The Dog Diary

I can’t really remember how the first night went with Conan. A friend of mine stayed over and we had some fun playing with the dogs until they were exhausted. As a result of that, I think my new puppy slept for most of the night. The peaceful nights were, however, to be short lived!

The following day, I was due to take Dexter to his agility class and I was determined that my boy would not be neglected just because there was a new dog in town! I was a little concerned about leaving Conan alone so soon after bringing him back to his new home, but Paul Connolly of Wolfspeak had told me to be brave, leave him in his dog crate, and come to training class. He assured me that a good way to conquer separation anxiety before it even started was to get the dog used to being alone for short periods of time from day one.

So, I made sure the pup was fed, watered and had been outside to do his business, then I locked him in his crate and left for training class.

A few hours later I returned, fully expecting to see a sleeping puppy, but the sight that greeted me was somewhat different! There he was, my 8 week old pup, asleep on top on my slippers which I had placed on top of the shoe bench by the front door. Have you ever looked at something and done a double-take? I was convinced I’d left him in his steel dog crate, locked and bolted. Was I going mad? On closer inspection, I discovered that the little cannonball had broken out of the crate. How he did this is still a mystery to this day, but yes, he had obviously gotten himself into such a state of separation anxiety, that he had broken right out from behind his metal bars. I knew from that point forward I was going to have trouble with this one. And Dexter had been such a great puppy. What on earth had I let myself in for?

A Picture of Innocence?

As I said, Dexter was an incredibly cute puppy, but that was part of the problem. It’s so easy to ‘humanise’ dogs them when they’re small and they look so defenceless and helpless, but really, they’re not, as the previous post highlighted!

I guess most of my problems occured with Dexter after I moved back home to Scotland at the beginning of 2005, when Dexter was only 6 months old. A stressful time for me affected him in such a huge way, but it’s hard to notice at the time.

It’s an absolute fact, and well worth bearing in mind, that dogs have something of a ’sixth sense’ and can pick up on what you and I might think to be the slightest ‘vibe’ but it’s really noticeable to the dog and they act accordingly.

Dexter was my ‘little rock’ through my stressful times, and he was showered with lots of love and cuddles and lots of trendy doggy gear, the most stylish I could find on the internet! However, none of that meant anything to him in his dog brain - all he was seeing was that I was elevating him up to ‘pack leader’ status and he was so ill-equipped to cope with it. He was taking on a role that was too much for him and it was my fault!

He started to suffer from nervous aggression which manifested itself by him snapping and snarling at whatever he wasn’t sure about. Now, this can be misconstrued by many people as pure canine aggression, and people don’t look any further than that, so it becomes very frustrating when the people around you don’t understand that there might be a reason for this kind of behaviour and that the dog is not bad or vicious, he is purely unsure and doesn’t know how to deal with certain circumstances, so all he’s really doing by snapping at it, is telling the ’scary thing’ to go away!

I knew my dog wasn’t a bad dog and I wanted to help him. I still didn’t fully understand the root of his problem, so I called in the services of a Dog Behaviourist. There are lots of Dog Behaviourists around but to this day, I feel I landed lucky and feel totally blessed that my random selection in the Yellow Pages led me to meet the most wonderful man, Paul Connolly, of Wolfspeak.

My next post will describe my learning curve.

A Little Confused About Life