Quote:
Originally posted by nononono
Thanks, all. Betty Ford says I'm still good to go.
The dog is 6. Has been mouthy, nippy, at times aggressive/possessive about being asked to get off whatever he's sleeping on throughout his life (yes, accept and acknowledge that his human parents owed him some additional behavioral training long ago that he never received). He had been improving in general behavior (he is of a very independent, not particulrarly obedient breed), but lately had been stealing food, disobeying, bitching about going in and out of the garage, etc. He disobeyed a particular set of commands last night (to get out of the kid-room, as it was bedtime), as he was on a mission to find crumbs of food or something, so I swatted at him with a magazine. He whipped around, snarled, paused and then lunged at my leg. I have a nasty bruise, it's sore, and there was some minor skin-breaking (through the pant-leg), but no external bleeding. Motherfucker. He was ashamed, etc. I take a huge amount of blame, as I believe the theory for this breed is that positive discipline works much better than negative (negative also showing that I'm not the calm alpha he needs to stay in line), but I'm not now sure what to do. Checked with the relevant rescue, and they won't even take a dog who's bitten. Considered at different points along the way finding another home for him, but like losers, we made excuses for him and focussed on alleged improvements or boundaries we felt he had, rather than getting serious about training and, if that failed, letting him go.
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Obviously, the biggest issue is whether or not you want to put effort into rehabilitation. It's the
all of the behavior in the aggregate, including the bite, that matters.
Your dog sounds remarkably like my sister's dog, and it took her years to get to the point where he understands that she is God. (Which isn't to say that he won't take every and any opportunity to steal food. He's a lab, it's what they do.) She even ended up having to report her own dog for biting her when she ended up getting stitches after a try to pull the stick out of his mouth and get him to pay attention to her incident. He went to gun school when he was a puppy, and the trainer said that Holden was the first dog he'd ever had to put a shock collar on. He's nine now, and a lot of the behavior problems have sort of mellowed out of him, but the vigilant training also is an important part of it.
I rather like Holden, so I'm going to be biased towards trying to change the behavior than taking drastic steps. But if you absolutely do not think that you can do it, start looking for an alternative.
Some people like the Dog Whisperer. His methods may or may not work with your breed. (They're not great for pulik, but then pulik are a pretty special breed. Again, bias.) It sounds like your dog desperately needs to know who the alpha is in his house. I would talk to other owners of your breed and see if they have suggestions that are particularly helpful with this particular breed. Talk to trainers in the area and explain what happened. Talk to more than one to get a feel for whether or not they can handle the dog and whether the advice you're getting is consistent. I know a dog that has gone to Texas A&M here to work with a behavioralist there, and he ended up on Zoloft for awhile. It helped calm his neuroses down quite a bit.
And then, if you decide to give it a go, you'll have to start working with him diligently and consistently. And every member of the family should be aware of the rules so training isn't undermined. (For example, my father is notorious for feeding dogs at the table, even though none of them are supposed to be fed there. He claims they look hungry and refuses to accept the simple fact that there is no such thing as a sated Labrador retriever.)
I'm a member of a puli listserv on yahoo groups, and I'm pretty sure that most breeds have similar fan clubs set up all around the internet. (Some of the discussions are boring things about showing the dogs. But there's a lot of practical advice there on pretty much everything having to do with that breed, and the archives are useful for past discussions.) The nice thing about the listservs is that you might also be able to find a champion for the breed, familiar with that type of dog that would be willing to take on a problem dog if you ultimately decide that you can't handle him.
