Don't Dump The Dog (6 page)
Read Don't Dump The Dog Online
Authors: Randy Grim
Cujo in the Dog Park
Hi Randy,
Can you give me some advice about what to do with Peaches? She’s a basset hound mix, and she attacked a golden retriever yesterday at the dog park and almost killed him. This is the third time she’s done this, and she’s already been through several rounds of professional behavioral training, so I was thinking of having her teeth taken out as a last resort. What do you think?
Thanks,
Witless Wally
Dear WW:
What do I think? Here’s what I think: Anyone who lets a dog-aggressive dog in a dog park should be tarred, feathered, and put on public display. I think anyone who lets wicked Rover run loose in a dog park should then be required to wear a big red “S” on their clothes, for STUPID, take some sort of medication for stupidness, and attend stupidity awareness classes for the rest of their natural lives. That’s what I think.
Sincerely,
Randy Grim
D
oes it actually take a mental giant to realize that any dog with aggressive tendencies shouldn’t be allowed to run loose in a dog park? I love all dogs, so don’t get me wrong. Many dog-aggressive dogs have the best sense of humor of any dog I’ve dealt with, and love their human companions with a bighearted stubbornness that borders on obsessive. But that’s the problem: When these dogs want something, they obsess.
Case in point: I got a call from one of our volunteers, a young guy named John, who fostered one of our more-abused rescue dogs named Blue. John told me I needed to get to his house ASAP because, as he put it, “Man, there’s something really wrong with this dog.”
When I pulled into his driveway, John stood by a fence with several of his neighbors who waved me toward them as they stared into the backyard with looks of horror on their faces. I, of course, expected the worst, and as I ran toward them, pictures of Blue with the last remnants of a FedEx delivery person’s uniform hanging from his mouth flashed through my mind.
(When you work with as many street dogs as I do, you come to expect those sorts of things. Once, a hysterical volunteer who was fostering one of our dogs called me in the middle of the night, and all I could understand through her incoherent crying was MAX ...
sobs, gulps for air
... KILLED ...
more sobs, more gulps for air
... PERSON. At least, that’s what I thought she said. What she actually said was MAX KILLED PERCY (her cat), but because I always expect the worst, my mind translated it into MAX KILLED PERSON, and subsequently I had a lot of explaining to do to the police, detectives, paramedics, and firefighters who showed up at her house after I called 911.)
What I saw when I reached John’s fence was not the actual worst, but it ranked high on my list of potentials. In the backyard stood an old tree with low-hanging branches, and underneath one of the branches, Blue circled with a franticness that indicated prey up above. As I searched the tree for the FedEx guy, Blue suddenly sprang up toward the branch, grabbed it in his jaws, and then held on and
hung there
like a dangling wind sock, six feet off the ground.
“Oh wow,” I said. “Who’s in the tree?”
John shrugged and shook his head with that sad, resigned look reserved for the hopelessly insane. “No one.”
I looked back at Blue, who still hung from the branch. “Is it a cat?”
“No, man, there’s
nothing
in the tree.”
“But ...”
“Yeah. Weird, huh?”
For whatever reason, Blue was so obsessed with killing the tree branch that whenever John let him out in the backyard, he jumped up, grabbed it, and hung on for up to five minutes before he’d let go. Then he’d drop down to the ground, circle a few times, and repeat the attack all over again.
“He’d do this all day long if I let him,” John said. “He’ll hang on until his gums bleed.”
That
is how obsessive some dogs are, and when you throw in abuse (like a fighting ring), you’ll start to understand why they should never be allowed to run loose with other dogs who could, and often do, end up being the object of their obsession. I have had countless aggressive dogs, and many can love and play well with others; it’s more a matter of what people did to them before I ended up with them and their “issues.”
I can hear you now—“I
paid
for this advice?”—but if you have a dog-aggressive dog and insist on letting him hang out with other dogs, then you are one of many who needs something akin to electroshock therapy when it comes to common sense. It’s like dealing with a person who has a false sense of entitlement.
I am not saying that all dogs who show aggression toward other dogs can’t be taught some manners (see below), but no matter how much you work with him, if he’s aggressive toward other dogs, you can never fully
trust
him around other dogs. Sounds harsh, I know, but that’s the sneaky point of this chapter: It’s not about training your dog to like other dogs, but about teaching him a few points of social etiquette (see Grim’s Guide to Proper Introductions below), and about you accepting and dealing responsibly with your dog’s personality (see Grim’s Guide to Proper Fork Use, on page 84).
Typically, dogs show one of three types of aggression toward other dogs—dominance, territorial, or fear—but regardless of the triggers, a few general rules apply to all:
- If the dog is not spayed or neutered and you aren’t willing to spay or neuter them, then you must wear the big red “S” on all of your clothes—see Randy’s letter on page 74.
- Invest in a halter-type collar—they give you much more control than a regular collar, including choke chains. Never let the dog out in public or around other dogs in the house unless he has it on.
- Teach your dog to “sit,” which won’t cure the aggression, but will allow you some control in certain situations.
- Teach your dog “stay,” which, again, won’t cure the situation, but will give you an extra tool.
- Invest in a basket muzzle for working with your dog in public.
Unfortunately, in my line of work, I run across the extremes. Many, many of the dogs we rescue are either former “bait” dogs used to train the fighters (and thus fearfully aggressive), or the fighters themselves (and thus aggressive on dominant or territorial grounds). I won’t go into all the horrible details, but I bring it up because I’ve never met a dog more fearful than a former bait dog or more aggressive than a former fighter, and in both cases we’ve been successful in introducing them to polite society and with a higher success rate than that achieved by our current penal system.
The symptoms of fear aggression in a dog include barking and nervousness when he sees other dogs, backing away from other dogs with his tail between his legs, pulling his ears back horizontally, looking away from the other dog, and raising his fur. The good news is that this is the most treatable form of dog-on-dog aggression. The bad news is that you have to read chapter 8 to fully understand the treatment.
Here, however, is a condensed version: You must gradually teach your dog to relax around other dogs, and to do this, you should start with teaching him to relax when you ask him to “sit.” So start there—teach him to sit and to
relax
.
I emphasize the word
relax
, because you are not actually concerned with teaching your dog to sit, but with teaching your dog to relax. To do this, take the dog to a safe place where there aren’t any other dogs, and ask him to sit. Then, wait for him to relax, and when he does, give him a treat. I suggest the canine caviar, hot dogs. Repeat this over and over in different place where there are no other dogs. Remember—you are trying to teach the dog to relax, not to sit, so he must believe the two go hand in hand if he’s going to get his treat. Every time you ask him to sit, he must associate happiness and relaxation with doing what you ask.
Once he makes the association of sitting/relaxing with groovy treats, take him outside, preferably to a park where there are other dogs, and practice the sit/relax from a distance. It’s really important not to get too close to the other dogs at this stage, because you don’t want your dog reacting to
them
; you want him reacting to
you
. So, take him to the park, and when he sees another dog in the distance and starts to whine or bark, ask him to sit, and don’t give him his treat until he focuses on you and relaxes. Whatever you do, don’t baby or reassure him when he whines or barks at the distant dogs, because this in effect teaches him that it’s okay to act that way. Just distract him by asking him to sit.
It may take several days or several weeks, but when your dog can be relied on to relax in the presence of distant dogs, start moving closer and closer, repeating the exercise in exactly the same way. What you’re doing is counterconditioning him to his fears, teaching him to respond to his fear in a way that doesn’t involve aggression, and once he gets this into his head, you’re ready for the final step: his introduction to polite society.
The introduction should take place in the park, or wherever you worked on the counterconditioning. Ask a friend with an already-polite dog to meet you there. Then walk the dogs (on leashes!) side by side, but keep the distance between them wide enough so they can’t reach each other. While there may be a few snarls at first, keep walking side by side at a brisk pace, and within one lap of the park, your dog should show relaxed behavior. If and when you’re comfortable with it, walk them a little closer together, and then closer still. As long as you walk quickly and with purpose, there should be no problems, and eventually, maybe over the course of only a few days, your dog and your friend’s dog will be best buddies.
Repeat this exercise with other dogs, but never let either dog off leash. Do not let what appears to be a miracle fool you. It will only take one wrong whiff by another dog to set your fearful one off.
The worst thing you can do is take your dog to the dog park—on leash or off. If he’s on his leash and other dogs swarm around him, he’ll feel trapped and lash out. If he’s off his leash and other dogs swarm around him, he’ll still lash out, but you won’t have any control over him.
So when
can
he run loose in the dog park?
Skip down to Grim’s Guide to Proper Fork Use for the answer.
Aggression caused by dominant attitudes or territorial protection share similar symptoms, including fights between dogs in the same house and aggression toward strange dogs, with the bad guy (your dog) staring the other directly in the face, with his ears forward and his tail raised before he goes for the throat.
When you walk them through the park, these are the guys that make all kinds of noise when they see other dogs, and lunge and twirl on the end of their leashes like hooked marlin on the end of a fishing line. These are the guys who act like they’re going to crash through the front window of your house when another dog walks by. These are the guys who embarrass you in the car, at the vet’s office, and in those pet store chains where you can bring your dog, because people wonder what you did to make him so mean. You, in fact, are probably wondering what you did to make him so mean. I can’t count how many times someone called or wrote me with the following tearful lament: “I don’t understand it. He’s so gentle and sweet around people, but when he sees another dog, he turns into Cujo. What am I doing wrong?”
The answer is, probably nothing. If you aren’t training a dog to fight other dogs (in which case you should be in prison), then the chances are good that it’s part of the dog’s makeup, especially if he has human-induced aggression or overbred bad-rap breeding running through his veins. These poor guys have been bred for hundreds and hundreds of years to protect
their
people from werewolves, rebellious serfs, and invading Huns, and whatever it is about the atoms that make up their cells that make up their genes, it just can’t be bred back out in a generation or two.
So you have to trick your loyal protector of the castle in much the same way you’d trick a fearful dog out of being afraid: You teach him to sit using hot dogs (and no, Oscar Mayer has not endorsed this book).
I cannot emphasize enough the power of hot dogs. After considerable and methodically sound research, I have determined that they contain unique cataleptic properties similar in effect to humans snorting pure chocolate, and are, in my opinion, the single most persuasive dog-training tool known to humankind.
Start in places where he won’t be distracted by other dogs, and teach him to sit using cut-up hot dogs as his reward for obeying. Like the fearfully aggressive dog, you are not really teaching him to sit, but to defer to you and then to relax. Repeat the exercise again and again until he automatically associates the word “sit” with hot dogs and happiness, and only then begin practicing in public.
Always keep him on a halter-type leash when you start the counterconditioning, because you must have physical control at all times. A regular collar—even a choke chain with prongs—won’t do the trick. Take him to the periphery of a park where there are other dogs, and every time he spies one and assumes his I’m-gonna-kick-some-ass posture, tell him to sit. He’ll probably ignore you at first, but wave a hot dog around in the air a few times above his head, and watch the offal-stuffed casing do its magic. Once he sits, wait for him to relax. Don’t reward him if he sits and jitters, or sits and keeps looking back at the other dogs. Wait for him to sit, look up at you, and
relax
. Once he does, give him his reward, and walk on. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.
As with the fearfully aggressive dog, the time for his social debut is determined by how well he learns to relax on command. If every single time you ask him to “sit,” he obeys and looks up at you with the gooey expression of a stuffed panda, then you’re ready for Grim’s Guide to Proper Fork Use, below. If, however, there is any hesitancy on his part—if he whines, or fidgets, or averts his eyes toward the other dogs, for instance—then he’s not ready and must continue his lessons. Desensitizing is the magic key here.
At this point, your question to me is probably, “Won’t my dog get fat with all these hot dogs?” and my response is, “Yeah. So?” Would you rather have a fat, happy dog or a lean, mean killing machine? And besides, once you get through this chapter, you’ll be able to take him jogging through the park to lose the weight without getting the usual dirty looks from parents of “normal” dogs.
This coincidentally leads me into the next section ...