From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

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

Part 1: Tale of Two Dogs

Part 2: Dog Bomb

Part 3: Sick Puppy

Part 4: Torn Between Two Dogs

Part 5: The Dog Whisperer

Part 6: Panicky Pup

Part 7: Akbash Awakening

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