Michelle Douglas

Lessons to Learn from Tragedy

On Friday, September 30, 2011, my home-town of West Haven CT experienced a horrible tragedy. Erica Hobdy was babysitting her 20-month old niece Neveah Angel Bryant. "I gave her lunch, gave her a bath, I layed with her when she fell asleep," said Hobdy. "When I went to get my son something from the store I told him just to listen for her because the only thing I was worried about was her waking up and seeing no one upstairs with her and start crying.” While she was out, her three pit bulls mauled her niece to death.

Story: http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/new_haven_cty/no-arrests-made-after-toddle-mauled

“He’s Just scared, but he would never bite.”

As a behavior consultant, I am often asked to assess the behavior of a client’s dog based on their interpretation of what they think their dog is doing and what his motives are. For example, some recent comments include:
“She is very dominant of her toys and things she thinks are hers.”
“Even with someone holding her, she still wanted to continue attacking.”
“He really wants to be a part of his owner’s life. He really wants to please – you can just see it in his face...the way he turns his head up when he does something right with almost a smile of excitement.”
“After this incident...Buddy remained angry at our friends.”

I tried to express my thanks to everyone in my closing remarks, but was overcome by emotion.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, keep in mind that your stress and changes in routine can have an impact on your dog's behavior.  They may "act out" if they sense our frustrations and the typical attempts to get our attention fail. This can be avoided by maintaining some of your daily routines, like mealtime and a long walk.  In addition to keeping things “normal” for Fido, also try to make sure he has a quiet retreat, like a bedroom or his crate, just in case he wants to get away from your niece who wants to play dress up or Uncle Fred’s cigars.

I recently had a client contact me to ask for some “refresher-training” suggestions for her aging dog.  Initially, she stated that her 11 year old dog, “Jenna” was experiencing some vision and hearing loss, and had bitten the behind of a worker who had come to the home.  I offered several alternative behaviors to teach and reinforce.  If Jenna can go to her “place,” or “touch” a visitors hand, she isn’t likely to butt-bite.  I also suggested that she teach the dog to gravitate to “heel” position so the owner can always be managing the interactions.

The client thanked me and said she would work on the suggestions, and then proceeded to mention that the bite happened when she was not home.  She explained that her dogs have a dog door, which gives them access to the yard, where they have an Invisible Fence containment system.

I didn’t think it was possible to introduce Nemo to a new dog.  However, the opportunity arose this weekend to see how far our training had come.  You see, Nemo is my “problem dog.”  He has had a habit of barking and jumping around in a frenzied flurry of anxiety when he meets new people or sees other dogs.  I have been slowly making progress, and he had been doing very well with visitors to my home.  So when my veterinarian called to ask for my help in placing a dog who had been dropped of by animal control (her time was up), I decided to evaluate Nemo, while checking out this “too-sweet” 6-year-old shar pei girl, who we’ve decided to call Emma. 

Well, it finally happened to me!  My dogs got skunked! It was, of course about 9:30pm, and I had just put the baby to bed. My husband was reading the 4-year-old his story and I let the dogs out into my fenced-in backyard.

This is in response to a comment asking for suggestions on how to deal with food aggression. The original question was regarding a dog who would snarl over his food bowl and snap at his owners if they approached. He was not walked and had never had any formal training.

For food-guarders, I generally put them on some version of a ‘Nothing in Life is Free’ program, with hand-feeding as the major component. Simply teaching the owners how to teach some basic cues and adding an exercise routine may make a world of difference! While each case is different, some general recommendations for food guarding include:

1) The owners need to teach (at least): eye contact, come, sit and lie down. I would also suggest targeting (touch hand with nose OR ‘paw’) and go-to-your-place.

(photo is Bailey - Lure-walking)

Leash Frustration or ‘Leash Aggression’ is a very aggressive-looking reaction to other dogs (or people) when on-leash. This comes from the feeling of frustration at not being able to freely investigate the other dog (or person). It doesn't necessarily mean that he wants to fight, but he does associate the frustrated feeling with the presence of other dogs (or people), so the aggressive behavior is directed at them. With intense frustration, there can be a loss of self control which can increase the likelihood of a bite, even if your dog is not normally aggressive.