May
20
2012
I was working on opening Archie’s mouth and noticed his two central top incisors didn’t look right. Getting him to let me hold his mouth open for longer than a couple seconds I discovered they are broken off, approximately half their length is gone. The left one is splintered into three sections lengthwise, two thin splinters that are loose and the main tooth. I was able to remove one of the loose splinters.
After letting him calm down (the handling of his mouth made him anxious), I was able to get another look and his right lower canine is also broken off, just the tip, from an impact to the front. You can’t really see it except from the side/rear view.
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May
19
2012
We were out in the side yard last night, me, Jim, and Archie. I was gardening and Jim had been changing the battery in the Jeep then came over to help me finish weeding a small spot. I had Archie on a 15′ training lead as I do not trust him off leash yet in the unfenced part of the yard except when playing ball. He’d been doing wonderfully however, and hadn’t given me any problems since he arrived here, even when people walked dogs past the house.
The night we picked him up, his previous owners opened the garage door with him loose and said, “He won’t go anywhere except if he sees a dog.”
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May
14
2012
Archie just mauled my right hand.
Any hope of him becoming my service dog just went out the window. The risk that a child could run up to him and find a trigger that makes him attack is too great.
I am now looking at having to buy expensive liability insurance I can’t really afford because he is now legally a dangerous dog in Ohio.
I think it is time for you to tell me the truth about this dog. What was the real reason you stuck him in your backyard when he was 5 months old and left him there? Lots of people have dogs and are pregnant. What happened scared you?
What do you know about these triggers that set him off snarling, growling, drawing his lips back, and biting people?
Pointing a finger at him when he has a toy in his mouth.
Touching the top of his muzzle.
Holding his mouth shut.
I did rescue for 12 years. Abused dogs aren’t the ones that cower from people and hide under things scared of everything. Dogs that have been hit have very specific things that scare them or cause aggression. Archie’s triggers are all very specific. He doesn’t give a hoot if I grab his testicles or any other vulnerable place a dog will protect naturally. He however put three large holes in my fingers because I touched the top of his muzzle while he was eating. He didn’t care that I messed with his ears, or under his chin. Just the top of his muzzle. Better I found out this way than him attacking a kid at a restaurant over some food on the floor. (And yes, he happily eats things dropped on the floor.)
What did he do and who tried to correct it? How did they try? What was done to this dog? Either he is unstable mentally or he has been handled inappropriately and roughly by a novice. Did someone try Cesar Millan crap on him or something for being a mouthy normal German Shepherd adolescent? What happened when he was 5 months old that caused you to put him out of the house? I noticed you completely stopped mentioning him on your facebook at that age. Something caused that. Something made you distance yourself from him physically and emotionally.
I keep running into these triggers. Every time I think I have them all found and counterconditioned I find another one. There’s a lot of booby traps on this dog and that makes him too dangerous to work with. I need to know what things were done to create these feelings in him. What makes him think he needs to defend himself and attack. If you won’t tell me or there isn’t something in his history to explain this, he will have to be euthanized to prevent someone getting seriously injured.
If you care at all about Archie, you will tell me the absolute God’s honest truth so I can help him.
Nikki
May
14
2012
Archie and I playing and working on desensitizing him to having a finger pointed at him. Two weeks ago I discovered quite by accident that Archie became defensive aggressive when a finger was pointed at him. He dropped the toy from his mouth, became tense, eyes wide and dilated, lips drawn back fully in a very big snarl and growled. I’ve since spent the time working on desensitizing him to this action. As you can see, he’s made tremendous progress.
Early in the video (12 second mark) he does become tense, nervous, stopped playing with his toy, and begin to pant from being stressed and afraid when I pointed at him. He even averts his gaze. He was scared, but he overcame it and actually moved his head to my hand and solicited play at the 30 second mark. Evidence that he is understanding that the pointed finger is not an indicator of anything bad about to happen to him now.
You can also see in the video I have counter conditioned him to accept touching all over his head. He is 95% rehabilitated on his head shyness. He almost never ducks his head away from me anymore, and rarely does with Jim. He does not aggress anymore over it, no mouthing, no growling. I have also overcome his issues with having his mouth opened.
The one issue still with his head is touching the top of his muzzle while he is eating from his bowl. He has shown 0 food aggression. He no longer has any issues with me touching the top of his muzzle at any other time, even while eating. However when he is eating from his bowl, he will bite if the top of his muzzle is touched. I am sporting several lacerations on my right hand from this issue last night. I can touch him on the sides of his jaws, top of his head, on his throat, no problem. That is why it took me so by surprise that he aggressed. I’ve touched him and his food without any issues several times. (This just illustrates how inadequate those tests they for “food aggression” in dogs like shelter dogs on those shows on Animal Planet are where they stick the fake hand in the bowl for a couple seconds to see if the dog will aggress. There can be incredibly specific triggers.)
I would not call Archie’s aggression food aggression though. He does not mind me taking his bowl from him. He will eat with my hand on top of the food without problems. He doesn’t mind us walking near his bowl, even standing directly over it. This is a very direct connection in his mind between eating food in a bowl and physical touch on that exact part of his body. It screams conditioned response to me.
What I found most interesting about it was when I went to finish feeding him after the bite, he avoided it. He laid down next to me on the opposite side of me from his bowl and buried his head between the stove and my leg. He did not want to eat if it meant we were going to have this happen. I had to hand feed him to get him to eat. Now that’s rather odd since I was the one bitten. Clearly he was very uncomfortable with it and wanted to avoid it.
Again this morning I sat down with his bowl of food and he tensed all over, eyes dilated, hair bristled slightly off his body, tail out stiff as a board and horizontal. After a couple minutes of me just sitting there and us looking at each other, he relaxed. We worked on desensitizing him to having the top of his muzzle touched while he was eating. He growled about three times and each time I sent him away from the food. He went willingly without any resistance or fight, another clue that he is not trying to guard the food nor drive me away from it which means it is not food aggression. He relinquishes it to me without problem. We got through this meal without bloodshed.
I don’t like where this leaves us. If there isn’t a root cause in his past for these weird aggression triggers, then he’s as unstable as a house of cards built standing on the tip of a toothpick and will have to be euthanized. And even if there is and I am told what led up to this nonsense but I can’t counter condition them all, he might have to be put down anyway. I hope I can help him. I can’t stand the thought of having to destroy him, I’ve become rather attached to him. I don’t know what I will do about a service dog now. While it is legal to use a dog that has a bite history, I am not sure I feel comfortable with it. While I am very confident in the rehabilitation work I have done with him, I am worried about what other triggers lie in wait for me to find like booby traps waiting to be set off. And I can’t afford another large dog. I do not like the idea of rehoming him. Finding an appropriate home would be difficult at best, and he has become so bonded to me. I also feel that it could set back his rehabilitation if he were rehomed too soon. When I was doing rescue I learned rather early on that the tough cases required a year or more before they were ready to transition to a new home. Being bounced through too many changes too fast set them back, but when they’d had sufficient time with us to become stable and forget the past, they transitioned very smoothly. But the longer he’s here, the more attached I will get and the longer I will be without independence if I wash him out. It’s all a very unpleasant situation.
UPDATE 4:45 PM 2012-05-14
I tried asking the prior owner to tell me what this dog went through that could have led to this behavior and my subsequent being bitten. I said clearly that I need to know because if there is no cause, he is unstable and will have to be euthanized. I told her if she ever cared about him she needed to tell me the absolute truth so I could help Archie.
Her response was to unfriended me and blocked me on facebook without even a peep about what caused this nightmare for Archie. Like every crappy owner that shoves their dog in the yard and forgets about it then dumps their problem on someone else, she shunned the chance to take personal responsibility and help the dog by owning up to what they did to him. Apparently she just doesn’t give a fuck if Archie dies or people get bitten. She got her money and somebody else got her problem!
Such behavior, blocking me and refusing to help save the dog she -claimed- she loved, that just -screams- that she has something to hide. I have had no doubt all along her husband tried rough manhandling with Archie. The man he cowered from at TSC looked eerily similar to her husband in features and build. And let’s all face it, a dog that drops to its belly and lays its head over on the side with teeth bared in a defensive posture any time you move your hands around its head has been hit. I’m not one that screams abuse over every shy dog that hides from people, but that is just a big fat neon sign of abuse. I had hoped it was just misguided or ignorant handling issues. But hiding it, running away when flat out asked? That says you know something wrong was done and very likely maliciously and you don’t want to face it. I hope their child fares better at their hands than poor Archie, but I won’t be holding my breath.
I hope she enjoys going to sleep every night with the knowledge she and her husband created a dangerous dog and then sold him under false pretenses to a physically handicapped person. I might have the knowledge to work with such a dangerous dog, but I am still physically handicapped now and not physically able to handle a dog that is biting and attacking me. May karma bring that joy back home to her family.
May
10
2012
Wow. I thought it was Wednesday all day.
Anyway tonight Archie alerted like an old pro when my alarm went off. You’d think he’d been doing it every day of his life. Then before I fed him his dinner we did training practice with some of his feed. We practiced sit, down, stand, wait, come and we started with two new things as well. Brace and place.
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May
7
2012
Had class tonight. Archie did very well. Rommy, not so much but not horrible. She’s just a young, unfocused, high energy dog. What some people would label as hyper. This was week six (fifth for the dogs) and just two weeks til graduation.
Archie has learned the following in the last six weeks.
Sit
Down
Stand
Wait
Come
Heel
Jump Up (get on something like the bed)
Off
Out (drop what is in his mouth)
Leave It
Paws Up (put his front paws up on something like a counter)
Attention (give eye contact on command)
Alert (paw me to draw my attention to my medication alarm going off, this is a service dog task)
Pull (pull me forward with his service dog vest to help me up stairs, this is a service dog task)
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May
7
2012
More and more each day this dog impresses me. He isn’t the dog genius that Rhade was. Rhade was some kind of savant in the dog world. But Archie has his own strengths that are well worth noting.
Just a few minutes ago he was attacked by Wonder. There was no transgression on Archie’s part. Wonder is just getting more senile and “childish” about things. He has his good days and his not so good days. As with human alzheimer’s the canine version has some periods of aggressive behavior. Archie was behind my chair and started to walk out the bedroom door into the kitchen and Wonder attacked, grabbing him by the side of the neck. Archie barked in angry protest at this unfair treatment. I got up calmly and stepped next to them and began weighing my odds on separating them without injury to myself. Before I could, Archie got the upper hand on Wonder.
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May
6
2012
Archie is just blossoming! He’s come so far in such a short time. He has become my shadow, very much like Wolfe was so many years ago. Unlike Rhade, he does not like to spend his time in another room away from me. He prefers to be right where I am, unless Jim is moving around somewhere in the house, then he likes to go see what’s happening and come back. He even prefers to spend his mornings inside with me instead of outside playing with the other two dogs.
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April
27
2012
Got this picture of Wonder catching some z’s while the other two were out playing the other day. He came and was standing there longingly with his head on the edge of the bed so I helped him up and he went right to sleep curled up in my spot.
April
26
2012
I’ve been sadly too quiet lately on here. My condition has been rather poor lately. Extreme fatigue doesn’t begin to describe it, and I’ve had a new level of widespread pain as well. I’ve taken some photos and a couple videos, but I haven’t had the strength to put them up. What little I’ve had has been used to work. I’ll try to catch up, but I can’t promise anything. lol So as they say, on with the show.
Today we encountered an extinction burst with Archie. His mouthing in protest has been on a steady decline since he got here because frankly, it just doesn’t work. If he mouths me in protest, I purposely continue whatever it is until he gives up and quits, and he’s figured this out. Better to just let me do it and get it over with I guess. But as with any behavior that is being extinguished, it reared its ugly head back up with an increased intensity.
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