to do this with my clients’ dogs, and I saw success. Even though I was late to my next appointment, I wasn’t ending until I saw him relax and calm down and accept what I was trying to teach him. I didn’t give up, and I was focused on being calm and working him through it.

Doggie Sitting Checkers

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Well, I said this blog was coming, and I meant it.  The story of the Pointer I was watching for a few days.

My friend adopted a German Short-Haired Pointer a few weeks ago from a very high kill shelter. They had him for 3 days before they asked me to babysit. They wanted me to doggie-sit (while I had the cute little border collie puppy as well) from Sunday to Wednesday night. I thought this was a great opportunity to get experience with another breed, and work with a shelter dog. I knew this was going to be a pretty significant challenge, especially because this boy was in the shelter for whopping 2 weeks!!

If you work with rescue or shelter dogs, you know how much work they can be, even after being in the shelter for a few days! I was completely unprepared! This boy was a full time job!

Checkers1First thing I noticed: very high energy. This makes it very difficult because I have a high energy dog as well, so managing 2 high strung dogs was the most exhausting thing I have done so far! Boy, what did I get myself into? Well, to make matters even more challenging, he had some aggression towards Napoleon. Nothing I couldn’t handle, it wasn’t severe, and it wasn’t like ‘I’m going to kill you’ aggression. It was because he is un-socialized, and I don’t think he had been around many other dogs before.

Now, I can pick out rude behaviors now [some of them, I’m learning], and immediately saw that Checkers was challenging Napoleon for rank, challenging him to a fight. Napoleon, just ignored him, being the submissive dog he was. Well, Checkers didn’t back down, making Napoleon’s hackles rise up. I also noticed his ears went back, head up, and the lip raising started. That’s when I separated them.

Checkers, again, not being socialized, didn’t care that we were done with the introduction. He was jumping like a maniac, and started snarling at Napoleon. So, I fitted him with a basket muzzle I had on hand. I’m glad I had one! I don’t handle aggression in my training, and this dog has absolutely nothing to do with my business or my training. He was a friend’s dog, and I was asked to watch him for a few days. Just want that to be clearly written here.

Anyway, now that the boys had a chance to be nice, and failed, we left Napoleon outside, and I decided it was time for Checkers to come inside. Just from the first few minutes of being inside, I realized again – un-socialized and has never been inside a house. Out of control jumping on furniture, bolting around the house, and jumping all over the walls. So, on a tether the entire time he was with us.

PetConvincer

My fault. This is what happens when I left something in reach of him getting to it. He completely tore it apart. I’m glad he didn’t get the CO2 container!

Even on the tether, we had to watch him 24/7. He dug at the carpets, chewed on the drywall, baseboards, couches, wired crate, and dug inside the plastic crate while chewing through the holes on the sides. I couldn’t go upstairs for 5 minutes without him. Also, not potty trained. So, again- reason to tether and keep him watched all the time.

Oh, crate training. Yeah – NOT crate trained, and suffers from severe separation anxiety to the point of self-mutilation. He chewed his feet, and chewed the bars until his teeth hurt. So, I switched him to a heavy duty plastic crate instead of a wired crate. This curbed the high pitched whining and constant barking. We had use soft music, a blanket over the crate (which he destroyed), and essential oils just to get him to calm down. We fed meals in the crate, and eventually, I would close the door to my office, and let him roam. He would go in the kennel willingly to rest. Total time of active training to get this achievement: 30 hours. The family says he is accepting the crate very well now, which is awesome. I’m glad I was able to work on this with him.

Is he neutered, you ask? Of course not-the shelter doesn’t do that before they adopt them out. Well, high kill shelters, at least! We also believe he was around 2 years old, meaning he was in his ‘prime’ and was mounting everything. Couches, beds, Napoleon, me, the wall, the air, etc.

Corrections: He did not respond well to any corrections using the Halti. Absolutely no regard for personal space, and would knock you over to get where he wanted to go. He would jump over Napoleon or a couch to get to where he wanted to go. Also, another reason to keep him on a lead. He didn’t ever slow down. Took 4 full days of training, but I curbed the jumping on furniture as well as jumping on people. I used the Pet Convincer, as well as verbal corrections, and he caught on fairly quickly. The Pet Convincer was incredibly effective for correcting him, and eventually I didn’t need to use it anymore, and just used verbal corrections. I think the total amount of active training hours spent was around 8.

Checkers2He was incredibly noise sensitive, and would hide underneath our end table. Not extra loud noises even, like a motorcycle, but things like the TV, washing machine, dish washer, doorbell, garage door, toilet flushing, etc. He got plenty of exposure to this, as I had to stay home with him for a few days because he was so self-destructive while I was gone.

How did he do with my cats? No go. Nada. Neit. Not even close to being ok. Incredibly high prey drive. With his energy level, and the level of aggression he had towards a dog twice his size, I just didn’t even bother with doing introductions for my cats. I was also worried because he chased a bird in the back yard and scaled my fence! Yes, he scaled my 7 foot fence, and went into my neighbor’s yard where he scared and scared the shit out of my neighbor’s small little dogs. Ok, so now he has to be tethered when he is outside in the backyard. Can’t let him off the leash ever. What a handful!

So, of the 4 days we had him, I think it was frustrating but successful. I didn’t plan on doing any training, but it turns out I had to, since he was just completely out of control in my house.

My personal accomplishments with this boy:

-Learned that sometimes, all it takes is switching something in the environment (wire crate to plastic crate)
-Reinforced the age-old comment of ‘Not all dogs are the same’
-Learned more about shelter dogs and un-socialized behavior
-Gained practice in really paying attention to canine behavior while in the presence of another dog
-Learned what ‘Board and Train’ means when I finally decide to do that (years away right now)
-Curbed jumping on furniture and people within 4 days.
-Started crate training
-By the time he left my house, I believe he was fully potty trained. Only one accident, and then he went to the door on his own afterwards…if I gave him the chance. Normally he was tethered.
-Started working on chewing on inappropriate objects with some success
-Successfully introduced Napoleon and Checkers after quite a lot of patience and small introductions. Video below is them playing in an acceptable manner.
-Met a dog who doesn’t respond to the Halti. A prong collar might have been better for this boy. But, I didn’t have one, so I couldn’t try.

Due to my level of experience, and how much time I have available currently to work with a dog like this, I have recommend another trainer take this case. I already have my hands full with another boy, who is making tremendous progress after 6 months of training. Updates on my boy, soon to come!

Here is a video of them finally achieving calm[er] play.