PuddleMonkey

I think I’ve reached my wit’s end with Bear. He’s cute, at times he’s also really affectionate, but he suffers from a bad case of possession aggression. When we first brought him home, he had bad food aggression, but I was able to cure him of that after hand feeding him for two weeks. The possession aggression, however, has improved very little.

Today, for example, we bought two medium-sized rawhide bones for the boys. We recently put some thin rawhide strips in their toy bin and noticed that they were chewing on them quite regularly, so we thought it would be nice to buy them some larger bones. Like a lot of dogs, Bear and Dozer can spend hours chewing on rawhide or marrow bones, and of course the more time they spend chewing on bones, the less time they spend barking at passersby or making trouble in general.

But as soon as we give chew treats to Bear, he turns into an aggressive, paranoid pup who spends his time guarding his treat or looking for some place to hide it rather than enjoying it.

At first Bear buried his bone in a pile of dirt in the corner of the yard. When Dozer came sniffing around, Bear growled, unearthed his bone and tried to bury it in another corner of the yard. Finally, he came inside with his bone and disappeared under the bed, where he often likes to sleep. About two hours later I walked into the bedroom and saw one of his paws sticking out from underneath the bed, so I decided to kneel down and say hello. The minute I lifted up the dust ruffle, I could tell Bear was very uncomfortable and worried that I was going to take his bone–his eyes were “hard,” which is something that really disturbs me.

At the beginning of the year, when we first began giving Bear Chlomicalm, an anti-obsessional medication, I noticed a change in his eyes within the first few weeks. A lot of dog behaviorists describe the eyes of dogs as either being “hard” or “soft.” I imagine you can probably deduce for yourself the difference. Dozer’s eyes, for example, are always soft. Occasionally, when he gets a little worked up about another dog walking by the house, his eyes turn hard, but those moments usually pass quickly. The only time that Dozer’s eyes really scared me was during a trip to the vet’s office; when the vet attempted to enter the exam room, Dozer suddenly turned into Cujo and lunged at her. After we muzzled him, I suggested Gips and I leave the room in the hope that Dozer would realize he was at the mercy of the vet and calm down. But he continued to thrash uncontrollably around the room until finally we had to sedate him.

Anyway, my point is that until we put Bear on the Chlomicalm, he more often than not had hard eyes. In fact, he often made me very uncomfortable, and I worried that if I got near him he would try to bite me, which he did do on several occasions. And on several occasions, Gips and I discussed getting rid of him. We couldn’t bear the idea of turning him over to the Denver Dumb Friends League, the shelter from which we adopted him, because we knew he would be put down. When he’s scared, he acts aggressively, and the minute he acted aggressively with the staff at the DDFL, he would have been deemed “unadoptable” and euthanized. Instead, we attempted to find another home for Bear, but we only met with two people, and I think both could clearly see how attached Bear is to me (and I to him). I was also honest about his problems, and there are few people in the world who want a dog with problems.

Bear is a much improved dog because of the Chlomicalm; he’s become more affectionate and even likes to cuddle, he’s responsive to commands, and his eyes are generally soft, except, of course, when he has a treat like a large bone or chewy of some kind. And this evening when I attempted to pet him while he was underneath the bed (I admit that I was curious to see what he would do ), he bit my hand. I don’t understand why. Perhaps I just should have left Bear alone, but there have been occasions in the past when Bear was under the bed or hidden from my view in some other way and bit me after I accidentally came too close. The few times I’ve accidentally stepped on him, he bit me in response. I’ve just never known a dog that bites its owners as much, and I’m afraid that I’ve finally reached the point that I feel I need to consider euthanasia as an option–I just can’t continue to live with a dog that bites me.

One of the reasons to hand feed a dog who has food aggression is so the dog learns who controls his resources. When it comes to his meals, Bear learned that lesson–I could pick up his food bowl a hundred times while he’s eating, stick my hand in it and fondle his food, and he still won’t bite me, so I am at a complete loss for understanding why he still suffers from possession aggression and resorts to biting me whenever I get too close to him. What I do know is that, sadly, I have lost my patience and, at times, do not enjoying being a pet owner.