cynological:

doberbutts:

vanishedshadow:

doberbutts:

Man IDK like

I don’t judge people for how they deal with aggressive dogs anymore.

Until you have lived in a house with an aggressive dog that you love and adore and you understand the feeling of never knowing when that button’s gunna be pressed and when your beloved dog is going to go after someone or something again, until you have to worry about your dog grabbing someone’s dog or grabbing a kid on a driveby even with a muzzle on, until you have to hard choice of give up or keep trying because you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t either way… you can say all the nice words you want about only accepting this or that method for your dog, but you’ll never ever know what it’s like to be constantly second-guessing your failsafes and your management.

While many of my followers know the story of my first doberman already, there are various ones of you who don’t and that’s because I was judged VERY harshly for the choice I made with him and didn’t feel like dealing with that again on a blog dedicated to Creed.

For those who do not know, December 15 2012 I met the best dog ever and his name was Skoll. He had been born Salem, then Simba, then Caesar, and finally Skoll when he came to me. He was 2.5 years old and I was his 4th home if we don’t count the near half-year he spent in boarding in foster care.

Skoll’s first owner was a dude who wanted him as a guard for the trailer of his truck. His second owner was a dude who thought he wanted an undersocialized undertrained mess in a 1br apartment. His third owner was a horse farm that kept him as an outdoor dog and was using the help of his breeder and the IPO club she attended to “manage his issues”.

I put that in quotes because both home and breeder were kicked out of the IPO club for overly harsh treatment of their dogs. You know it’s bad when a sport that almost requires (in many clubs, including this one) aversive trainings says you’re being too aversive and you can’t come anymore.

On paper I have confessions to:

  • putting a prong around his muzzle and yanking upwards when he barked at dogs or people
  • cranking a professional-grade e-collar all the way up, chasing him down with continuous high stim until he was cornered, continuing to stim through this until he “voluntarily surrendered” and rolled over. for countersurfing.
  • hanging him with a prong
  • beating him with various objects
  • hanging him with a choke- specifically a leerburg style “dominant dog collar”
  • stomping on his feet for correct heeling position
  • stomping on his feet for barking at dogs/people

And various other petty things that I am frankly too upset to go dig up his papers and read off right now.

I also have words from the IPO club they trained at, and the reasons they were kicked out, and how it was a majority vote by most members and the person who contacted me after Skoll’s death had been watching his journey with me because she knew him and was of the opinion that he should have been euthanized as he was unsaveable at point of surrender due to their harsh treatment making his dog/human reactivity much, much worse than it needed to be. She, and other club members, declined giving me names of either breeder or home, however. I suppose they wanted to stay out of it and not take sides.

From the story the 3rd home wrote, it sounds like he had some minor reactivity as a young, intact, 1.5 year old male doberman. That’s a punk stage for the breed and one I’m expecting Creed to hit when he’s that old too. Either due to his bad breeding (which both foster mom and IPO club were not impressed by his pedigree), crappy start on life, that third home, or a combination of all three, he crashed within 6 months to be much much MUCH worse than when he’d started.

And they gave him a behavior which he practiced many times. If I bite the human, the stim turns off. If I get hit with a prong, just bite the human and they will not hit me again. If the e-collar shocks me, bite the human and they’ll release the button. After several attacks during “training” onto his owners, they tossed him at a vet clinic to do whatever they wanted with him… which is when he entered foster care.

pawsitivelypowerful, who was my friend at the time (and still is!), knew I was looking for a doberman that I could work and have some fun in obedience maybe with. She also knew that I’m not a stranger to aggressive dog cases, though neither of us realized just how bad Skoll was at that point. Due to the incomplete story told by the third home (as I got the rest of the story from the IPO club much later), his foster mom also was not aware of how ongoing of an issue this was with him. I contacted her, wrote a literal 10 page essay on my previous dog experience and why I thought I was a good home, sat through an hour-long phone interview with her, sat through an hour-long phone interview with the trainer she had assess him, got a home check, sat through another hour-long phone interview…

And FINALLY on December 15th 2012, I made the 14hr drive up to Buffalo, NY to pick up my dog.

And all of us quickly discovered that Skoll’s issues were deeper than “just don’t use positive punishment, that’s the trigger”. A lot deeper.

Skoll was fear aggressive, dog aggressive, human aggressive, completely unsafe around small animals (despite testing well onleash with cats), with high levels of anxiety and a whole ton of drive that he had absolutely no idea what to do with. He was OCD and had pica. He was a resource guarder. He was vWD affected and became enraged whenever a small cut or scratch- a non-bleeding superficial wound on a regular dog- would suddenly start gushing blood. He redirected his frustration and aggression onto every- and anyone. For whatever reason he was terrified of urine and feces and would cower as soon as he saw them but god forbid I go to pick them up because then he would guard them. If someone yelled, if someone raised their hand, if someone seemed angry, he would cower… but if they came toward him he would launch.

Once, he saw a leaf fall out of a tree and became obsessed with the absolute NEED to inspect and when he hit the end of the leash lunging at it he turned around and came right back up the leash at my face. His triggers changed often and usually without rhyme or reason. Our trainer could be working with him and he would greet her like she was his best friend, she would leave and come back and he would launch himself towards her face with full intention to bite, then turn around and launch at me with full intention to bite me once he hit the end of the leash. Leave and come back and OH HEY FRIEND FANCY SEEING YOU HERE I LOVE YOU. She is experienced with doberman and specifically aggressive doberman and told me in private that she had never seen a case as bad as him in the 40 years she’s been in the breed. He could see a squirrel on a mailbox and whine and chatter because I wasn’t going to let him chase the squirrel, go by that same mailbox on a walk later that day and THE MAILBOX MUST DIE JUST IN CASE THE SQUIRREL IS STILL THERE. And the next walk, oh? there was a mailbox there? I didn’t notice.

This dog had problems.

I worked him every single day. Skoll was a dog that loved to work for the simple sake of working. “YES!” was the only thing he needed to hear to get excited about training. I swear, if Creed has half the work ethic of Skoll, then he indeed will go far. If Skoll was not so out of control, he would have made one HELL of an obedience dog. He was flashy, he was controlled, he was fast… until you pressed that button, and then good luck getting him to stop trying to seek and destroy whatever it was that turned him on in the first place.

In the short time I had him, his obedience and manners improved immensely. His health improved immensely. His focus improved immensely. The triggers that were visible, the ones that stayed still and didn’t jump all over the place, those we could work with and he was making SO many strides. But then something would change, and suddenly something that had been okay 100 times before HAD TO DIE and I was stuck figuring out what the hell it even could have been in the first place.

A lot of behaviorists like to describe dogs like Skoll as having demons. After having Skoll, I can see why. This was a lot more than I had ever dealt with. The dog aggressive BBM, the human aggressive chow, the dog-and-human aggressive GSD, those were nothing compared to the unholy force that drove Skoll forward when he zeroed in on something to murder even if there was nothing there anymore. There was no squirrel on that mailbox anymore, but because it was there 3 hours ago, he has to kill the mailbox and the air around it just in case.

Skoll attacked me 4 times. The first 3 was with clear trigger and I chalked them up to a learning experience. In my defense, the first 3 happened within a week of him coming home and were the basis of everyone’s realization that he was waaaaaaaay worse than what all of us had thought. The last time was the second-to-last day I had him.

He was laying down and I wanted to see something in my closet. I was an art student and my closet in that apartment had my drawing papers in it, and he was in the way. I patted him on the bottom, called his name to let him know I was behind him. He sort of glanced back but didn’t move. Normal. He did that all the time. I went to pet his head, something he had sought from me in the past and something that had NEVER been a trigger for him. He had a momentary stiffen and as I pulled my hand back I knew. I was going to get nailed.

And he did bite me. He roared, he came at me, he grabbed my hand with his whole mouth… and then he stood there looking at me. He didn’t shake. He didn’t let go either. I’d yelped and my roommates had come running, I told them to stay out of my room for fear that he would go after them once he released me.

Slowly but surely something clicked behind his eyes and he let go. Dropped to a grovel and crawled slowly to his crate where he huddled against the back of it shaking.

I conferred with his trainer, his foster mom, her trainer, my friends, my vet… and we all came to the same conclusion.

February 15th 2013, I said goodbye to the best dog ever. I had him exactly two months but it felt so, so much longer.

And I was SO ANGRY. I was SO ANGRY for SO LONG. Skoll was an AWESOME dog and now he is gone. Who the hell would breed a dog this screwed up and sell it to someone to fall in love with and have to say goodbye like this? Who the hell would screw a dog up so bad using shitty training and then toss him aside like he’s a worthless broken toy? Who the hell would be so callous to continue breeding knowing this dog came from them and not care where he ended up?

I felt so guilty. Could I have done something else? Was I wrong to euthanize him? Maybe he was just having a bad day? Am I making a big deal of this and shouldn’t be? Would he be happier in another home? Could I accept the liability of him biting yet another person, here there or anywhere?

I searched his microchip- Skoll was born in Canada and sold as a purebred, so he was required to be chipped and registered with the CKC. His chip led in a big circle back to nothing. I contacted his foster mom but though she knows the pedigree she does not know the exact name of who produced him. I put a plea out on my doberman forum for anyone who might have information, and that is when the people from the IPO club he had attended contacted me.

A few months after I read @prairiegsds’ story on Bosco. I realized that there are some dogs that are helped by aversive training, provided it’s… sensible… and not the torture that Skoll experienced.

I don’t judge anyone for how they deal with their aggressive dog. Whether they stay in +R or if they use +P. Whether they euthanize or not. Whether they keep their dog at home or take their dog in public. I can’t. Not after feeling the helplessness that I felt when I knew I would have to euthanize Skoll. If +P had been an option for us, I would have done it. I would have done anything to keep Skoll alive.

Because I did not wait the 10 day quarantine I was supposed to, and euthanized him before that time was up, my state requires a mandatory autopsy and rabies check even if your dog is UTD on shots. Skoll had absolutely nothing detectable wrong with him. No thyroid issues. No visible heart problems. No tumors in his brain. Nothing besides vWD. I’ve had a couple people suggest rage syndrome but it doesn’t matter anymore. He is dead and has been dead for nearly two years. And it doesn’t ever stop hurting. Even after the death threats and suicide wishes stopped, it doesn’t stop hurting.

Until you have lived with a dog like that, until you have weighed your options with a dog like that, I really don’t think it’s your place to say yes or no on the subject of how to rehabilitate them. Not all dogs train the same… and I won’t knowingly judge someone stuck between a rock and a hard place with a dog they are desparate to save.

This is so important. Read it. All of it. Don’t be a slacker.

Wow, this got dug up from the abyss. Very early into my having Creed, long before Creed hit that aforementioned punk stage and my mentor and I used a prong collar and behavioral modification to teach him not to perform the dangerous behaviors he was performing. I was so afraid I’d fuck Creed up like Skoll had been.

Creed is now older than Skoll ever got. It was a sobering birthday for me, the day Creed turned 3, because Skoll was just shy of his 3rd birthday. Sometimes it shocks me that I was able to start again with a dog that wasn’t fucked up from birth- that I’m allowed to be happy with the dog I have now, that I don’t need to worry that my dog is going to bite someone- or me- just for walking by or touching him. Creed does not obsess like that. Creed does not zero in on something with a vengeance. Creed is controllable, tamable, manageable in his drive.

Creed is STABLE. And Skoll wasn’t. And that’s the difference.

The more I see and experience the less I am convinced that there is one right answer for everything. I have seen some aggressive dogs for whom using aversives in their training and behaviour modification was incredibly helpful. I have seen others that would not be appropriate for.

Cookie cutter dog training does not exist. 

1 year ago / 1497 
#animal abuse 
via: guzz-lords
src: doberbutts
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