I was out with Sticky & Bailey yesterday afternoon in our village fields enjoying a lovely, quiet, uneventful walk with my four-legged friends when, a long-haired GSD flew out of the bushes and lunged at Sticky’s back. I was about 10m away which isn’t normally a problem in this normally blissfully peaceful environment, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get there for a few seconds. I was therefore very proud of little Sticky (Lab x Dachshund) who managed a neat trick of combining just enough appeasement with just enough warning behaviour to keep things from escalating into a fight (I believe this is due to the time spent in an Irish pound having to learn these life skills…)
I don’t tend to panic in these situations because, well, to be honest I’ve seen some horrendous dog fights and it does a marvellous job of desensitising you to the normal ‘handbags-at-dawn’ type squabble that domestic pet dogs tend to have; it’s actually dealing with the humans involved afterwards that normally gets my blood pressure to nuclear levels.
I did a couple of deep yells and then I heard the owner (previously hidden on the path behind the bushes) yelling at his dog and come crashing through waving a stick at it. He grabbed his poor dog who by this time was beside itself with panic and literally throttled it. I called Sticks to me and found that although he had a few tooth-scrapes in his fur and a bit of slobber on him, was otherwise physically okay.
“Sorry about that – I didn’t see you were there” the owner replied, holding his petrified dog so tightly I thought it was going to pass out.
“What was that about?” I asked the owner calmly as I examined Sticky.
“Dunno” he replied blandly with a shrug.
“Has it done that before?” I said, knowing full-well that this was an established behaviour.
“Nope – never” he said, not that convincingly.
“Look, I do this for a living and work with dogs like this almost every day; that was quite an established display.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” said the owner in an all-too-familiar kneejerk reaction.
“I don’t have to – your dog has just told me all I need to know.”
To save his poor dog any further pain I started to walk away but as calmly as possible asked the owner to get some help for his dog before it was too late and advised him that now his dog had now ‘attacked’ another once – not to let it happen again. We both knew this wasn’t the first time the dog had done this but I thought it might be worth pretending to be in denial as deeply he was just to get a serious message across…
The owner said nothing more and dragged his dog off in the opposite direction.
What struck me hardest about this incident was how ineffectual this owner was with his dog and how easily this kind of problem can be resolved. Luckily the dog has good ‘ABI’ (Acquired Bite Inhibition) or we’d have had to stitch poor Sticky up like a patchwork quilt, but it seemed obvious to me that this dog is crying out for his owner to write the Rulebook and be his Referee, not let him wander around feeling anxious and lost enough to just launch himself at passing dogs.
As an example, once I’d released Sticky after examining him he went to trot back up to the GSD, who had by now shut down completely and was just sitting there with a glazed look in his eyes, still held far too tightly by the collar. I merely said ‘No’ in a calm, firm voice, called Sticks back and he stopped and came back immediately, which he was praised for with a smile and a wink and a ‘Good Lad’. Our rulebook says when I say ‘No’, Sticky stops. Our rulebook says when I say ‘Sticks Come’, Sticky comes back. Our rulebook says he gets a wink and a smile and even – sometimes – a treat for following the rules. He knows I’ll enforce it if I have to. He knows where he stands. It’s a nicer place to be for a dog. And an owner.
I hope the GSD gets the help he needs and the incident yesterday proves to be a turning point in his life.
Sticky, by the way, is physically okay but a bit unsettled today. After a bit of a shock like this and the subsequent adrenalin rush, it can take a dog a couple of days to get back to a normal maintenance state. At least he’s in the right place for the help he needs to recover. I find myself wondering if the poor GSD will get the same or whether his owner still thinks denial is just a river in Africa…
