Tag Archives: pit bulls

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.

Wonderful Weekend

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What an awesome weekend! My best friend flew into town, and we packed in as many cool things as we could. I haven’t seen her since my wedding in 2010, so this was a really big deal.

Her flight was delayed, and didn’t get in until almost 1 in the morning. I had physical pain waiting for her to show up at my house. The anticipation was killing me. And what was worse, I couldn’t tell my husband about it all. It was a surprise. KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.

See, I couldn’t tell my husband about it because it was his birthday, and this was part of the surprise. My parents, his parents, and my friend all pitched him to get him a GoPro camera, as well. He had a good birthday!

While she was here, we had an awesome time, and did all the things we used to do when she used to live closer. We went to sushi, saw a movie (Oblivion), and then watched League of Legend games.

Then, on Saturday, I took her to my Pack to Basics class, and I was dying to have her come. I introduced her to some of my clients/neighbors and their dogs. Afterwards, we went to our local street fair. It would have been more awesome if there were more tables to visit (we have a small town), or if it didn’t rain. It was freezing!

Later, we drove to my parents’ house, and my niece was there. She’s 3, and just loves my husband. She sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and played and played until she was too tired to play anymore. We played Mario, watched her play doctor with her dolls, ate chile, and my mom made my husband a special chocolate cake.

PittieOverall, it was a wonderful weekend. However, Sunday came around, and I had to take my friend to the airport. Sad day. We didn’t want her to leave. It felt so normal having her stay with us. It’s like all that time we haven’t spent together in the last 3 years didn’t pass at all. We just picked up where we left off. It just wasn’t long enough. It wasn’t enough time.

So, we have decided our next meeting will be to go on a cruise. We will also invite another friend from college. We call ourselves the ‘Quad’. It’s actually a pretty awesome story. Our best man and Maid of Honor are my best friends. I knew them before I met my husband. Well, turns out, they were also my husband’s friends too! So, when I introduced him to get approval of who I was seeing, I found out they were friends too! So, all was well, and nothing in our ‘click’ changed because now we were all just hanging out together.

As a close to the weekend, a trainer friend needed a doggy-sitter while she is out of town, and I get to watch ‘Pittie’ again! I have him for a week this time! He is such a good dog, I’m happy to be able to watch him again! The best part – he wasn’t so good with our cats last time, so my friend had him come with his eCollar, and he is doing much better. Here’s a picture of Max actually approaching him, and not fixating at all. Notice, I’m right there, just in case.

Anyway, Sunday was a pretty emotional day. Hopefully it will get better throughout the week.

Pittie and Kitty

Doggy-Sitting with a Pittie

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PittienapoleonThis last week we had the opportunity to watch my friend’s dog. A sweet pit bull named (for the sake of protection, we’ll call him ‘Pittie’). He was a love, but there were some adjustments that needed to be made. He wasn’t used to our house rules, so we quickly did a bit of ‘house training’. No, not potty training, but actual HOUSE RULE training. He caught on, and we were patient with him.

However, first night was a little rough. Pittie was anxious and needed some time by himself before we could let him out of the kennel. Spray bottle, verbal corrections, or ignoring him didn’t really work. Ok, let’s put those training skills to work! Blanket over the crate? Check. Essential oils? Check. Did they help? YES! After putting some lavender on him, it only took him about 5 minutes to settle down in his crate and go back to sleep.

Still anxious the rest of the night and the next day however (he was lip licking, pacing, whining, eyes darting around). So, again, he was ignored until he calmed down. Finally found a spot on the comfy carpet that felt nice, and curled up quietly. Then and only then, he got attention. He’s a love! Kisses and snuggles! It just took some time to realize he’s not home, and things are a little different.  After the first original day, he settled in, and was just completely wonderful!

Pittie3Napoleon and Pittie had some things to figure out, however. Napoleon is still learning his doggie manners when he is around other dogs, and as I have said before: he is over-adrenalized. He kept getting in Pittie’s face. Luckily, Pittie is a good ‘teacher’, and Napoleon is learning what is acceptable and what is not.  Pittie is very dominant, and Napoleon is not. So, after he realized Pittie was going to correct him on everything, he just submitted. This took about a day to work everything out.

Now, as for Pittie and the cats: Pittie was showing signs of over-interest in the cats on the first introduction. Cats were not so sure about this new dog. I wrapped Mia in a towel first, and then had Pittie sniff her in the towel. She eventually had enough, hissed, swiped, and then ran away. Pretty much same thing happened with Max. Whatever, that’s fine, they’ll come around, right?  After that, Pittie was very fixated on my cats. So, we did small introductions throughout every day, with Pittie tethered to the banister, and had the cats eat about 6 feet away. Max ate, Mia didn’t. So, I put Mia behind a wall, so she still knew Pittie was there, but couldn’t see him. She ate. Each meal got a little closer. Pittie was put in the cat’s room so he could sniff everything, and the kitties were put in his crate to smell him. Every day, small introductions. Finally, on Monday, the cats were brave enough to approach Pittie.

PittieThe approach was fine, and even though they didn’t sniff, they walked away peacefully. However, we started to trust Pittie a little more, and when he was around the cats, we weren’t tethering him anymore. He seemed interested, but still able to respond to commands. But when we were far enough away, he started chasing them, and they ran up the blinds , basically near the ceiling. That was enough to scare both my husband, and my cats. That was it – no more introductions for kitties and Pittie. However, it was a comfort to know the kitties were fine eventually with a new dog, since we are planning on fostering. He was just way to adrenalized. So, kitties stayed upstairs, and the dogs stayed downstairs. No biggie.

Now, Napoleon and Pittie have been fine together for the most part.  Until a bone was introduced. Well, Pittie found it. I got another bone for Napoleon, and set them up on either side of the room, just in case one had a fit or something. We have had Pittie for a few days at this point, and everything was going fine, so I just let them be. I was working on my computer, and I notice Pittie get up and walk over to Napoleon while he’s chewing on it. Napoleon gets up, and tries to walk away with the bone. Pittie didn’t like that. He air snapped and Napoleon. Normally, he would have just submitted and given Pittie the bone. I think at this point, he had had enough of the corrections from Pittie. Napoleon snapped back, and it turned into a fight. I broke it up fairly quickly, and the fight lasted about 3 seconds total. They were separated then so they could calm down-both were pretty adrenalized after that. Once they stopped licking themselves, and stopped panting, I checked them both out to make sure there wasn’t any damage. Pittie was fine, and Napoleon walked away with a cut in his ear. More blood, than actual damage. He’ll be fine. After they were both calmed down, and the adrenaline had subsided, I introduced them again. Napoleon submitted immediately. We went on a ‘pack walk’ later that evening, and no issues at all.

Pittie2So, I was able to get some experience with a very dominant dog, introducing resident cats to a new dog,  pit bull experience, and re-introducing some dogs after a dog fight. I wish the dog fight didn’t happen, but it was good to get some experience. Afterwards, Pittie realized what I say is law and we didn’t have any more problems after that.

 

 

 

Thinking about the fight, I think there were a few factors that contributed:

-Food/resource.
– Pittie being dominant
–Pittie being in a new environment, and possibly having some stress
-Napoleon having enough of Pittie’s dominance
-I wasn’t watching closely enough

Good experience overall for me. I’m so happy I was able to experience this, and I hope I’ll be able to doggie sit him again!