|
[ MOUFA ] [ SOUNDS ] [ STORIES ] [ LINKS ] [ EMAIL ] [ ARCHIVE ] [ BIO ] |
8.19.2003From: "jenn" Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 07:58:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [K9U-Dog-HumanAggression] new member (really long post) Hello everyone I have been following along since i found and signed up for the group and finally decided to post. It is really nice to see that other people have had problems with their dogs and I don't feel like a horrible dog owner because my dog is such a demon! (i say that with the greatest love, affection and frustration) Moufa (pronounced "mow-fa" :) is a suspected dobie/dane mix. I was out having dinner one night in my Brooklyn neighborhood and saw a young boy carrying him around on his bike. The dog was as big as the palm of my hand and his eyes were not yet open. I asked the boy what he was doing with that dog away from it's mother and he informed me that the mother had died. I gave him $20 and he gave me the dog. The rest as they say is history. I immediately took this big hamster sized dog to my vet where i had been taking my cats and a million rescues for years. She told me he was a very healthy pup but was going to need a lot of special attention to socialize him since he was only 10 days old when i brought him to her. i had taken in strays and helped to find homes for tons of animals (including some quail chicks that were left on my doorstep!) so i definately felt that i was up to the challenge. I had no idea what i was in for. My vet, bless her soul, had some breed biases, a phenomenon that i was unawre of at the time, and even as a pup she handled him a little roughly. I trusted her with all of my own pets and thought for sure that she knew best. She hooked me up with a trainer who she heard was "good with agressive breeds". I called him when the dog was about 4 months old and we started training. he is now over 100lbs he nipped me the first time when he was 6 months old and his trainer told me that when he showed any bossy behavior i should roll him on his back and hold him there and praise him until he calmed down. Having never dealt with an agressive dog i had to trust that this person knew better than i and it seemed reasonable at the time. so we continued with negative correction methods for 9 months. To make a long story longer, he has nipping issues. He has done it about a dozen times in the 6 years. He bit me pretty well over this winter but has never done anything that serious to anyone else. the agression has spread (agressive around food whenhe never was before, agressive around dogs when he used to LOVE playing with other dogs, agressive around his territory even with me) but the actual biting has stayed the same. About 2 years ago I enlisted the help of a behaviorist who is supposed to be top in the field. and he suggested "sniff therapy" and puppy prozac. i was disgusted that i spent so much $$ and he was supposed to be the 'best of the best' and that what i was offered. I took him up on the prozac. Mouf was on it for 2 years. it really only slowed the nipping frenzy down. It only occurred to me about 6 months ago that maybe all of these people were wrong. and that as a very physical sort of dog he will never respond well to ANY sort of force (i know,'duuuh'!) last winter i came home pretty late. My room mate who was home sleeping so the dog was out cold next to my bed. I went in and he didn't hear me. i leaned over to kiss him on the head. he jumped up and bit my face and a small one on my hand. it required 7 stitches total, 5 of them on my face. I scared the hell out of him and after he did it he looked at me like he was completely ashamed of himself. I was inconsolable. I was at the hospital more worried that I was going to have to put him down. I could have cared less about my face. That was when i really realized that he HAD to be handled differently. I moved him to Georgia. I hoped that a less stressful city might help both of us. Unfortunately for me, the job that i secured was not so secure and i had to come back to NY to work. So i am splitting my time between Atlanta and NYC. He lives with my girlfriend there. She is great with him and has had and trained big dogs her whole life and loves hime desperately and is committed to helping with this problem. about 3 weeks ago she let him out in the driveway without a leash (she gets NO treats now) and he caught sight of my nextdoor neighbor at the foot of the driveway and ran down and started barking at her. she started waving her hands at him and he bit her calf and ran back up to the top of the driveway. well georgia has a one bite rule. he now has a record. Thats when i called the atlanta humane society and spoke to the behaviorist there and gave her his whole history. She was nearly crying when i told her about his trainer and the vet and the behaviorist and told me that I had been given some pretty bad tools to deal with this dog and that he was practically trained to behave this way. She referred me to another behaviorist who specializes in dogs who have repeated biting incidents. Needless to say i am a little leery of any more so called 'experts' so i have yet to call him. I immediately started with NILIF and it seems to have made a big difference in his demenor. but i still have some things that i do not know how to handle. the treating works with LOTS of things. for example, the phone service man came out to put in a new jack and i was able to get him to sit and be quiet and not try to eat the man by treating him while he was quiet and sitting. I was even able to carry on a conversation with this man in my house while the big demon sat next to me. THat doesn't mean that it didn't take me quite a few minutes to actually get him to sit. the problem is that if he is REALLY wound up, he doesn't want the treats. even the best and tastiest ones. he sniffs them and gets back to barking and running around the house like a crazy dog. i will call him and tell him to heel but if he is that wound up it is no use. do i go to him and bring him to where i want him? and the desensitizing him to negative stimulous... he does not and will not and has never let anyone touch his feet. So that was where i wanted to start. so i was feeding him from my hands for a few days and making him work for it and he was very excited and happy about it. then after a few days i would tell him to sit and stay and i would just place one piece of kibble on his foot and tell him to leave it there. He was having none of it. not even once so that i could tell him what a great dog he was. so if i try to put the kibble on his foot he jumps up from his sit and walks away. so i moved on to asking him to give me his paw and praising him wildly when he did. then i held it for a bit longer each time i did it. but if i hold it even a second longer than he wants me to he gives me a little growl. so i guess i want to figure out the best way to desensitize him to the things that he thinks are the most horrible, most awful things that could happen to him, like going to the vet and me cutting his toenails. I am sorry for such a long post, but there is a lot of stuff and i wanted to try to be as thorough as possible. any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. thanks Jenn .: posted by landry 12:04 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
