I fostered and later adopted "Honey Bear" from an adoption event at my office. At the event, she was shy and terrified and cowering in the corner of her cage. I asked to take her out and took her to the side away from the crowd and sat with her during the entire event. She was scared of every noise and person. She finally warmed up to me and allowed me to take her for a walk around the building. I was asked to foster her and picked her up on Monday after the event on Saturday. She was neutered and I picker her up as soon as she was barely awake and took her home. I later adopted her. She bonded with me quickly and in a couple days bonded with my adult son. She was not too crazy about my adult daughter but was okay. That was about a year and a half ago. She was about 35 pounds and was estimated to be about a year old. She is now about 55 pounds and is somewhere between 2 and 3 years old. She has been acting strange around my daughter and has run at her 2-3 times and nipped holes in her favorite T-shirts. This didn't make my daughter happy and it started a non-trusting relationship. My daughter has tried some to get along with her but she has become fiercely protective of me. She won't let my daughter walk in to my bedroom in the evening to talk to me. About a week ago she ran at Shannon and bit her on the shoulder. Now we have a real problem..... Shannon is scared of her. She now sleeps in her crate instead of loose in the house and I can't trust her around my daughter. She now barks when Shannon even walks by the crate at night. She is a very high energy dog and love to play with toys and especially tennis balls. I take her out to the school yard, take her lease off and she and I play ball until she gets tired. She has learned to "Throw" the ball back to me. She is extremely smart and I absolutely love her. Now what do I do. It has become a choice between she and my daughter and Shannon thinks she needs to go. What options to I have? I would re-home her, if i had someone who would not treat her badly. I think she was probably abused before I met her. If I take her back to the shelter, they will kill her and I don't want her to go through the trauma of being in a shelter. Ideas?
Hi @Linda Barnes Welcome to the site. I believe you need to a positive reinforcement dog behaviourist to come to your home to evaluate your dog's behaviour with respect to all in the home. In the meantime keep the dog on lead with you holding the dog or in a crate until the dog is assessed.
Hi Linda, That really is a difficult situation for you, I'm so sorry to hear about it My advice would reflect Michael's - a positive reinforcement using dog behaviorist will be best placed to assess your dog and help you decide the best way forward. Vets often have contact details for local trainers, just make sure they aren't going to use punishment based techniques which can make these problems worse. Do let us know how you get along. Wishing you all the best!
@Linda Barnes this is a very stressful situation, I'm sorry. Whereabouts are you based? I ask that because sometimes it's easier to recommend a behaviourist or trainer knowing where people are. It sounds like you are in the US at least. I would suggest you take a look at these registries and see if there is anyone near you on them: CBATIs: http://grishastewart.com/cbati-directory/ Jean Donaldson's Academy: https://academyfordogtrainers.com/find-a-trainer Karen Pryor: https://karenpryoracademy.com/find-a-trainer/#!directory/map The first thing to establish, is just purely physical safety. This part is not about training, it's about management. You need to figure out how to ensure your daughter feels safe around the house and how to prevent repeat occurrences of this. This is going to mean taking a look at 1) locations (of daughter and dog) and 2). daily schedules or timetables (when is daughter in/out of the house). It's going to involve things like stair gates or other types of barriers, crating (as you are doing), keeping dog on a leash tethered to you, with treats in your pocket if you are in the same room as your daughter together (being more in active training mode and very observant of dog's behaviour and feelings) - and potentially other protocols (ie - daughter texting or phoning if she is coming home outside the usual times; dog being crated if you are out etc etc). It would be good to think about every incident which has occurred or which could occur, and what you could have put in place to prevent those. You want to make it completely impossible for something to happen, even if the dog reacts. A good behaviourist/trainer will do this with you, in detail, immediately - or you can also do it yourself. Then, you need to try to reduce the dog's stress in a 'global' way. This means - using products like an Adaptil diffuser and collar, and Zylkene (do you have the latter in the US?) - these are available without prescription and have no side effects and are proven to reduce stress and anxiety in dogs. Then comes the training side of things. You can do Look At That with your daughter as the 'looked at' person on a daily basis: https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/look-at-that.22184/ This should be done with dog on leash, with you holding the leash, and your daughter elsewhere in the room at a good distance. There will be other things, which a behaviourist will be able to suggest. Ultimately, you want to work towards your daughter actually doing the training - because there's almost nothing which will lead to a better relationship between them (from both sides!) than that. However, to do that safely, it will need to be distance training at first - for eg - you holding the dog on a leash on the other side of the room, your daughter cuing remote positions like Sit or Down, clicking when the dog does the correct thing and throwing the treat beyond where the dog is, so the dog does not have to approach her to get the treat. Before you can do that, YOU will need to train the dog in lots of general ways, to create an 'operant' dog which knows how to learn and work with a person and be trained - and to do remote positions, so it can be transferred easily across to your daughter. There are now loads of great online dog training resources, which are perfect for reactive dogs because they can be followed in your own home. A great free one to start with, is Jean Donaldson's Train Your Dog Like a Pro video: You might also like to check out the Fenzi Academy: https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com There is a new Fenzi term starting now, and this course may be useful: Dealing with the Bogeyman: https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/courses/84. It would also be good to have a chat with your daughter about it all, because it sounds like she is experiencing the situation as a choice you have made between her and the dog - and she feels upset because it seems like you have chosen the dog over her, somehow, in not rehoming the dog... So finding time to sit down with her and explain that she really matters to you etc etc, is important. It might be worth pointing out that the dog is going to be destroyed if returned to the shelter - and try to get her onboard to help more with the work you do with the trainer or behaviourist, as it will be quite difficult if she does not want to be involved and just wants the dog to vanish, and meanwhile you need her cooperation.... Good luck!
I’m not sure what kind of training if any you’ve done with your dog, but if it isn’t dangerous I would think maybe a few training sessions with the three of you could better the relationship. For example, do recall back and forth. Let your daughter give the dog lots of treats for calm, friendly behaviors or correct responses to things like “sit.” But even if your daughter becomes less of a stranger, I’d still be cautious with other people.
I would not follow henry77's advice at all. it is not safe to use recall. After much counter conditioning it might end up that way but at the moment you need to use distance to lower the dog's arousal level. And Jo's plan suggests while you wait for the dog behaviourist to come, employ distance and maintain distance.
