Filed under: Akbash, CCD, Divide Creek Animal Hospital, aggression, alaskan malamute, anxiety, bloat, canine, canine compulsive disorder, cats, cesar millan, clomipramine, crazy bitch, dog behavior, dog story, dog whisperer, dogland, dogs, gastritis, hypersensitivity, lab, localized scleroderma, obsession, peggy tibbetts, pet adoption, river park
This is Part 8 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
The Two-Headed Dog Visits the Vet
Psychoanalyzing a dog’s obsessive behavior can lead to – well – obsession.
Uh-oh. I’m repeating myself. That’s so – um – obsessive. This is mind-boggling stuff, this dog psychology. It’s a lot more complex than I had anticipated. Yet fascinating.
While exploring the whole aggression thing, I hit a detour on a trip to the Vet last week. I stumbled on a puzzle piece we had overlooked. Zeus’s health.
Oh, he’s fine. Venus is fine. They both had some health issues that cropped up suddenly over President’s Day weekend. My lovely friends at DCAH were kind enough to let me bring both dogs for back-to-back appointments.
Venus likes to track down and dig up dead animal carcasses at Dogland and along the ski trail. And who doesn’t? She’s had quite a productive winter thus far. So many elk bones. So little time. Unfortunately her nasty little habit resulted in sores on top of red, swollen skin around her mouth. Dr. Pearce called it a “localized scleroderma” and prescribed antibiotics for 2 weeks. From now on I’m going to have to “own” those smelly dead things in order to get them away from her. Lucky me.
Zeus had been puking yellow bile during exercise. Dog vomit and elk bones. The dogs sure do keep us humble. Both Malamutes and Akbash are breeds at risk for bloat, especially as they age. We feed them grain-free Taste of the Wild. Zeus only eats once a day, in the evening. Dr. Pearce said he didn’t show any signs of bloat but he probably has gastritis from exercising on an empty stomach.
“How much exercise does he get?” she asked.
“Oh. A half-hour walk in the morning. Twenty minutes in the evening. And ten minutes before bed,” I said. “On weekends we ski for two hours and he keeps up.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s a lot of exercise for an eight-year old Malamute. I’d say that’s about the max for him. And you need to make sure he eats something in the morning at least an hour before he exercises.”
We considered the options.
His dry food – He refuses to eat dog food in the morning. Period. And I do not wish to fight about it.
Canned food – Even the best Science Diet contains ground corn. We’ve gone to the trouble and expense to feed him grain-free food. Why add corn to his diet?
Cooked turkey burger – A good protein source and he likes it. But it could also add too much fat to his diet. And what if he decides he’d rather eat turkey burger than dog food? Malamutes are like that.
Scrambled egg – He likes scrambled egg. It’s a good protein source and it’s easy to fix. We don’t need to worry about his cholesterol because he gets a lot of exercise. Way better choice.
So far. So good. He has eaten an egg every morning since and hasn’t puked.
Venus only eats once a day, too. But she’s younger and she eats a tablespoon of peanut butter with her pill every morning so that must be enough. Remember Zeus hates peanut butter.
Anyway that’s what the two-headed dog Vet visit was all about.
On the way home I had a Homer Simpson moment. We have been so focused on Venus’s behavior and mental health, we forgot to factor in Zeus’s health and how that affected her.
Doh!
Was Venus’s aggression toward Zeus related to his hypothyroidism?
Zeus’s thyroid level tested low last spring (2008). We wanted to treat his condition naturally rather than pharmaceutically. We gave him Thyro-Pet and Raw Thyroid capsules. In mid-September he still tested low so we put him on Soloxine. By then Venus had attacked him a couple times. She was already melting down. The Soloxine worked almost immediately. Within a month Zeus dropped 20 pounds and blew his coat. He also regained his energy and became more active.
Now that we have a better understanding of Venus’s obsessive behavior we’re certain that she must have obsessed about his health during that time.
Venus has a history of health obsession. When we adopted her we had, among other cats, a 5-year old red Himalayan named Moby.
Venus was obsessed with Moby from day one. She sniffed him. She licked him. She followed him around. She kept track of him. We just thought she really, really liked Moby.
Three months later he suffered a stroke and died. The necropsy showed that his liver had grown around his heart. The Vet said if we had only known he could have fixed the problem surgically. If we had better understood Venus’s obsessive behavior back then we would have known that she sensed something was wrong with Moby. She doesn’t have X-ray vision. She must have sensed a problem with his energy.
Before Lucy (our 17-year old bluepoint Himalayan) died in January, she had been in fragile health for about 7 months. Venus doted on her, too. Lucy didn’t go for the sniffing and licking. But Venus always checked on her. Lucy used to sleep on the loveseat in the afternoon. I could always find Venus asleep nearby. Because of our experience with Moby, we knew why she obsessed about Lucy. She sensed her frail energy.
It was after Lucy died that we became more keenly aware of the Rain Dog intensity in Venus’s obsessive behavior. Lucy’s death bothered her. She became overly anxious and obsessive about the other four cats. She wasn’t aggressive, just obsessive to the point we even considered increasing the Clomipramine. We decided to wait. We reassured her. We kept an eye on her around the cats.
Even Yoda (flamepoint Himalayan) hung out around her, oozing his own version of calm, stable energy, as though to reassure her that the cats are all right. Yoda is sort of a professional calm artist.
Eventually Venus seemed satisfied that the kitties were fine.
All of which amounts to pretty strong evidence that Venus is extremely sensitive to the energy around her. The sixth sense. I believe all animals have it. The guardian Akbash in Venus makes her genetically predisposed to react to her sixth sense. With Moby and Lucy, she sensed a problem with their energies. But she didn’t attack them. She obsessed over them.
With Zeus, her reaction was more complicated. He was hypothyroid for at least six months before he starting getting better. She must have been obsessing about him all that time. The thing is, Venus is crazy about Zeus. Literally. She has always obsessed over him. That’s part of her problem. Before she started attacking him we didn’t really notice any excessive obsessive behavior. Nothing more than usual, that is.
During her most unstable period, between Labor Day and Election Day, she attacked Zeus three times. Between attacks she showed no other unusually obsessive or aggressive behavior toward him. The attacks were all sudden and seemed to come out of nowhere. She also attacked two other dogs at Dogland in October. We think she attacked them because she sensed fear in them. On top of that, in November when she had her worst meltdown Zeus’s thyroid was completely normal.
That answers the question.
Was Venus’s aggression toward Zeus related to his hypothyroidism?
Probably not. She was also aggressive toward other dogs, not just Zeus. When Moby and Lucy had health issues she didn’t attack them.
Hypersensitivity is the piece of the puzzle we were missing.
Hypersensitivity. Anxiety. Obsession. Aggression. Venus has a lot going on – for a dog.
When we need to sort out behaviors, we always turn to the Dog Whisperer. Cesar says in order to change the dog’s behavior you must fully recognize and understand the source. I’m probably repeating myself again. But dog psychology is all about behavior patterns. And dog behavior modification is all about repetition, repetition, repetition.
Venus’s hypersensitivity probably comes from her Akbash breed. We can’t control it but we can be aware of it. When we pay attention to her hypersensitivity we learn how to communicate with her. She’s trying to tell us something. Our understanding has turned a negative into a positive. We’re lucky that Venus senses danger. She might save a life someday.
Her anxiety is the result of too much punishment, and not enough discipline and training as a puppy. We have addressed that by teaching her to calm down and rewarding calm behavior so that she thinks she is controlling the situation by remaining calm. A lot of repetition is involved.
Her obsession must be a genetic accident from mixing the Akbash and Lab breeds. We can’t control that either but our awareness is the key. We use distraction to interrupt the behavior and discipline to give her something else to do. We changed her routine to help her avoid boredom, which has also helped control her anxiety.
Understanding her aggression is much more complex. We know her aggression didn’t come from Tod and me. It didn’t come from Zeus. It didn’t come from abuse in her past. It didn’t come from her breed.
Take one hypersensitive, anxious, obsessive dog and repeatedly expose her to some really bad energy that she has no control over and she’s bound to go all agro. We just needed to identify the source of that negativity energy.
Stay tuned for Part 9
Filed under: Akbash, CCD, aggression, alaskan malamute, anxiety, canine, canine compulsive disorder, cesar millan, crazy bitch, dog behavior, dog story, dog whisperer, dogland, dogs, lab, meadow lake, obsession, peggy tibbetts, pet adoption, sheep
This is Part 7 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
Akbash Awakening
Psychoanalyzing a dog’s obsessive behavior can lead to – well – obsession. It’s all about perspective. It’s easy to get caught up in the psychological aspects and forget we’re dealing with dogs. While it’s true that Zeus and Venus are thinking dogs, they think like dogs. Not like humans. That’s why understanding breed characteristics is so crucial. It keeps us focused on dog behavior. Breed is all about genetics and temperament.
We had Venus all wrong.
Our friends, Karen J and Anthony have known Venus since we adopted her. They used to own a purebred Akbash named Powder. For 2 years they told us time and again how much Venus reminded them of Powder.
“She looks like him. She even acts like him,” Karen said. “Although Powder was more aggressive. And totally unpredictable.”
That was before Venus’s meltdown.
We had never heard of the Akbash breed. Karen told us about three Akbash dogs that tended the sheep along the Cutoff Road to the Buford Road. We had seen those dogs many times and just assumed they were some sort of Great Pyrenees mix. We’ve always thought they look a lot like Venus.
Last July, Karen and I were having lunch and she insisted that I look up Akbash on the intertubes. “I am one hundred per cent certain Venus is part Akbash,” she said.
When I went home I googled Akbash and clicked on the images. I was shocked at the photos. One after another looked strikingly like our Venus. The sleek head, long legs, and curly tail were unmistakable.
Two purebred Akbash -- male (l) and female (r)
Here's Venus. She looks almost identical to the Akbash except for her tiny webbed Lab feet.
Then I googled Great Pyrenees and clicked on the images.
Venus doesn't look anything like this
Great Pyrenees don’t have sleek heads, long legs, or curly tails.
The description of the Great Pyrenees’ general demeanor as “quiet composure, both patient and tolerant” was definitely NOT Venus.
I looked up Akbash temperament:
Because of its strong independent nature, it thinks twice upon receiving commands. Not recommended for first time dog owners, or people who do not wish to have a serious guard dog. Companion dog owners should be prepared to spend a fair amount of money on good fencing and a lot of time on socialization and maintaining the humans pack leader status over the dog. The Akbash dog needs a firm, but calm, confident, consistent owner.
Hey, now that’s our Venus.
Last summer we spent most weekends camping at Meadow Lake on the Flattops. The weekend after Karen prodded me into considering that Venus might be part Akbash, a large herd of sheep covered the hillside across from our campground. A sign at the campground warned campers to stay away from the sheep and keep their dogs away. To paraphrase, the sign said the Akbash dogs guarding the sheep were trained to guard the sheep and if left alone would not harm anyone but could be vicious and attack if approached.
What an amazing opportunity we were given to watch the life of the Akbash from a respectable distance. To SEE them at work. To hear them barking at night to warn the coyotes to stay away. It was an incredible experience.
At the same time we were with Venus. We saw how she reacted to the Akbash and their sheep. She was alert and listened. We were her flock. She was at work. She showed us who she was. We saw the Akbash dogs with their herd two weekends in a row. Perhaps those experiences awakened some ancient Akbash guardian spirit within her.
I told Karen, “You were right about Venus. We saw the Akbash. We watched them work. She’s definitely Akbash.”
When Venus’s meltdown began in September, Karen and Anthony shared their Powder stories with us and encouraged us to stick with her. Sometimes I think they believed in her more than we did. Their understanding combined with actual experience with the Akbash breed has been our lifeline. On top of that, Venus has known their two Labs, Seek and Fern since we adopted her. Together at the park, our dogs make a stable pack which has been essential to her rehabilitation. She is mostly calm with them.
Okay, so Venus is part Akbash, which is a low energy guardian dog. She’s also part Lab, which is a high energy hunting dog. Both are working dog breeds, but the low energy mixed with high energy seems like a recipe for obsession. Yet obsession is what makes the Akbash a perfect guardian for a herd of sheep. The dogs must simultaneously keep track of the sheep while looking out for predators. Perhaps the combination of low energy and high energy breeds has intensified Venus’s already obsessive nature. That could also explain why she was calm one minute then snapped into aggression mode the next.
A working dog needs a job to do. That’s probably why the new office routine has been working so well for her. It has given her another job to do and has broken up her routine so she’s not bored.
From learning about the Akbash breed and watching Venus, we’ve figured out that she’s a checker. A Rain Dog. When she comes in the house, she checks on Zeus, she checks on the cats, she checks her food dish. Then she settles down. When she goes outside, if Zeus is out, she checks on him first. She probably has a whole nother yard ritual after that. We can allow that kind of obsession up to a point. We’ve had to teach her to leave Zeus alone. No nose bopping, no nipping, no pawing, no throwing toys at him. She can look but she can’t touch. He doesn’t like it.
The Akbash are guardian dogs, not herding dogs. However part of the guardian dog’s job is to keep the herd together, so he will nip at a sheep when he needs to control it.
But Zeus is not a sheep. He’s a purebred Alaskan Malamute. Malamute temperament is not as easily describable as other breeds. In general Malamutes are intelligent, social, good-natured, and communicative. Some Malamutes are high energy working dogs. Some are low energy companion dogs. Each individual dog’s temperament is a reflection of the way he’s raised. Even though they are not considered guardian dogs, a Malamute will protect his owner. Above all else, Malamutes are loyal.
What matters most is how Zeus has responded to Venus. After all, the question is no longer whether Venus can be rehabilitated. The question is whether Zeus and Venus can live together under the same roof. Zeus’s behavior has been fascinating.
When we started watching the Dog Whisperer, Zeus couldn’t help but notice that our walks had turned into training sessions. He also noticed that we were training Venus to leave him alone. In mid-December he started watching the Dog Whisperer, too. I realize how bizarre that sounds – but it’s true. One episode in particular captured his attention. It was the one about a 1-year old female Pit Bull named Justice. She was undisciplined and out of control, and had begun to act aggressively toward the family’s 6-year old male golden retriever mix. Cesar expressed enormous empathy for the older male having to put up with the “crazy bitch”. He showed the owners how the older more stable dog could be encouraged to train the younger dog.
After that episode, Zeus began participating in her training. He showed her by example how to walk properly on the leash and how to behave toward barking dogs and strangers on our walks. To encourage him, we made a special point to watch episodes that included using the energy of the calm, stable older dog to get the younger messed up dog to follow commands. Zeus paid attention. When we told Venus to sit, he sat. At Dogland he showed Venus how to greet other dogs. Sometimes we let her off leash at the park if there’s no one else around, or there are dogs she knows well. When she wandered off, Zeus found her and brought her back to us. Now he just shows us where she is. If she charges up to another dog, Zeus runs interference and blocks her. All of these things he learned from watching Cesar.
In another episode, Cesar showed how one dog will discipline another dog with one growl or one nip (or bite), or a combination of both. That is not dominance or aggression. That is one dog telling the other one to stop the bad behavior. Right after we saw that episode Zeus tried it out on her when he didn’t know I was watching. The dogs were in the yard and another dog walked by. They always get excited when a dog walks by, which is normal. With Venus it can become obsessive, escalating into the anxiety dance with ferocious barking, which it did that day. Zeus did a combination growl with a nip on her. I held my breath. A month earlier she would have snapped and snarled, jumped him and pinned him down. That first time she looked shocked for a second. Then she lowered her head and backed away, and eventually calmed down.
That was a pivotal moment for Zeus and Venus. It even felt like a pivotal moment. The most amazing thing was watching Zeus actually control Venus’s behavior. As we trained Venus, he saw how much control we were gaining over her bad behaviors, which gave him the confidence to participate without fear of her attacking him.
That can-do attitude in Zeus is the perfect example of Malamute behavior. Like Cesar says, “dogs don’t rationalize” but Malamutes do tend to think through things. They handle challenges with patience, perseverance and intelligence. Sometimes Malamutes think too much. When Zeus kept his distance and ignored Venus he wasn’t being true to his breed. He was feeling sorry for himself. He was being a big baby. We’ve learned to encourage the Malamute in Zeus to be the calm, stable example to Venus – the Teacher.
By Christmas we saw the beginnings of a healthier more trusting relationship between them. We gave them both pink blankets. Pink represents balanced energy. We had figured out that Venus’s anxiety was caused by confinement and punishment as a puppy. We learned that obsession is an Akbash breed characteristic, which is intensified in Venus because of the hi-lo energy of her Akbash/Lab mix.
But where did her aggression come from?
In every Dog Whisperer episode about aggression Cesar emphasizes and illustrates how unbalanced or bad external energy that comes from humans or other animals can turn an anxious dog into an aggressive dog. In other words, show Cesar an aggressive dog and he looks for the source of bad energy in the dog’s life. Medical researchers concur that “stress, frustration, and/or conflict” in the dog’s life can trigger aggression.
So where in Venus’s world was the bad energy coming from?
Stay tuned for Part 8
Filed under: Akbash, CCD, Divide Creek Animal Hospital, aggression, anxiety, canine, canine compulsive disorder, cesar millan, clomipramine, crazy bitch, dog behavior, dog fight, dog story, dog whisperer, dogland, dogs, obsession, pet adoption, tibbetts
This is Part 6 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the five previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
Panicky Pup
Wouldn’t it be nice if dogs could talk? Then Venus could lie on the couch, as she loves to do, and tell us what’s really bugging her.
Instead we have to learn a different way to communicate with our dogs. Most of the time, we humans muddle our way through various training methods and achieve a healthy relationship with our dogs. However when good dogs go bad, Cesar Millan’s proven method of rehabilitation through dog psychology really is the solution. Just by watching Dog Whisperer episodes we have been learning how to recognize signals of anxiety and dominance in Venus’s behavior and how to correct her.
On December 2, Venus was scheduled for her 4 week checkup. The night before, Tod and I discussed keeping her Clomipramine dosage at 75 mg twice a day. The day we accidentally double dosed her with 100 mg she had acted sluggish. At 75 mg she was still Venus, yet calmer and more amenable to training. She had responded so quickly to the techniques we’d learned from Cesar, we almost felt like we were cheating with the drug. Almost.
Dr. Pearce was impressed with how well Venus was doing. She explained that the next dosage level would be 100 mg, then up to a maximum 125 mg twice a day according to Venus’s weight, which was 90 lbs.
“We’ve decided we’d like to keep her at her current dosage,” I told her. “We’re addicted to the Dog Whisperer. We’re using his dog psychology method on her, and it’s working.”
Dr. Pearce was a little surprised but she confessed she loves the show, too. “It’s obviously working. Venus is so calm today. So let’s keep her on 75 mg. If you change your minds at any point just call me.”
I told her the only problem Venus had with the pills was sometimes she gagged.
“How do you pill her?” she asked.
“I just stick it down her throat,” I said.
“Clomipramine can cause dry mouth. It probably gets stuck and dissolves in her throat. It’s pretty bitter. Try putting it in a spoonful of peanut butter.”
The peanut butter trick led to a funny illustration of the difference between Zeus and Venus. Zeus takes Soloxine twice a day for hypothyroidism. So we pill them at the same time. I tried the peanut butter that evening. Venus loved it. Zeus wrinkled his nose but ate it anyway. The next morning he was ready for me. He rolled his tongue along the roof of his mouth and the wad of peanut butter shot across the room. I cracked up. It was news to me he didn’t like peanut butter. Or else he preferred the finger down his throat. Weird dog.
Finding the magic dosage plus Cesar’s training method gave us a whole lot of confidence with Venus. Progress was slow but it was – well – PROGRESS. Training her to control her behavior was only half of her rehabilitation. We needed to understand the psychological factors that led to her meltdown. When rehabilitating a dog, Cesar always takes into consideration the dog’s history and breed. Likewise we evaluated Venus. There must have been some signs we missed along the way.
Venus was ten months old when we adopted her from a family in April 2006. She was born May 31, 2005. Gemini. I know. The Twins. Dual personalities much?
The mom said they had to give her up because she and her husband (we didn’t meet him) were working long hours and their 2 kids were in school so they didn’t have time to spend with her. The mom and kids seemed frustrated and sad. She had escaped from their fenced-in yard several times and was destructive when she was confined alone indoors. The mom said Venus’s hobby was sitting on the couch and watching TV. That seemed odd as I stood in their tiny yard watching a very high energy pup tearing around with Zeus. She didn’t really act like a couch potato.
Zeus came along with us because we had to be sure they liked each other before we brought her home. It looked like love at first sight. Venus wasn’t the least bit territorial. The 2 dogs ran around and played like normal dogs do. So we decided to take her home.
The mom also said she was part Great Pyrenees and part Lab. We knew a lot about both breeds. Labs are good-natured, high energy dogs and Great Pyrenees are mellow, low energy. Seemed like a good mix, which gave us a lot of confidence about training her.
Once we got her home we quickly discovered why Zeus was so delighted. She was in heat. Even neutered males respond to female hormones so we took her to the vet right away for spaying. After surgery, Venus was easy going. She responded to leash training, though it was obvious she’d had very little in the way of training.
In place of discipline, she had evidently been punished. When told to “sit and stay” she cowered, then tried to flee – and often did. Her behavior told us that most likely someone had smacked her in the sit and stay position. “Sit and stay” is, of course, the cornerstone of every dog obedience regimen. Building trust was a challenge. She was also afraid of bathrooms, so we assumed she had been locked in the bathroom for long periods of time.
It took Zeus a long time to adjust to Venus. During the first couple weeks every time Ema came over, he acted over eager around her and sort of pushed Venus off on her. Then after she left, he acted sullen and ignored Venus. We thought then and still believe he wanted Ema to take Venus home with her, like she did with her two dogs whenever they came over. Eventually Ema’s dogs went home. He was trying to get rid of Venus. He knew something we didn’t.
As she recovered from the surgery, more behavior problems arose. Twice she climbed our fence and escaped our yard.
Venus the puppy planned her escape 4/17/06
We installed an electric wire around the perimeter of our fence. After one low volt buzz at the gate she never tried to escape again.
Zeus has always trusted and accepted me and Tod as his pack leaders. Because he is the older, more stable dog, we assumed Venus would be submissive toward him and learn from his behavior. For the most part she did, yet sometimes she rebelled against her place in our pack. There were 4 incidents during the first 3 months.
The first incident happened during the first month. While they were playing tag in the yard Venus grabbed Zeus by the collar. Her lower jaw got tangled up, she panicked and began snapping and snarling. Luckily I was at home and managed to unhook his collar before she strangled him. Zeus and I were both bitten in the process. I kept Zeus’s collar off for a couple weeks. I played with them daily to show Venus how to play fair. It worked and we eventually put Zeus’s collar back on, though I loosened it to slip off easily. When she nipped at his collar during play we stopped her.
On a camping trip to Moab, Venus started eating Zeus’s food. He walked over and growled at her and she attacked him. He pinned her down on the ground and we pulled them apart. The fight amounted to no more than gnashing of the teeth and a lot of saliva but nobody was injured. We felt that Zeus had handled the incident properly by putting her in her place and nothing more needed to be done. We thought Venus was crazy to take him on and she’d learned her lesson.
Several weeks later I stood on the porch talking to Zeus and scratching his ears. Venus came up to us and started nose bopping. Zeus gave a low growl to tell her to back off. She snapped and snarled at him. I grabbed her collar to pull her away from Zeus and she bit my arm. It could also be said that my arm was in the way when she snapped at Zeus and I got bit. It’s true but it’s no excuse. Biting me was unacceptable.
We thought her behavior was related to having her spayed while she was in heat, which can cause a sudden decrease in estrogen, along with more pronounced testosterone. It seemed logical that a testosterone surge could have caused her anxious dominant behavior.
We put her on the homeopathic remedy Aggression Formula. The remedy combined with exercise, training, and socialization worked well. On a camping trip to the Flattops she dug up an elk bone and teased Zeus with it. We told her to stop and tried to get the bone away from her, which began a game of keep away. Zeus stepped in and growled at her. She dropped the bone and lunged at him. Because we were right in the middle of it, we separated them before a fight broke out. Tod grabbed her and I snatched the bone. He put her in the camper for a time out and gave her some Aggression Formula. Meanwhile I hid the bone in the pickup. She calmed down and that was the end of it.
We kept Venus on the Aggression Formula for about six months. There were no more incidents. She seemed happier and more stable. Venus and Zeus became good buddies. She accepted Tod and my roles as pack leaders and Zeus’s calm assertive dominance over her. She played well with the other dogs at Dogland. If another dog attacked her she did fight back but that’s pretty much normal dog behavior. She has always adored Hailey, our 7-year old granddaughter, and has never even looked cross-eyed at her. She has loved our cats like they’re her little lambs and has never so much as snapped at one of them.
Now that we have a better understanding of dog psychology, there were probably some things we could have done better back then. Because we achieved the results we wanted, we felt satisfied. In retrospect, we don’t believe that we fully understood her anxiety. In the past we either ignored it or yelled at her. The problem is, Venus responds to anger and/or fear with more anxiety. If we need to raise our voices, we’ve learned to do so with authority, not anger. We’ve learned to address her anxiety by distracting her and making her calm down. Then we reward her calm behavior.
As I mentioned, Venus showed signs that she had been severely punished and shut in the bathroom when she was a puppy. Her early bad behaviors seemed rooted in separation anxiety. We have come to the conclusion that she probably wasn’t abused. It seems more likely that the punishment and confinement caused her to develop anxiety, but not necessarily aggression. The snapping, snarling, even biting that Venus engaged in when we first adopted her amounted to an undisciplined puppy testing the pack. The aggression she displayed last summer and fall was something else.
The puzzle pieces had begun to fall into place. We had the anxiety thing figured out. But we still had obsession and aggression staring us in the face.
Medical researchers and Cesar also point to breed as a factor. The previous owner had said Venus was part Great Pyrenees and part Lab. Last summer we realized the mom was mistaken. Venus is a whole nother breed.
Stay tuned for Part 7
Filed under: Akbash, CCD, Silt, aggression, cesar millan, clomipramine, crazy bitch, cross country skiing, dog behavior, dog fight, dog story, dog whisperer, dogland, dogs, pet adoption, rehabilitation, river park, tibbetts, training
This is Part 5 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the four previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
The Dog Whisperer
The weekend before Tod left for Chicago, I saw Karen J at Dogland.
“Venus seems a lot calmer,” she said. “How are things going with her and Zeus?”
“Not well,” I said. “They’re fine here at the park. But we still keep them separated at home. Zeus doesn’t really want to have anything to do with her. And who can blame him? I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive her. “
“That’s so sad,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Stay positive. Keep working with her,” I said. “I don’t have any answers. I’ve given it up to the Universe. The answers will have to come to me. Somehow.”
Prior to Tod’s departure I worked on my self-confidence. All my life, I’ve had a special connection with animals. I’ve bred and raised dozens of Persians and Himalayans. I’ve bred, raised, owned, and fostered dozens of dogs. For ten years, Kay Larson’s horse ranch was 2 blocks from our house. For many years he enlisted my help with socializing his horses and a donkey. He said I had “animal magic”. So-oo why couldn’t I work my magic with Venus?
Venus really enjoyed spending mornings at Tod’s office. The extra walks plus having the run of the office was good for her. But we were concerned that the combination of Tod’s absence and taking away her new office routine would increase her anxiety at home. Our daughter, Ema also works at his office so she offered to take Venus with her for at least 3 mornings.
Before Tod left on Monday afternoon, November 17, we made sure Venus had three walks. After he left, I decided to calm her anxiety with meditation. I called her into the bedroom while I sat on the rug in a lotus position. I told her to sit. She ignored me and did her anxiety dance. So I closed my eyes and began deep breathing. I should’ve videotaped the session. It was hilarious.
“A-um.”
Bop. She poked me in face with her nose. I kept my eyes closed and ignored her.
“A-um.”
Bop. Bop. Again with the nose in the face. Again I ignored her.
“A-um.”
Bop. Bop. BOP. She almost knocked me over.
“Ouch!” I opened my eyes and pushed her away. “Venus, go lie down.”
She licked my face. More anxiety dance. Time out.
I got up and let her outside. She ran around the house, into the garage and barked at the door to get back in. I took that as a signal that even though she was being a pest, she wanted to be near me while I meditated. I let her back in. Next I tried a new tactic. I stretched out on the carpet, face down and covered my face with my hands. She poked at me and pawed the carpet. I nearly suffocated trying not to laugh. Eventually she lay quietly beside me. I hung onto the moment as long as I could. We had accomplished something. What that was exactly, I had no clue.
I turned to the intertubes and googled “dog aggression” which led me to the Dog Whisperer website and an announcement that the program would be returning to the National Geographic Channel beginning with a re-run of an older episode about dog aggression on Tuesday, November 18. I set my DVR to record it.
I admit that I had watched a couple episodes of the Dog Whisperer a few years ago before we adopted Venus but had never kept up with it. Cesar Millan seemed like a really good dog trainer and nice enough guy, but I thought the dog owners were idiots. There was a woman who was afraid of her own dog and a couple who never walked their dog. Why do people like that even have dogs?
I was supposed to increase Venus’s Clomipramine from 50 mg twice a day to 75 mg on Tuesday. But I cheated and upped it on Monday night. It was my first evening alone in the house with those two mooks and I didn’t want any trouble. Even though we had been opening the gate after dinner when Tod was home, I kept the gate closed and the dogs separated. They still weren’t even going out in the yard together. The only time they were together was during walks. I decided not to make any changes in that routine while Tod was gone.
I assessed my “tools”. In addition to the Clomipramine I had the leashes, Zeus’s studded collar, pepper spray, the gates, and a ridiculous Chinese-fire-drill-with-dogs routine. How the hell had life with my dogs come to this?
The 75 mg dosage worked. Venus acted calmer right away. By Wednesday I felt certain we could get through the week without any problems.
Then I sat down and watched the Dog Whisperer episode I had recorded. It was the one about Isis and Tina, the two Pit Bulls that fought with each other all the time. Their aggression threatened to break up their owners’ relationship. Isis and Tina hated each other. But Cesar trained their owners how to work with the dogs to build a positive, healthy relationship. I was blown away. Zeus and Venus weren’t anywhere near that bad. That meant there was hope we could repair what Venus had broken.
Call it a revelation – or divine intervention – or canine intervention. I knew I had found my answer. And his name was Cesar Millan.
I watched the episode twice and picked up a whole bunch of tips on how to train Venus right away, starting with the leash. We were giving her way too much control. I reined her in. I also made her sit until she calmed down when she acted aggressively toward other dogs. By Friday we had made tons of progress. I couldn’t wait to show Tod the episode and how I had applied what I learned.
When he got home Friday night he noticed immediately how much calmer Venus was and how much more control I had gained over her anxiety. The “Shhh-t-t-t!” and snapping of the fingers worked like a charm. Distraction. We watched the episode and Tod saw how Cesar’s dog psychology and people training worked.
“What this means is that in order to rehabilitate Venus, we have to start all over again with her training,” I told him. “It’s a huge challenge but at least now we have a resource to help us get through this.”
I set the DVR to record the upcoming Dog Whisperer marathon on Thanksgiving weekend. We continued working with Venus. No fixating. No dominance. No anxiety. We opened the gate in the house and we let them out in the yard together with supervision. Zeus didn’t always stay in the same room with her. And he didn’t always stay in the yard with her. But SOMETIMES he did, though he kept his distance.
Thanksgiving weekend was amazing. Ema, Tim, and Hailey came over for Turkey Day. The dogs were calm and well behaved, even around all the food – which usually makes Venus really anxious, then Zeus gets all grumpy. But that didn’t happen. We watched several Dog Whisperer episodes and got a whole bunch more new tips and tricks to work on with Venus.
On Saturday, November 29, we took the dogs cross country skiing. It was our first time out for the season. We have trained them to do skijoring. It’s a gas. Zeus isn’t into it as much anymore, but Venus loves it. Oh I know. I know. How the hell did we manage to train that crazy bitch to do skijoring and work with Zeus as a team? All I know is she wasn’t crazy when we trained her.
Anyway, that day something wonderful happened out on the West Elk ski trail. When we let them loose, Zeus and Venus walked together side by side, flanks touching. They sniffed together. They played together. She wasn’t fixating on him. He wasn’t ignoring her. It was like old times. Zeus remembered what it was he used to love about Venus. Her companionship. Tears ran down my face as I skied.
We devoured Dog Whisperer episodes as quickly as the DVR could supply them. Cesar takes a holistic approach to dog rehabilitation. He considers the dog’s breed, energy level, training – or not, living conditions, and what sort of pack leadership – or not – comes from the humans around the dog.
Using Cesar’s criteria we evaluated our situation. Tod and I are pretty good pack leaders. We don’t “humanize” our dogs. They get plenty of exercise, discipline, and affection. I’m good with the discipline but I need to be more patient with Venus. When her anxiety level rises and I have to tell her to sit 20 times in a row and she doesn’t do it, I lose my cool and yell at her, “Sit dammit!” Tod needs to be less permissive and more consistent. He cuts her way too much slack. Sometimes he rewards her anxiety with the attention she’s seeking. We admitted our weaknesses and committed to improvement.
We learned about triggers. How to identify situations that activate Venus’s anxiety. Zeus gets a lot of exercise for an 8-year old Malamute, so he gets more tired than Venus who is only 3. When he’s tired he doesn’t like to be messed with. But as I pointed out, Venus is a nose bopper, which pisses Zeus off and he grumbles at her. That’s a trigger. He grumbles, she gets anxious. We worked on training Venus to leave Zeus alone when he’s tired.
Family members coming and going is another trigger. Or people coming to the door. Those are common issues that Cesar addresses. We worked on distracting her during those situations by following his instructions.
We learned how to recognize when Venus was showing dominant behavior, because when she does that, aggression usually follows. Even though she’s a 90-lb dog, she used to walk across the back of the couch. We used to think she was funny like a clown. Not. She was displaying dominant behavior so we made her stop it. In fact much of her attention-seeking clownish behavior that used to make us laugh wasn’t funny anymore. We suddenly saw through it. She used the spotlight to control the situation and gain dominance. As cute as she was, the behaviors had to stop.
The great thing was, in the process of correcting her dominant behaviors, she didn’t lose her comical spirit. She still sits upside down.
She still rolls on her back grins and shows teeth.
She still tosses her dog toys. She’s just not allowed to smack Zeus with them while he’s resting.
Cesar is an expert in dealing with all types of dog anxiety and/or aggression. He usually recommends 10 minutes a day on the treadmill. We don’t own a treadmill, but we haven’t ruled out getting one. We decided our 4 walks a day were better than a treadmill.
With severe “red zone” cases of aggression, Cesar usually takes the dog to live with his stable pack for several weeks. We don’t live near LA so that’s not an option. Venus does have dogs that she regularly socializes with at Dogland. We decided that working on her social skills at the park was a pretty good substitute.
We had good days and bad days. What mattered most was that we were making progress with her.
Because I’m a writer I need to know why things happen. Why did Venus go crazy? Veterinary medical researchers suggest that an imbalance of serotonin in the brain can cause CCD in dogs. Researchers also recommend taking into consideration other factors, including the dog’s breed, plus the levels of “stress, frustration, and/or conflict” in the dog’s life, which is exactly what Cesar does.
The Clomipramine combined with training were just the beginning of Venus’s rehabilitation. Our next step was to look into her past to find more of the missing puzzle pieces.
Stay tuned for Part 6
