I hate having to type this out but I need some perspective because while I see a logical answer, I definitely don’t see a good answer. I don’t even know if this is the right sub for this so if it isn’t I apologize.
There’s a lot of back story that may or may not be relevant so TLDR at the bottom.
We rescued a dog, M, when he was a puppy. No one knew his exact pedigree (his whole litter was found all at once and put up for adoption) but we were told he’s roughly equal parts German Shepard, Pitbull, Retriever, and Boxer if that matters.
The first few years were good. We already had another dog so we thought we knew what we were doing at that point. We took him to a group obedience class and worked on training at home. He was, and remains, a pretty smart dog.
Fast forward to when my wife was pregnant with our son, about 2 years into the dog’s life. I don’t know if what follows is a result of my wife’s pregnancy or something else but we noticed he was getting more and more anxious about everything. If someone outside was having a conversation on the sidewalk outside, it’d be enough to upset him to the point where he would bark loudly and frequently. This wasn’t just a once in a while occurrence, it got to be a multiple times a day sort of thing.
We consulted our vet and they recommended fluoxetine, which was meant to help him calm down. Initially it worked good enough so we kept at it. We thought we’d stick with it for a month or two but life got away from us and if got to be a habit for a matter of years.
I may be hazy on the exact timeline of things but a few weeks before the birth of our son, M attacked our other, more senior and smaller dog over a frisbee. S (our other dog) managed to get the frisbee before M. M straight up attacked S, there was no other way to describe it. I intervened and got a hefty bite as a result but I did manage to pry open M’s jaws from S’s neck. It’s probably worth noting that this happened on a Monday, and the previous weekend we had family members staying with us for the weekend. I strongly suspect the stress of the weekend caught up with M and that’s what led to the attack. S needed mild veterinary care but was ultimately fine.
After this incident we consulted with a vet recommended trainer to at least give us some guidance on what we need to do with M since we were a matter of days away from my wife’s due date. The trainer met with us and essentially told us that he’s an anxious dog, and keeping him on the fluoxetine and minimizing stressors were just about the only things we could do. My wife and I both have had dogs for most of our lives but never one that was this anxious, so we took the trainer at her word. Besides that, we had a tiny human to worry about soon, so we basically heeded the trainer’s advice and kept him on meds and tried to minimize his stressors.
Our son was born and we were able to introduce him to the dogs without much of an issue. For the most part they weren’t interested in him but all the same we made it a point to either have M on a leash while in the same room as my son (J), or to be holding J out of reach of M.
Over the first few years of J’s life, the dogs got along fairly well, but M did attack S two times. Both required intervention but weren’t as serious as the first incident. S was banged up but ok and didn’t need veterinary intervention. Both of these times were food related so while we weren’t exactly OK with the conflict, we did understand that it isn’t uncommon for there to be a disagreement between dogs about food. We made sure to separate them when they ate and if one dog got a treat, they both got a treat.
As the years went on M got more and more anxious and barked more and more, even through the medication. COVID didn’t hit us particularly hard, at least not directly, but I do feel that contributed to his anxiety, especially after I (the primary caretaker) left the house more and more frequently after years of mostly being at home.
Within the last two or three months his barking and anxiety got to be unbearable, so we consulted the vet and tried a few different medications. None of them changed his anxiousness so after consulting the vet we stopped his medication and found a different trainer. I’ll stop here and say that if we had found this trainer several years ago, I wouldn’t be typing out this essay on Reddit.
He came into our home on Friday. M barked at him for about 15 minutes straight upon arrival but the trainer knew what do to and rewarded him with food when he stopped barking, then rewarded him again when he stopped barking to eat the previous reward. He was only in our home for about 90 minutes but within that time he was able to establish several expected behaviors (M wasn’t perfect but holy shit was he less anxious) of M before he got rewarded. He gave my wife and I an entirely new perspective on training a now 7-year old 75 lb anxious dog. It was overwhelming in some respects but the prospect of having a pathway to a working relationship with M, not even expecting perfection but at least a legitimate hope that it would get better was a frankly brand new and exciting feeling.
Then today happened.
It started great, we worked on exercises that the trainer suggested and rewarded M when he seemed relaxed and content. Then he attacked S. Again. I saw the leadup happen but wasn’t able to stop it.
Our neighbors have a dog and if that dog and either S or M are out in the yard at the same time, they like to bark and chase each other the length of the fence. Lately M’s barks have sounded more aggressive so we usually don’t let M and S out in the yard at the same time. This time however the neighbor dog was let out after M and S were both outside. M started chasing neighbor dog and S was apparently in the way. I saw M run the fence but didn’t see their first contact so I don’t’ know if S was also chasing the dog and that upset M or if S was simply in the way and M attacked, but this was the worst altercation he’s had with S (out of at least 4). I’m convinced he would have killed her had I not been there to pry his mouth open and my wife hadn’t been there to punch M enough to distract him. I still very vividly see M holding S by the neck and tossing her around, then her laying limp after. I had to rush her to a vet clinic where she got several stitches for a laceration and a drain put in.
[I’ll add here that this neighbor dog situation has happened before, despite our best efforst, but M just simply runs over or around S and doesn’t attack her. I suspect he was still stressed from the fact that a stranger (the trainer) was in our house recently, similar to M’s first attack on S.]
So, Reddit, what the fuck do I do here? If M hadn’t attacked S right now I’d be studying the information the trainer gave me and putting work into M. However I no longer view him as a dog that loudly barks at everything he diesn’t understand. Yesterday I would have said M has been aggressive in certain instances with other dogs but not humans. Now? If my son had been standing there instead of S I’d rather not think about how it would have went down.
Logically I know having this dog in my home with at least two other beings he could easily traumatize, injure or even kill is a very, very bad idea. On the other hand I feel confident that his anxiety could be minimized with intensive training. With that being said until the results from the training are realized I don’t feel safe having him in the same house as S or my son. To be clear he’s never alone and unsupervised with my son for more than a few seconds at a time, but I don’t even feel comfortable with supervised access at this point.
The way I see it our options are keeping him and working on training (not at all ideal because of his unpredictable aggression and size differential between him and S and my son), rehoming him (not likely since I would want to be honest with whoever takes him in and say he’s anxious and when he gets very anxious he will attack) or, and this is tough, have the dog put down.
I plan to reach out to both the trainer and the vet in the morning after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it but for now I needed to get this all out and get some feedback from somebody that may have some insight. I just got back from the emergency vet with S and seeing her laceration repair really puts into perspective how dangerous M can be. On the other hand as I type out this sob story M is laying at my feet, half licking his paws and half sleeping. He really is a good boy but I’m worried about the safety of my son and S because of M’s unpredictable anxiety.
I don’t really know if I’m after solutions or empathy or something else but any comments are appreciated.
TL;DR: Dog has anxiety and has periodically attacked our other dog over the last few years. After talking with a trainer we felt optimistic and ready to work with anxious dog. Literally the day after talking with a trainer, anxious dog attacked another dog resulting in a need for several stitches. I feel that he could be helped with training but also cannot in good conscience keep this animal in the same home as another dog and a tiny human that are both roughly half of the anxious dog’s body weight.
There’s a lot of back story that may or may not be relevant so TLDR at the bottom.
We rescued a dog, M, when he was a puppy. No one knew his exact pedigree (his whole litter was found all at once and put up for adoption) but we were told he’s roughly equal parts German Shepard, Pitbull, Retriever, and Boxer if that matters.
The first few years were good. We already had another dog so we thought we knew what we were doing at that point. We took him to a group obedience class and worked on training at home. He was, and remains, a pretty smart dog.
Fast forward to when my wife was pregnant with our son, about 2 years into the dog’s life. I don’t know if what follows is a result of my wife’s pregnancy or something else but we noticed he was getting more and more anxious about everything. If someone outside was having a conversation on the sidewalk outside, it’d be enough to upset him to the point where he would bark loudly and frequently. This wasn’t just a once in a while occurrence, it got to be a multiple times a day sort of thing.
We consulted our vet and they recommended fluoxetine, which was meant to help him calm down. Initially it worked good enough so we kept at it. We thought we’d stick with it for a month or two but life got away from us and if got to be a habit for a matter of years.
I may be hazy on the exact timeline of things but a few weeks before the birth of our son, M attacked our other, more senior and smaller dog over a frisbee. S (our other dog) managed to get the frisbee before M. M straight up attacked S, there was no other way to describe it. I intervened and got a hefty bite as a result but I did manage to pry open M’s jaws from S’s neck. It’s probably worth noting that this happened on a Monday, and the previous weekend we had family members staying with us for the weekend. I strongly suspect the stress of the weekend caught up with M and that’s what led to the attack. S needed mild veterinary care but was ultimately fine.
After this incident we consulted with a vet recommended trainer to at least give us some guidance on what we need to do with M since we were a matter of days away from my wife’s due date. The trainer met with us and essentially told us that he’s an anxious dog, and keeping him on the fluoxetine and minimizing stressors were just about the only things we could do. My wife and I both have had dogs for most of our lives but never one that was this anxious, so we took the trainer at her word. Besides that, we had a tiny human to worry about soon, so we basically heeded the trainer’s advice and kept him on meds and tried to minimize his stressors.
Our son was born and we were able to introduce him to the dogs without much of an issue. For the most part they weren’t interested in him but all the same we made it a point to either have M on a leash while in the same room as my son (J), or to be holding J out of reach of M.
Over the first few years of J’s life, the dogs got along fairly well, but M did attack S two times. Both required intervention but weren’t as serious as the first incident. S was banged up but ok and didn’t need veterinary intervention. Both of these times were food related so while we weren’t exactly OK with the conflict, we did understand that it isn’t uncommon for there to be a disagreement between dogs about food. We made sure to separate them when they ate and if one dog got a treat, they both got a treat.
As the years went on M got more and more anxious and barked more and more, even through the medication. COVID didn’t hit us particularly hard, at least not directly, but I do feel that contributed to his anxiety, especially after I (the primary caretaker) left the house more and more frequently after years of mostly being at home.
Within the last two or three months his barking and anxiety got to be unbearable, so we consulted the vet and tried a few different medications. None of them changed his anxiousness so after consulting the vet we stopped his medication and found a different trainer. I’ll stop here and say that if we had found this trainer several years ago, I wouldn’t be typing out this essay on Reddit.
He came into our home on Friday. M barked at him for about 15 minutes straight upon arrival but the trainer knew what do to and rewarded him with food when he stopped barking, then rewarded him again when he stopped barking to eat the previous reward. He was only in our home for about 90 minutes but within that time he was able to establish several expected behaviors (M wasn’t perfect but holy shit was he less anxious) of M before he got rewarded. He gave my wife and I an entirely new perspective on training a now 7-year old 75 lb anxious dog. It was overwhelming in some respects but the prospect of having a pathway to a working relationship with M, not even expecting perfection but at least a legitimate hope that it would get better was a frankly brand new and exciting feeling.
Then today happened.
It started great, we worked on exercises that the trainer suggested and rewarded M when he seemed relaxed and content. Then he attacked S. Again. I saw the leadup happen but wasn’t able to stop it.
Our neighbors have a dog and if that dog and either S or M are out in the yard at the same time, they like to bark and chase each other the length of the fence. Lately M’s barks have sounded more aggressive so we usually don’t let M and S out in the yard at the same time. This time however the neighbor dog was let out after M and S were both outside. M started chasing neighbor dog and S was apparently in the way. I saw M run the fence but didn’t see their first contact so I don’t’ know if S was also chasing the dog and that upset M or if S was simply in the way and M attacked, but this was the worst altercation he’s had with S (out of at least 4). I’m convinced he would have killed her had I not been there to pry his mouth open and my wife hadn’t been there to punch M enough to distract him. I still very vividly see M holding S by the neck and tossing her around, then her laying limp after. I had to rush her to a vet clinic where she got several stitches for a laceration and a drain put in.
[I’ll add here that this neighbor dog situation has happened before, despite our best efforst, but M just simply runs over or around S and doesn’t attack her. I suspect he was still stressed from the fact that a stranger (the trainer) was in our house recently, similar to M’s first attack on S.]
So, Reddit, what the fuck do I do here? If M hadn’t attacked S right now I’d be studying the information the trainer gave me and putting work into M. However I no longer view him as a dog that loudly barks at everything he diesn’t understand. Yesterday I would have said M has been aggressive in certain instances with other dogs but not humans. Now? If my son had been standing there instead of S I’d rather not think about how it would have went down.
Logically I know having this dog in my home with at least two other beings he could easily traumatize, injure or even kill is a very, very bad idea. On the other hand I feel confident that his anxiety could be minimized with intensive training. With that being said until the results from the training are realized I don’t feel safe having him in the same house as S or my son. To be clear he’s never alone and unsupervised with my son for more than a few seconds at a time, but I don’t even feel comfortable with supervised access at this point.
The way I see it our options are keeping him and working on training (not at all ideal because of his unpredictable aggression and size differential between him and S and my son), rehoming him (not likely since I would want to be honest with whoever takes him in and say he’s anxious and when he gets very anxious he will attack) or, and this is tough, have the dog put down.
I plan to reach out to both the trainer and the vet in the morning after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it but for now I needed to get this all out and get some feedback from somebody that may have some insight. I just got back from the emergency vet with S and seeing her laceration repair really puts into perspective how dangerous M can be. On the other hand as I type out this sob story M is laying at my feet, half licking his paws and half sleeping. He really is a good boy but I’m worried about the safety of my son and S because of M’s unpredictable anxiety.
I don’t really know if I’m after solutions or empathy or something else but any comments are appreciated.
TL;DR: Dog has anxiety and has periodically attacked our other dog over the last few years. After talking with a trainer we felt optimistic and ready to work with anxious dog. Literally the day after talking with a trainer, anxious dog attacked another dog resulting in a need for several stitches. I feel that he could be helped with training but also cannot in good conscience keep this animal in the same home as another dog and a tiny human that are both roughly half of the anxious dog’s body weight.