venting about dog owners in my neighborhood

I’m constantly frustrated with the other dog owners in my neighborhood.  literally, almost constantly.

I found out from steve at my last training session that my block in gloucester city is notorious for bad, loose dogs.  steve suggested I either get a tread mill or a long walking stick for the summertime because he gets so many calls about stray or loose dogs that he’s down on my block at least once a week!

I came across a loose dog a few weeks ago.  he was huge… looked like a mastiff mix.  and he ran out into the middle of the sidewalk in front of wally and me one day when we were out on a walk.  thank god for my dog whisperer obsession, for many reasons, but this time because cesar taught me how to deal with an unfamiliar dog.  I immediately put wally behind me, and turned sideways from the dog.  I didn’t turn my back to him, but just turned sideways and didn’t make eye contact so that he knew I wasn’t trying to threaten him, but I also wasn’t going to back away.  after he barked at me a few times, he ran off into what I learned was his back yard.  wally and I finished our walk uneventfully.

a couple of weeks ago, joe told me he heard that dog got out again.  this time, though, he attacked a guy and his little chihuahua.  we found out last week that the chihuahua ended up dying from the attack.  since then, I haven’t walked down that way for fear of him getting out and decided that he gave us a free pass last time.  I haven’t gotten a walking stick yet, but I have invested in pepper spray just in case I do end up coming across a dog that doesn’t decide we’re too much trouble to take a piece out of.

this is just one isolated incident, though.  I have neighbors all along my street who have dogs and never put them on leashes.  most of the dogs are harmless, but with wally’s dog aggression it’s just not safe to have other dogs coming up to him without a leash to pull them away on.  nothing is more annoying than an owner shouting from 20 yards away, “oh, he won’t bite you!”  well, that’s good to know, but what if my dog decides to bite?!  jeez, it’s so frustrating!

I hardly ever see anyone out actually walking their dogs on leashes, most of the time I see dogs in their yards.  they bark incessantly and aggressively as we walk by and all I can think is how sorry I feel for those dogs.  they don’t get enough exercise or mental stimulation, which is why they go absolutely ape shit when they see people walk by.  it’s the only outlet they have!  so I try not to take it personally when dogs bark at us like that, but it still makes me sad.

it figures that I moved onto the most notorious bad dog block known to camden county animal control… that just seems to be the way my luck is sometimes.

wally’s dog aggression

I haven’t really had any other dogs around wally.  I noticed that he growled and snapped at my neighbor’s dogs, a pitbull and a Rhodesian ridgeback, who are never on leashes and never listen to their owner when he gives them commands.  they would swarm him and get in his face, and he would snap.  I thought this was relatively normal.  these dogs had no doggie manners!  they went straight for him, right in his face.  that’s pretty damn rude in the doggie world – it’s pretty much a sign that you’re looking for a fight.
then, I asked gina’s mom to come over and help me learn some techniques for training wally.  she brought her german shepherd, willow, over with her.  again, I thought he snapped at her because she did the same thing as the other dogs – she went right into his face. 

however.  I was out walking with mr. bear one afternoon and a guy was also out with his dog (I love how now that it’s nicer out I see all these people out, but when it was the dead of winter there was NO ONE out!).  they were walking on the sidewalk coming towards us.  we owners did the right thing, we moved to the middle of the sidewalk with the dogs on the outside.  well, even unprovoked wally went after this other dog.  that was when I realized I had a dog who had dog aggression.

I had one session with steve where the first thing we did was take a nice walk with another dog.  this makes the dogs feel as though they’re migrating in a pack, so it usually lessens any aggression.  sure enough, once we walked for about 15 minutes and THEN let the dogs smell each other, wally was fine.  he wasn’t “happy” with the other dog by any means, but he could at least sniff the other dog and be sniffed by the other dog without incident. 

the only problem I face with trying to rehabilitate wally with this particular problem is that I don’t know anyone with a really well-behaved dog who lives nearby that I can really practice with.  :(

spectacular, spectacular prom

 wally looking stellar in his tux

my best friend bear had a seizure last tuesday.

wally needed a haircut, so I decided to take him to a groomer that a neighbor recommended to me, a plus grooming in gloucester city.  I cannot say this enough… DO NOT GO HERE.  ever!  when I got him back, one of his nails was cut so short that it was bleeding, and they shaved him so short and carelessly on his belly that they nicked his little warts and his belly was covered in blood!  the entire ride home, he was licking, licking, licking himself all over.  I don't know if this was from stress, or from the shampoo they used drying his skin out since he kept licking for a few days.

as I had him lying on his back so I could try and clean the blood off his belly, all his legs started shaking.  then he started drooling a lot and was doing a little of the running in place thing, all the while still shaking.  joe and I were just holding him up so he wouldn’t fall or hurt himself, and when the shaking started getting less, joe called the vet while I stayed with wally.  the entire episode was probably about a minute, give or take a few seconds.

the vet said it was probably stress-induced, but I should still check with the groomer just in case he could have gotten into something while he was there.  the woman I talked to on the phone acted like I was the lawyer cross-examining her in a murder trial.  I explained to her what happened and asked a couple of questions, and she just kept saying, “that happens sometimes, it’s not our fault!”  god!  I kept saying that I just wanted to give the vet an accurate description of what happened when we took him in… the way she was acting completely made me disregard anything she may have told me.

once we got him to the blackwood animal hospital, his overall exam went very well.  the doctor said his heart sounded good, his reflexes were excellent, his pulse was steady… then explained that about 90% of the dogs he sees with epilepsy are little white dogs with curly hair.  three strikes on my buddy bear!  since he didn’t have a grand mal seizure (no loss of control of his bladder or bowels, no eye-rolling, no yelping, etc.), the doctor suggested we simply keep an eye on him for now.  if wally gets them more frequently or if they become more intense, we can think about putting him on phenobarbital, but the vet said that for now the side-effects of the medication would probably outweigh the benefit if he doesn’t have seizures often. he also assured me many times that wally is not in pain or scared when he's having the seizure, he just needs someone to help him not accidentally hurt himself since he won't be able to stand on his own during it.

so that’s what we’re doing – just keeping an eye on him and trying to keep him out of situations that are very stressful.  I will never, EVER go back to that horrible groomer.  yes, they were about $20 cheaper but I’d rather pay the extra $20 at petsmart and get a dog back that isn’t covered in blood and so shaken up that he has a seizure!

this past weekend

mr. bear's head shot

lazy saturday morning

freshly shorn!

he looks so skinny with his hair short!

training - go to bed

this command is really a mixed bag for me and wally.  he’s really, really good at going to bed when I give him the command… it probably helps that he loves his bed so much!  so he’s good at going to bed, and he’s good at staying there even when I try to distract him with food and toys.  however, getting him to stay in his bed when someone knocks on the door… whew!

he just gets so amped up whenever there’s a knock on the door!  and I can’t trick him with training by knocking on the door myself while he’s in the bed… he figured out pretty quickly that I was knocking.  so I’ve worked with him on it as much as I can, and he’s getting better… but of course, he is my little work in progress!

I can gladly report, though, that throughout the training I haven’t gotten any growls out of him, even when I have to push him into a down kinda hard.  I feel pretty confident that he’s starting to really trust joe and me, which is a great feeling!

training - sit-stay, down-stay

as I said before, wally was pretty solid with sit when we first brought him home.  he wasn’t so good at stay, though, and we certainly weren’t trying down very hard with him since he bit gina’s mom when she tried showing us.  I explained to steve that wally wasn’t very receptive to being pushed or pulled, but steve showed us a way to get wally to sit by applying pressure to pressure points right above his hips and how to get him to go down just by pushing him over from a sit.  

part of what steve taught is that whenever joe or I give the sit or down command, the “stay” command should just be expected.  so when wally goes into a sit or a down, he has to just stay there til we give him the break command.  so wally’s got sit-stay down pat.  now, the down-stay… that’s a slightly different story.

wally knows what the command means.  he’s demonstrated it time and again when steve is actually in the house with us.  however, when it’s just the two of us, he hardly ever goes down on the first command.  one of my big mistakes was repeating the command a couple of times before enforcing the command (giving him a push into the down).  if he knows you’re going to give him a couple of free passes before enforcing it, he’s going to take advantage of it.  it’s taking me some practice, but I’m getting better at simply saying the command once.  most of the time he doesn’t immediately go down, but I’ve gotten to the point where he just sees me start to bend down to him and he goes down on his own.  not perfection… but it’s a start!  once he’s in the down, though, he’s really great at staying there until we release him.  it’s that initial obedience that he has a little trouble with.  again, I’m sure that his home before us never enforced rules or obedience in any way, so in a way, it’s rehabilitation and not necessarily teaching him a new trick.  the act of going into his down is more of a psychological exercise than it is anything else.

more wally pics

action shot!

 

cooling off in front of the air conditioning vent on the one hot day we've had so far this year

lookin' grumpy in the morning

training - walking & boundaries

the first thing we learned is the proper way to walk on a leash, which has been so, so, so important!  part of that training was teaching wally that he’s not allowed to go into the street (or cross any boundaries that we set, actually) without my or joe’s command to do so.  steve wanted to make sure that we taught wally things that will keep him safe first and foremost.   

when we first got wally, he was pretty good on the leash.  he didn’t do that dragging, pulling thing that makes it sound like he’s choking himself to death, but he did definitely walk out ahead and pretty much lead the walk.  steve taught us how to make him walk either beside or behind us, that wally should stop and start when we stop or start, that he has to keep up with us if we’re walking slowly or running, and most importantly, to not ever cross the street until we tell him to do so. 

I think this command has been wally’s shining moment.  I very rarely have to correct him for going into the street without my command.  joe tests him sometimes with different words to make sure that he’s listening for the right word before crossing the street, and I’ve even started testing him by walking into the street myself and then tugging the leash a little bit.  you’re never ever supposed to say his name or the command “come” when you’re testing your dog with boundaries because you always want your dog to respond to “come” or his name, and testing him to go into the street like that is unfair.  but with the gentle tug, he’s been doing phenomenal.  every time we cross the street I tell wally what a smart boy he is.  :) 

teaching him not to cross the street, or the boundaries of the street, has been really helpful in training wally around the house, too.  he’s not allowed in the laundry room – originally because that’s where I kept the cats’ food and I didn’t want him getting in there.  now, though, in lieu of a shed, we’re using that back room to keep lawn and gardening stuff in… the weed whacker, plants, pots, tools, weed killer, etc.  so needless to say, it’s not a very safe place for any animals to hang out.  so we practiced with that boundary, and he’s got it down. 

next, we started removing the baby gate from the staircase so that wally could come with me if I go upstairs to get changed out of work clothes, go to the bathroom, whatever.  he’s got one boundary at the bottom of the stairs, and also one before entering the bedroom.  he’s got the stairs down with very few mistakes… but the bedroom is a whole different story! 

I thought that we had made enough progress with wally that we might be able to have him start sleeping upstairs in my room at night.  he’d still have to sleep in his bed, not mine, but just to have him in the room with me was nice.  you see, since we got him, I’ve been falling asleep on the couch every night until joe comes home from work because wally will whine at the gate if I go up to bed by myself.  so I fall asleep on the couch, joe comes home, then I shuffle upstairs to go to sleep again.  it’s a little annoying, but worth it to me to spend a little time, even sleeping time, with him. 

so he was sleeping in our room at night for a couple of nights in a row… and then we started to notice his behavior was becoming more and more beastly.  he was acting up on walks, ignoring our commands, and even growled at joe’s friend tom!  unfortunately, we had to admit that wally was clearly not ready to sleep upstairs with us.  steve said that if he sees the bedroom as the place to be, even if he has to sleep in his own bed, he’ll start thinking he’s the boss again.  funny how quickly wally fell back into his old ways!  but, I guess he was used to getting his way and being the boss in his last house, and old habits die hard.  it’s back to the couch for me, and the downstairs level of the house at night for mr. bear!

training

let me just say up front that the dog training sessions I bought were fairly expensive ($295), but it is WELL WORTH IT.  steve comes to my house about once a week and works with me and wally.  the commands that he guarantees when you’re through with the sessions are:  “sit”, “down”, and “go to bed”.  the way he teaches these commands are easily translatable into other commands like “go to kennel” or “roll over” or others like that.  I think that was pretty much the most important thing I learned – that there are specific ways to teach a dog that are much more effective than anything I was trying.  true, after working with wally for three weeks, joe and I were starting to get some results, but after I started learning from steve… well, the results were unbelievably faster.

just as a plug here, in case anyone reads this and wants to have steve spence train help them train their dog, here's some info: 

steve spence

ahassteve@yahoo.com

almost home animal shelter

a strong case for neutering your dog

after the initial night, I immediately noticed a difference in wally.  he was much more focused on me when I was talking to him, much more likely to obey when I gave him the sit command.  I didn’t really see the really stubborn dog who had lived with me for a couple of weeks.  every once in a while, he would dig his heels in, but if I challenged him he didn’t growl at me or look at me with that rage in his eyes.  I read so many mixed reviews about whether neutering an adult dog would help with aggression, but luckily in my case, it worked pretty well.

so, the only command that we could get wally to reliably obey was “sit”.  we were wary of trying to teach him any new tricks that involved touching or pushing him in any way because of his previous aggression towards that.  he even bit my friend gina’s mom when she came over to try and help us teach him “down” before he was neutered.  he just did not like being pushed or pulled.  I had this dilemma, because I knew that he was very smart – if you ever looked into his eyes, you could tell that there was lots of intelligence bouncing around in that little skull.  he was very smart, and I knew I wasn’t challenging him in a way that was stimulating that part of his brain.  after much hemming and hawing, I decided to hire a dog trainer.  the shelter where I got wally offered a dog-training seminar once a month, so I decided to go check it out.  I was reasonably impressed with what I saw from the speaker, who was an animal control officer and a long-time dog trainer.  he offered classes, so I decided to splurge for the classes.

this has probably been the most important investment that I have made in wally so far.

end of february

so, february was a rough month for me.  actually, this whole winter was really hard on me.  we had tons of snow this winter, and joe's schedule had changed for him to work nights.  i spent a lot of winter alone in my house.  when i went outside it was cold and bleak.  it was a hassle to go anywhere or do anything.  i was really depressed.  one of the big reasons that i wanted to get a dog was because i wasn't really comfortable being in my new house by myself.

february was particularly bad, though.  i had tons of stress going on at work on top of my seasonal depression.  adding to that the new knowledge that instead of adopting a dog who was my new best friend i adopted a dog who would kill me if he could... well, it was hard.

when we first brought him home, he was very shaggy and very dirty.  the friday after i brought him home, i had him at petsmart for a serious grooming sesh.  when i got him home, he looked like a whole new dog!  he was clean and shiny and soft...  and i discovered upon his "rub my belly" pose - an intact dog! 

nancy, the woman who runs the shelter where i got wally said she'd always be there if i had any questions.  i called her when he bit me and asked her if he had been aggressive with anyone else.  she told me that he wasn't crate trained and i shouldn't have tried to "force" him into a crate.  the next day he growled at me for pulling his face out of a cat food bowl at my father's house.  she told me that i shouldn't have brought him to my father's house since he still didn't know or trust me yet.  she basically told me that wally's aggression wasn't his problem, i just wasn't communicating effectively with my new dog. 

i called her the saturday after wally's grooming appointment and i told her i found two reasons why wally's aggression was his problem, and not that i wasn't communicating effectively with him.   since he was supposed to have been neutered when i brought him home, she asked me to drop him back off at the shelter so that she could take him to get neutered.  that night, my car died.  just to add to my stress.

i borrowed my sisters car to bring wally home from the shelter after his neutering appointment.  he was chilling on the rug in the kitchen while i was cooking.  i walked past him to get to the fridge, and he growled at me.  i totally lost it at that point.  all the stress came out in that one moment.  i called joe up and i told him that i wasn't going to be able to keep doing that with my life.  every waking moment i had was spent trying to train this dog, trying to make him trust me and respect me.  and it wasn't working.  i felt like a failure.  i couldn't handle his rejection anymore.  joe told me that we should wait a few days to see how he'd do after being neutered before we brought him back to the shelter.  i agreed with him.  i didn't want to give up on him, but it had been two and a half weeks straight of hard work, with almost no results.  taking him back to the shelter wasn't an ideal situation, but i really was at my wit's end.

thank god, and joe, i didn't just flip out and give up that night.

the first night

when i decided to adopt a dog, i had this image fixed in my mind.  i heard "so happy together" playing over a montage of me and my new dog running on the beach, playing frisbee, hanging out in dog parks... it was going to be perfect!  joe and i started looking online and putting in applications at different shelters on petfinder.  we didn't have much luck... many of the dogs were either already adopted, or we just didn't get responses back from the shelters, or, in one case, i got told that i'm a neglegent pet owner because i don't have my five cats vaccinated yearly.  they're inside cats!  why would i vaccinate them if they never leave the house?  anyway, we finally physically went to a shelter near our house that a friend of joe's recommended.

wally was the second dog we met at this shelter, and we absolutely fell in love with him.  a few days later, i was driving home from the shelter with my new shaggy, smelly dog!

looking back, i really should have waited until a weekend to pick him up from the shelter.  picking him up on a work night wasn't the best thing to do since we wouldn't be able to spend a lot of time together before going to bed.  i had him for a couple of hours before i was ready to go to bed.  i figured that he was crate trained since he came from a shelter... i was very wrong.

i started to put him into his crate.  i pulled him a little by his collar to guide him into his crate.  he did NOT like that.  the first night i had him home, my dog snapped and bit me.  it wasn't just a scared bite, either.  he bit me on my leg and on my arm when i tried to push him off my leg.  i was bleeding and bruised, and before me stood this tiny, shaggy, pissed off dog.  and the most confusing thing to me was that five seconds after it happened, he was back to sitting near me and wanting to be petted.

i was actually pretty traumatized by the whole thing.  i never owned an animal who wanted to hurt me before.  i washed my arm and put wally in the bathroom for the night, then tried to sleep in my room.  it was impossible.  every time i heard a noise, i woke with a start.  my arm and leg hurt every time i moved them.  and i was seriously doubting bringing an adult dog from a shelter into my home.  he hurt me, really hurt me... and i had five cats to worry about. 

the next day, i decided that i wasn't going to give up on wally.  i thought, what if everyone gave up on the abused and/or tempermental kids that happened?  the human race would just die out.  so i decided i was going to hunker down and work hard with him to make him more comfortable with me, to trust me, and most of all, recognize me as the pack leader.

meet wally!

wally the first day we met him at the shelter

sir shaggy himself, pre-grooming

smiling at joe in the car

after his very first grooming appointment... we could actually see his eyes!

i fell in love with those butt cheeks...

my all-time fave!

starting to get shaggy again...

why so sad, mr. bear?

shorn like a spring lamb!

wally bear taking a walk with papa bear

who you winkin' at?  ;)

i love his big nosey!