Help, We’ve Created a Monster!
“We need to you come over right away! Missy is trying to bite us!” The elderly woman’s voice was tight with distress on the other end of the telephone line. This was a totally unexpected call, because Missy was the friendliest, most submissive Golden Retriever you could ever meet; the type who came up to greet you with her rear end wiggling and tucked in, head sideways and licking the air, all aglow at the prospect of getting some attention and petting from everyone around her.
Missy belonged to John and Cynthia Freeman, an elderly retired couple who had acquired Missy for companionship and to be part of their family. I first met them when they brought her as a puppy to one of my group classes.
Missy was easy to train, but the Freemans just didn’t take the training too seriously – they would laugh and pet her if she broke a Stay exercise; they would end up hugging and kissing her when she jumped on them. “We just can’t bear to be strict with her, we love her so much,” they would giggle as she dragged them over to sniff a bush while walking on- leash. And yet they would return to class week after week just to spend fun time with their puppy, and with new resolve. They realized that even though she was so adorable, it would be nice if Missy could have good manners and obey some commands. But week after week their good intentions would dissolve when it came time to be consistent with Missy. I had many conversations with John and Cynthia about trying just a little bit harder to put some good training time in with their dog. They would laugh and say, “Oh, we know, we know….”
Eventually they drifted away from the classes, leaving occasional phone messages that they intended on returning, but something would always come up. They would always end their messages with how much they loved Missy and what a great dog she was.
I hadn’t seen or spoken with the Freemans for about two years when I got this distressed phone call from Cynthia. It was surprising to imagine sweet little Missy threatening them with a growl for any reason! What on earth could have happened since I had seen them last?
Mrs. Freeman explained that they have always put Missy in their service porch area to sleep each night. At first she would easily go in the room, but as time went on she began to play a little bit of “keep away”, as she would rather stay out with the family than be put away by herself. When that didn’t work, she began to lie passively on the floor and refuse to get up when the Freemans called her to go to bed. So, they would give her a little pull on her collar - and this worked okay for a while. Then Missy decided she *really* didn’t want to go in the service porch to bed, so she started refusing to get up at all when they pulled on her collar, so the elderly couple would drag her across the tiled floor into the service porch area. Missy would lie flat on the floor like a huge lump and allow herself to be pulled across the room. This went on for several weeks, and Missy must have been thinking to herself, “this is not working either, and they are really beginning to annoy me!” So one evening, as John began to once again drag her into the service porch, she growled at him. A low warning: “Don’t bother me, I don’t want to go!” The couple was astonished and horrified! Their baby girl was threatening them, her erstwhile parents! Why was she “turning on them” like this! Cynthia reported that, in all other respects, Missy was still her same old loving self. This was definitely an emergency for the Freeman family, so we set up an appointment for the following day.
Cynthia opened the door when I arrived, and Missy burst onto the scene and began jumping on me with crazy delight. The Freemans watched her with the same loving grins that I remembered; Missy could do no wrong in their eyes. I managed to move forward with the ecstatic Golden Retriever leaping all over me and we all sat down on the couch, including Missy. I began to ask some basic questions about what was going on, but what I was really doing was watching the interaction between Missy and her owners. And this was quite a spectacle to see. Missy never stopped moving. She crawled along the top of the couch until she reached John, and then flung herself into his lap where she squirmed and pushed her muzzle against his hands for petting. Then she jumped on the floor and jumped immediately back up straight onto Cynthia’s lap and then up onto the back of the couch again where she began to scrape her paws against Cynthia’s head, nuzzling and licking her face at the same time. Obviously, it was difficult for the Freemans to concentrate with all of this going on, and their solution was for Cynthia to get a rawhide bone and hold it so that Missy could lay on her lap and chew it while we talked. Missy chewed the bone, but paused intermittently to lick Cynthia’s face over, and over, and over again.
I carefully asked the Freemans if they actually enjoyed the way that Missy was acting. They admitted that, no, they wished she would sit or lie on the floor “like a good girl” but that she just wouldn’t listen to them. They also explained that they didn’t want to “hurt her feelings”. I then asked them to show me how she was doing on her basic obedience commands. Mr. Freeman got up and showed me what they could do: unfortunately Missy didn’t listen to a word he said. Only when he got a food treat did she even look at him, and then it was as if she was doing a trick; she would quickly give a Sit, take the treat, and then immediately ignore John.
Everything was crystal clear to me at that point. It was a good example of how a sweet dog in a loving family could reach the point of growling to “get her way”. Let me explain:
a) Missy is a sweet dog, very playful and energetic. From early puppyhood she learned that she could demand play from her owners, by pawing at them; barking at them; pushing at their hands with her nose; and staring at them. The Freemans always were quick to give her what she wanted, because they loved her.
b) The owners in this case were inconsistent following up on their requests – never requiring Missy to focus or respond to anything that they requested her to do. She learned instead to ignore their commands and to do what she wanted, and it always worked for her. Missy therefore had a very short attention span and no understanding of self-control, or the concept of “working” for her owners.
c) Due to this inconsistency, and never requiring Missy to follow through on responding to them, the Freemans failed to establish themselves as “leaders” in any sense of the word. Because they were so enamored of her cuteness, they effectively taught her that any commands they called out meant nothing. They also failed to create any boundaries for her: if she wanted to jump all over the furniture and all over them, that was fine. If she wanted to jump all over their guests, that was fine too.
d) Now that Missy was an adult, the natural progression of her upbringing mandated that when she came head to head with her owners over going into the service porch at night, she saw no reason to calmly obey them. She had never actually obeyed any direction they had given; she had occasionally performed a quick behavior in order to get a treat. Missy did *not* want to go in there! First she tried all of her cute evasive techniques, such as running away. Then she tried passive resistance: lying there and hoping they would give up. When the owners insisted by eventually dragging her in there, it wasn’t too much of a leap for her to begin to actively resist by growling. In her opinion, her “fun” owners were just going a step too far by thinking they could make her do something that she *really* did not want to do. Hence this new and very inappropriate change in her behavior.
To make a long story short, Missy recovered her sweet personality after the Freemans were finally motivated to take their training seriously. We worked on: (gasp) requiring Missy to hold a Stay in Place when guests came over; requiring Missy to sit quietly for petting; teaching her to Heel and focus on her owners even around distractions; teaching her to hold long Down-Stays around distractions. Missy was a model student and actually eager to learn. As is often the case, she seemed to blossom now that her life was more predictable: now she clearly understood how to earn attention and rewards. She became calm and obedient, and happily assumed her place in the household. With this new and changed mindset it was easy for her to obey and go into the service porch when told, just as it was also easy for her to remain in her Place until released (even with all sorts of guests and excitement!) and to Come when called.
Often I will ask a client to imagine that they are waiting in line at the grocery store, and see a young child whining and demanding a candy bar from its mother. The mother calmly tells the child, no, they can not have the candy. What would they think if the child then swore at the mother and hit her in the face with the nearest heavy object?! Would they think that the child had suddenly “turned on” its mother? Or would it seem clear that things haven’t been right in that relationship for a long time, and this was just an escalation in an already unhealthy relationship? Similarly, dogs do not spontaneously “turn on” their owners. If you ask questions you will find that things have not been right for a long time, and that there have been warning signs that the owners would have noticed if they had only known what to look for.
It’s important to set clear boundaries and guidelines for your dog, and to teach a dog *how* to respond to you, and that you are their benevolent leader. Teaching the basic obedience commands is an easy way to establish this type of relationship, as these commands require the dog to use self-control and teach them to focus on their owners. There are few “black and white” rules that must be followed in living with your dog – it’s a very personal thing. However, whatever your unique rules will be, having clear boundaries and a strong foundation will lead to a healthy relationship and a fuller life for the dog, since the dog with good manners is always welcome to be part of the family.
