Bad dogs, bad behavior and three people I have on speed dial

by Joanne Brokaw

Bandit, Bailey and Scout

It’s been a wild week here at The Funny Farm. Lots of barking, a little biting and even some blood. That’s because yesterday morning, very early, two of our dogs got into a tussle and while trying to separate them, darling husband was bit.

A friend told me this week that I ought to write about what happened and how we’re dealing with the situation because there are probably other people out there dealing with the same problem.

And if we’re being honest here, other people might have given in a long time ago. I know, because I’ve volunteered at an animal shelter and seen dogs come in and never leave because they’re “bad” or “aggressive” or they’ve “bitten” someone and need to be put down.

So starting tonight, I’ll be blogging every week about our “bad dogs” - or rather, our dogs’ bad behavior – and how we’re dealing with the situation so that other dog owners will realize that they’re not alone, that there are resources available, and that really, they don’t have bad dogs. They just have dogs with normal (and OK, sometimes bad) behavior that needs some redirection.

Understand that I’m not a dog trainer or dog professional. I’m a writer with three dogs, an insatiable curiosity about dog behavior, genetics, and communication, and about 20+ years of experience as a dog owner at all ends of the spectrum – from totally clueless to mildly educated and still learning. I can’t give advice, but I can tell my own stories and track down answers to your questions.

We’ll start with what happened this week.

Darling husband and I had been out for a few hours, gone to pick my mom up at the airport in Buffalo for a flight that arrived at 11 PM. It’s rare that we leave the house together, especially at night, or for that long. In fact, it’s rare that the dogs are really even home alone, since I write from home.  When I’m out, it’s maybe an hour or two running errands.

When we left Sunday night at around 9:30 PM, there was no barking or excitement. We got the dogs settled like normal and then quietly snuck out, leaving the lights and TV on. This may have been our first mistake, and it’s something we’ll talk about in the weeks to come as I learn the proper way to deal with separation anxiety.

When we came home, the dogs were obviously overjoyed to see us. By then it was 2 AM, but they were barking and howling and jumping. We let them outside and I bent down to pet Bandit and Bailey. That was my second mistake; I don’t normally respond to their exuberant welcomes until they’ve calmed down. But it was late, I wanted to quiet them so they didn’t bother the neighbors, and darling husband was with me and he and they have a welcome home routine.

But very quickly – and I mean very, very quickly – I could see that we were about to have a dog fight on our hands.

When I use the phrase “dog fight”, I don’t mean two aggressive dogs fighting to the death. I mean two dogs who normally get along just fine, whose excitement levels have quickly risen into the red zone, who both are after the same thing (in this case, Mommy; one dog was jumping on me, another pulling at my sweater to get my attention) and who lose their minds for a minute amidst their very excited emotions.

In the blink of an eye, Bailey snapped at Bandit, Bandit snapped back, and they were on each other.

When the dogs are play fighting – or as we call it, playing Wrestlemania – we let it go. We’ve learned over the years that growling, wrestling, and even some biting aren’t necessarily fighting. It’s the way dogs play and interact with each other. And we’ll talk about that in the coming weeks, how to tell when it’s play and learn why interfering in play fighting can actually be harmful to the dogs’ relationships.

But this is beyond playing, and we’ve dealt with it before. We’re learning to recognize what triggers it and the best way to defuse the situation. In fact, I was able to see it coming, but I’ve yet to learn what to do in those few seconds before it erupts. So they got into it. I quickly grabbed Bailey’s back end and darling husband reached for the scruff of Bandit’s neck – just as Bailey was going in to grab Bandit.

The whole incident lasted about two seconds, but when it was over Bailey was limping from where I’d grabbed her leg; Bandit had a bare patch of skin on his chest where Bailey had grabbed his fur while we pulled them apart; and darling husband’s finger was bleeding profusely.

Long story short, darling husband required four stitches to close the wound on his finger, and we had to report the incident to our local village animal control officer. Bailey is quarantined in the house for 10 days, and we’ll have to appear in village court to explain what happened. She didn’t mean to bite darling husband or even Bandit; it was just a heat of the moment explosion between two dogs who were stressed and competing for the same thing, one of them a puppy who hasn’t learned impulse control, the other an adolescent who can control himself but had clearly reached his limits at that moment.

Any of this sound familiar to you? Separation anxiety? Dogs with super high energy and excitement? Maybe you’ve even got a biter on your hands? Dogs that wrestle and tussle and growl with each other? This is the stuff we’ll be talking about every week.

For now, I want you to know that what happened between our dogs is not unusual, and it doesn’t mean we have bad dogs. And neither do you.

But I also want you to understand that this is not a situation you handle alone, and that you need to make sure that you have resources in place before you need them so that you’re able to work with your dog – rather than give up.

First thing yesterday morning, I called our regular vet. I wanted to make sure that the wound on Bandit’s chest wasn’t infected, because while it wasn’t bad – it was very much like a rug burn, oozing some blood but no puncture - he was licking it a lot. (The verdict: I had put antibiotic ointment on it, which he promptly licked off. I reapplied it; he licked it off.) We also talked at length about what happened and how we handled the situation and what might have triggered it. We know our vet well, and she knows our animals well, so her advice was definitely helpful.

The second call I made was to our trainer. Yes, we have a regular dog trainer, someone we talk to and take classes from and call when we have questions. She also knows our dogs, and she is very, very good at working with situations like this.  She gave me great advice to handle things right now (like getting the dogs used to an interruption cue, making a list of the things that seem to rile Bailey up, and using a supplement to help calm her down), she let me cry, and then suggested which training class we should get Bailey into, mapping out a long term plan of action that would help us and the dogs learn to manage living together so everyone is happy.

The last person I called was our other vet, a specialist in Chinese herbs and acupuncture. She’s seen Bailey for her hip dysplasia (more about that in a minute) and the herbs Bailey takes are supposed to help “cool” her “heat” and reduce the inflammation in her joints. I wanted to make sure that the doctor didn’t want to make adjustments to the herbs, and that the amino acid our trainer wanted to add wasn’t duplicating or interfering with the herbs. She was completely supportive of the addition to Bailey’s supplements, and wants to follow her progress, too.

And so today, 24 hours later, we’re a little on edge but things are settled down. Bandit and Bailey slept together last night like always. They played together today on those rare moments Bailey was allowed out, and while Bandit is a little wary around her, we’ve got some tools to manage the immediate situation and a plan of action for the long-term.

And after that long story, here’s what I want you to take away:

1) Find a vet and a trainer, both of whom you trust and like. No matter how many dogs you’ve had in your life, every dog will benefit from training and socializing with other dogs and people. That’s because every dog is different, with different needs and different ways he communicates those needs. Just because you understood your last dog doesn’t mean you’ll have a clue what’s going on with your new one. And when there is a problem or a question – and there always will be – you’ll have at hand both a medical professional and a behavior professional familiar with you and your animals.

2) Bad behavior does not equal a bad dog. When Bailey was about four months old, she started snapping at me whenever I tried to pet her any place near the back half of her body. Had I not been mildly savvy about dog behavior, I might have written her off as aggressive. But I realized right away that the snapping and growling was completely inconsistent with her normal temperament. So I talked to the vet, who suggested that when Bailey was spayed they also x-ray her hips. Turns out that in addition to a chronic urinary tract infection that took three months to clear up, Bailey has mild hip dysplasia; touching her back end or legs was probably painful, especially after a day of puppy romping, running and jumping. The shelters are full of dogs like Bailey. Good dogs who don’t know any other way to tell their owners that something hurts, and who end up paying the price for the miscommunication.

3) You are not alone. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve screwed up, that everyone else knows something you don’t, or that you’ve got a devil dog on your hands while everyone else’s dogs are so lovely and clean and well-behaved. If talking about my dog problems helps even one owner understand that they can have a better relationship with their dog, or keeps one dog from being dropped off at the shelter because he can’t communicate what he really needs, I’m willing to share all of my mistakes and screw ups.

Besides, those of you who read my column in The Christian Voice Magazine or read my blog, Notes From The Funny Farm, already know my life is an open book and I know some of you breathe a sigh of relief when I admit my failures and faux pas. So let’s open the book and help our dogs, too.

4) It does get better. Believe it or not, much of the behavior that we’re dealing with in Bailey is what we also dealt with in Bandit. Bailey is just a little more fiesty, and we have three dogs with three different personalities to work with now, rather than just two. When I look back at our first year with Bandit, I have to laugh. I spent the months after I brought him home crying and questioning and second guessing my decision to get another dog. Now? I can’t imagine life without him. (And if you want his perspective,  you can read Bandit’s blog, It’s A Dog’s Life.)

So there you go. The first “Bad Dog Files” – I don’t even know if we’ll keep that column title, but it does seem fitting. Next week, we’ll talk about … well, let’s see what happens with Bailey, Bandit and Scout between now and then. But I’d like to start with separation anxiety, since I think that may be at the heart of Bailey’s problems.

In the meantime, if you have a question, email me at contact@barkaroundtown.com.