Yeah, dogs with this kind of trouble just don't seem to grow out of it naturally...it takes a lot of human effort. The vet really thinks we have a chance because Ruby is very smart and a fast learner. But she is so intense. I'm teaching her to touch her nose to a small green ball at the end of a stick (the idea is that later I'll introduce her to a stranger who is holding this, and she'll have a sense that she knows what to do because that stick = a task she can easily do + delicious treats). But she's so enthusiastic about this that she is practically poking her eyes out as she jams her face at this thing... Such a bizarre dog.
The real challenge, and the one I'm frankly just not sure she is capable of overcoming, is that no matter how many people she meets and makes friends with, she does not generalize that experience. The next person she meets is just as scary. This is what I'm really counting on the medication to help with. She's been exposed to enough people by now, and no person has ever harmed her, and the vast majority have provided great things for her; she's just not going to make that leap without help. Something's got to alleviate her general sense that the world is a threatening, dangerous place. That's her default setting, and that's what has to be changed.
It's interesting to compare her case to that of our first dog Rusty. I remember that he really was hurt by people (someone had cut off part of his tail if I remember correctly). Yet he was pretty normal with people. I don't really understand what the problem was that made him so aggressive with those little dogs... I guess his predatory instinct was triggered? We'll never know.
Or maybe you're referring to Buttercup, who really was destructive, territorial, and protective at this age, to a degree that scared other people and infuriated us. Remember when she chased that guy on his bike and bit his dog? It is something I must remind myself of: all dogs I've ever known struggle in one way or another until they are about Caper's age! Ruby's the only one who I've just felt on a gut level just ain't normal in the head. But adolescence (technically up to 4 years) is not easy for even those dogs who turn out to be the greatest of companions. What's astounding to me, and most frustrating, is that with the exception of this single problem, Ruby is the most well-behaved adolescent dog I've ever known. She's never really been destructive, potty training was a breeze, she is almost flawlessly obedient in terms of commands in a wide variety of contexts, and she's downright polite (e.g. sits and makes eye-contact and waits for an OK before getting anything, even before going out the door). It's just this one thing...and it happens to be the worst hangup possible. I think this is part of why my love for Ruby is so intensely desperate. I know her potential! I saw it when she was a puppy! How can you give up on that?
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Lemon head.
You know how some cars are just "lemons"? And there are guides, laws even, about what to do if your new car turns out to be a lemon. I'm not sure when it fully sank in, but the truth is...Ruby is a lemon. If your car is a lemon, I suppose there's no question--you take it back or something. But what do you do if your dog is a lemon? A dog you've been intensely in love with since the moment you first made eye contact with her.
What do you do when your dog is crazy?
Millie was a freak. Her eyes pointed in different directions, so she mistook a lot of inanimate objects for space aliens. She had serious separation anxiety. She could not handle being confined. You might be thinking "Oh, so she was one of those dogs who cries a lot when left alone." You're mistaken. She would cry a lot, for hours, but she would also scratch at the door or kennel wall until her feet bled. She went berzerk when people left the house. Even when strangers, like the cable guy, left the house. (Although, fortunately, this frenzy would end as swiftly as it began after a few minutes.) Probably most exhausting was her food obsession, and, for her, the distinction between edible and non-edible was a blur. Combine that with her food allergies and other digestive sensitivities, and you had a medical emergency waiting to happen. Despite all this, Millie was not crazy, in any medical sense. A freak of nature, yes, but crazy, no.
I was excited when I got Ruby because I thought, "Ahh, here is a fresh start." I had learned so much as Millie's momma over the years. I am an expert when it comes to dog nutrition, allergies, and eye-care. I know exactly where we went wrong in Millie's training and socialization, so I thought with Ruby I could apply all that I had learned to turn this blank slate into a well-adjusted, non-neurotic friend, healthy inside and out. She'd be on the best food starting the day I got her, a food unlikely to cause allergies. She would get tons of exercise and socialization at the dog beach, and I'd do basic obedience with clicker-training from day one, followed by puppy and adult obedience classes for the additional socialization. She'd be crate trained to prevent separation anxiety and to ease potty-training. She'd ride in the car without going into a rage at every stoplight, and she'd be so calm and used to being around people that I'd sit outside with her at Good Cup while I worked. Well, I was wrong. Turns out a four month old puppy is anything but a blank slate.
Potty training was so easy. And she was delightful at the dog beach, running and playing easily with dogs of all kinds but always coming to check in with me every few minutes. Our first summer together was amazing, going to the dog beach almost every day. Ruby was great with other dogs and seemed indifferent to strangers. She was a very quick learner and therefore had a great recall, making her absolutely perfect for the dog beach.
Then The Stranger Issue started. Even though she had, for months, spent an hour or more a day running around off leash at a fairly crowded beach, Ruby became increasingly afraid of and reactive toward strangers. She was fine with almost everyone, but maybe 1 out of every 100 people she saw seemed to her to be a serious threat that needed to be scared off immediately. She would run up to these poor souls, barking loudly, with a very intense look in her eyes. She never showed signs that she was about to bite anyone, but she was also clearly not just playing or excited. She seemed to be trying to tell these people that she would fight them if she had to.
Fast forward one year. Ruby is now approaching her second birthday. She's been on Prozac for six months because, without it, she looks and acts like she's about to jump out of her skin, even when we're "relaxing" at home. Her pupils are no longer fully dilated at all times, and she can often handle direct attention from me. After about nine months of working with trainers and our regular vet, doing hard, slow desensitization/counter-conditioning work, she is able to ignore strangers (if they ignore her) about 90% of the time. But about 5% of the time, mostly unpredictably, she looks at a stranger as if they are a five-headed monster. And another 5% of the time, also unpredictably, she will lunge at a stranger in an inevitably successful attempt to scare them away. For all the work we've done, her aggressive episodes have become a bit less frequent than they were at her worst, but they are at least as explosive, if not more so. The majority of the time she is terribly sweet, if a little nervous, but her occasional explosions of fear-aggression have made it necessary to restrict her life to what can hardly be called a happy existence. She is still hyper-vigilant, even at home, and there are times when she is too nervous to spend much time outside of her crate.
What hell happened? Why is she like this? As best we can tell, she's actually followed a fairly typical developmental path for a dog with her background, or what we know of it. And this is what I think everyone who has anything to do with dogs and their reproduction should know. Ruby's mom was abandoned. Obviously she was either already pregnant or unspayed. She had the puppies in an abandoned house, and she somehow kept herself and four of them alive, and alone, for about three months. When Ruby's brain was developing, when puppies must be exposed to lots of different stimuli, and when puppies absolutely must be socialized with humans, she was malnourished and likely had no exposure to humans at all. Momma and the puppies were found when the puppies were about three months, and they were fostered until they were put up for adoption, and I adopted Ruby when she was about fourth months. For dogs with this kind of history, who spent their most formative weeks in such an impoverished environment, no matter how enriched their environment is after the early developmental window closes, it is not uncommon for psychological problems to develop much later, as they reach adulthood around one year. What this has made painfully clear to me is this: if you breed dogs without understanding their brain development and socialization needs, or if you leave it open as a possibility that your dog may have puppies whose development and socialization you cannot or will not take responsibility for, you are ruining lives. You might fool yourself by thinking that those puppies will find loving, responsible people to take care of them. But you probably have not even considered the possibility that, because of your shitty choices, loving dog owners will have to face the possibility that euthanasia of an otherwise healthy, smart, sweet, and well-behaved animal is the most responsible thing to do.
So what do you do with a lemon head of a dog? Aside from writing an angry blog about irresponsible dog owners. I suppose you just do whatever you can do. I am not ready to give up on Ruby, although this means I have to push through thick layers of hopelessness and exhaustion on a daily basis. We're now working with a veterinary behaviorist (who is optimistic), increasing the Prozac, and...well...continuing with the desensitizing/counter-conditioning only at an even slower pace. My desperate hope is that this training will become more effective with the increase in medication.
What do you do when your dog is crazy?
Millie was a freak. Her eyes pointed in different directions, so she mistook a lot of inanimate objects for space aliens. She had serious separation anxiety. She could not handle being confined. You might be thinking "Oh, so she was one of those dogs who cries a lot when left alone." You're mistaken. She would cry a lot, for hours, but she would also scratch at the door or kennel wall until her feet bled. She went berzerk when people left the house. Even when strangers, like the cable guy, left the house. (Although, fortunately, this frenzy would end as swiftly as it began after a few minutes.) Probably most exhausting was her food obsession, and, for her, the distinction between edible and non-edible was a blur. Combine that with her food allergies and other digestive sensitivities, and you had a medical emergency waiting to happen. Despite all this, Millie was not crazy, in any medical sense. A freak of nature, yes, but crazy, no.
I was excited when I got Ruby because I thought, "Ahh, here is a fresh start." I had learned so much as Millie's momma over the years. I am an expert when it comes to dog nutrition, allergies, and eye-care. I know exactly where we went wrong in Millie's training and socialization, so I thought with Ruby I could apply all that I had learned to turn this blank slate into a well-adjusted, non-neurotic friend, healthy inside and out. She'd be on the best food starting the day I got her, a food unlikely to cause allergies. She would get tons of exercise and socialization at the dog beach, and I'd do basic obedience with clicker-training from day one, followed by puppy and adult obedience classes for the additional socialization. She'd be crate trained to prevent separation anxiety and to ease potty-training. She'd ride in the car without going into a rage at every stoplight, and she'd be so calm and used to being around people that I'd sit outside with her at Good Cup while I worked. Well, I was wrong. Turns out a four month old puppy is anything but a blank slate.
Potty training was so easy. And she was delightful at the dog beach, running and playing easily with dogs of all kinds but always coming to check in with me every few minutes. Our first summer together was amazing, going to the dog beach almost every day. Ruby was great with other dogs and seemed indifferent to strangers. She was a very quick learner and therefore had a great recall, making her absolutely perfect for the dog beach.
Then The Stranger Issue started. Even though she had, for months, spent an hour or more a day running around off leash at a fairly crowded beach, Ruby became increasingly afraid of and reactive toward strangers. She was fine with almost everyone, but maybe 1 out of every 100 people she saw seemed to her to be a serious threat that needed to be scared off immediately. She would run up to these poor souls, barking loudly, with a very intense look in her eyes. She never showed signs that she was about to bite anyone, but she was also clearly not just playing or excited. She seemed to be trying to tell these people that she would fight them if she had to.
Fast forward one year. Ruby is now approaching her second birthday. She's been on Prozac for six months because, without it, she looks and acts like she's about to jump out of her skin, even when we're "relaxing" at home. Her pupils are no longer fully dilated at all times, and she can often handle direct attention from me. After about nine months of working with trainers and our regular vet, doing hard, slow desensitization/counter-conditioning work, she is able to ignore strangers (if they ignore her) about 90% of the time. But about 5% of the time, mostly unpredictably, she looks at a stranger as if they are a five-headed monster. And another 5% of the time, also unpredictably, she will lunge at a stranger in an inevitably successful attempt to scare them away. For all the work we've done, her aggressive episodes have become a bit less frequent than they were at her worst, but they are at least as explosive, if not more so. The majority of the time she is terribly sweet, if a little nervous, but her occasional explosions of fear-aggression have made it necessary to restrict her life to what can hardly be called a happy existence. She is still hyper-vigilant, even at home, and there are times when she is too nervous to spend much time outside of her crate.
What hell happened? Why is she like this? As best we can tell, she's actually followed a fairly typical developmental path for a dog with her background, or what we know of it. And this is what I think everyone who has anything to do with dogs and their reproduction should know. Ruby's mom was abandoned. Obviously she was either already pregnant or unspayed. She had the puppies in an abandoned house, and she somehow kept herself and four of them alive, and alone, for about three months. When Ruby's brain was developing, when puppies must be exposed to lots of different stimuli, and when puppies absolutely must be socialized with humans, she was malnourished and likely had no exposure to humans at all. Momma and the puppies were found when the puppies were about three months, and they were fostered until they were put up for adoption, and I adopted Ruby when she was about fourth months. For dogs with this kind of history, who spent their most formative weeks in such an impoverished environment, no matter how enriched their environment is after the early developmental window closes, it is not uncommon for psychological problems to develop much later, as they reach adulthood around one year. What this has made painfully clear to me is this: if you breed dogs without understanding their brain development and socialization needs, or if you leave it open as a possibility that your dog may have puppies whose development and socialization you cannot or will not take responsibility for, you are ruining lives. You might fool yourself by thinking that those puppies will find loving, responsible people to take care of them. But you probably have not even considered the possibility that, because of your shitty choices, loving dog owners will have to face the possibility that euthanasia of an otherwise healthy, smart, sweet, and well-behaved animal is the most responsible thing to do.
So what do you do with a lemon head of a dog? Aside from writing an angry blog about irresponsible dog owners. I suppose you just do whatever you can do. I am not ready to give up on Ruby, although this means I have to push through thick layers of hopelessness and exhaustion on a daily basis. We're now working with a veterinary behaviorist (who is optimistic), increasing the Prozac, and...well...continuing with the desensitizing/counter-conditioning only at an even slower pace. My desperate hope is that this training will become more effective with the increase in medication.
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