PuddleMonkey

I hate my dogs. Okay, I don’t hate them, but there have been far too many days that I’ve wanted to kill them. By himself, Bear is a great dog–well behaved, calm, not as cautious as usual. Around Dozer, however, he often turns into an absolute monster.

Bear doesn’t think much of most of the dogs in the neighborhood, mostly because, I think, he’s had time to get familiar with them and their scents. He takes exception to a few dogs he knows and every new dog that comes walking by, in which case he runs from one end of the fence to the other making the most hideous noise, a combination of barking, screaming and crying. It sounds as if he’s being pulled from limb to limb, and there’s nothing Shawn nor I can do to stop or calm him.

What’s more frightening is that Bear (and Dozer too) is able to get his head between bars of the wrought-iron fence, and I have watched him lunge at people, snapping his jaw and trying to bite. Though he’s yet to actually catch anyone, I’m scared that eventually he will, especially because the sidewalk is so close to the fence and often Bear lunges at people without warning. Of course I worry that Bear will really hurt someone, and I worry that I will have to destroy him as a result.

When the boys are inside and something outside catches their attention, they often both run screaming out the doggie door. Sometimes they find something to bark at; most times they don’t. We’ve discovered that we can stop Dozer from running out the doggie door if we call to him several times. He’s very good about stopping at the door, listening to us, calming down and walking back to where he was laying on the floor. We can literally see Dozer “thinking” about what he’s being told and making the decision to obey us rather than running out into the yard. Sometimes we’re not successful, but often we are, which is amazing.

Bear, on the other hand, we can’t stop. When he wants something, he becomes singularly focused on it and turns a deaf ear. Even if Dozer runs outside to bark, we can walk outside and tell him to stop barking, and he’ll obey. When Bear starts barking/screaming/crying about another dog, we either have to ignore him or pick him up and throw him back in the house.

Bear has made tremendous improvements in many ways. He’s much less anxious than he used to be, and he’s now very good about letting Shawn or me know when he’s scared and wants help, but he’s still awful with strangers and an absolute nightmare in the yard. I spoke to his vet this morning, and she suggested increasing his dosage of Chlomicalm to 80mgs a day, or two pills instead of one. So that’s my plan for now. I also contacted our behaviorist, who owes us one more appointment, and asked if she would be willing to come over and hang out on the porch and watch Bear in action. Hopefully, she’ll be able to provide us with some methods for controlling Bear. Her advice thus far has been very useful and made a positive difference in our lives, so I’m confident she’ll be able to help with this problem as well; she just needs to see for herself how Bear transitions from dog to slobbering monster.

As for me, I still need to learn to calm down and just ignore the dogs when they’re making me insane, especially when they’re humping each other. I definitely believe that Bear often picks up on my mood, how tense or angry I am, and he responds rather accordingly. When I am tense, for example, he becomes very anxious and often aggressive. If I ignore him, however, he is well behaved and rather care free, so I know I need to work on my own behavior as well. The problem, of course, is that I’m a type A personality, and worry about every little thing. I do consider myself to be a dog person, but I’m not the right human for a high-strung dog. I need a dog who is by nature a lazy, self-assured and so dopey that he doesn’t know how to be anything else but happy. Maybe he could teach me a thing or two.