From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

This is Part 9 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.

Please note that the incidents described here are part of an ongoing investigation therefore some names have been changed and/or omitted.

No Bad Dogs – Only Bad People

Even though Zeus has borne the brunt of Venus’s aggression he wasn’t the source of the problem. She was aggressive toward other dogs and had also shown aggression toward strangers. It’s called Redirected Aggression:

This type of aggression is relatively common, but is a behavior that pet owners may not always understand. If a dog is aroused into an aggressive response by a person or animal that he is prevented from attacking, he may redirect this aggression onto someone else. A common example occurs when two family dogs become excited, bark and growl in response to another dog passing through the front yard. The two dogs, confined behind a fence, may turn and attack each other because they can’t attack the intruder.

Venus was taking out her frustration on others. Zeus just happened to be around more.

Why was she so frustrated? Who was the intruder?

Obviously Zeus and I have a connection. Good energy and good communication. Certainly he knows the source of her frustration. The answer was so simple. All we needed to do was ask him.

Zeus is very friendly He likes people. He likes dogs and cats. He loves to spread good energy. But he does not like the Bully family that lives across the street. I’m sure his issues with them go back many years. We weren’t aware of a problem brewing until September 2006.

We left the dogs with a pet sitter over Labor Day weekend. Mr. Bully complained that Venus had barked at night while we were gone. We apologized. We sent flowers.

I invited Mr. and Mrs. Bully and their 2 boys over to meet Venus and get to know her. The meeting didn’t go very well. Venus barked repeatedly at them. She would not calm down. I had never seen her act that way. I handed them treats to give her but she refused to take them and grew increasingly agitated. Even Zeus walked away.

“We didn’t know you had another dog,” Mr. Bully said.

That struck me as odd. How did they not notice her in 5 months?

“We’ve never heard her barking before last weekend,” Mr. Bully said. “You must keep her inside all the time.”

“No. She’s outside most of the time,” I said. “Even at night.”

By that point Venus’s barking had become so out of control it was impossible to talk. I opened the gate thinking she would calm down and accept the treats. Instead she bolted down the sidewalk and ran away. I convinced her to come back but she steered clear of the Bully family.

Venus told me a different story. She definitely knew the Bullys and she did not like them. She feared them. Afterward I told Tod about the strange meeting. We assumed something bad must have happened while we were gone.

The weekend before Thanksgiving Mr. Bully came over and complained that Venus was barking when we were not at home.

He seemed real up tight so I tried the humor. “Now Mr. B, don’t expect us to send flowers every time Venus barks.”

“This is not a joke,” he snapped. “I’m dead serious.”

“Okay fine,” I said. “It’s just that last summer you said you didn’t want her to bark during the night. So we’ve been keeping her inside at night.”

“I said she barks when you’re gone,” he insisted.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “No one else has complained.”

“Well I’m complaining,” he said.

“Oh come on. It can’t be that bad,” I said. “We hardly ever leave the dogs.”

“I’m telling you now I want it to stop. Don’t make me get the police involved,” he warned.

Tod and I agreed Mr. Bully’s attitude seemed way over the top. We have neighbors all around us. No one else had complained about Venus’s barking. I saw Mrs. Magpie almost every day and believe me if Venus was barking a lot, she would’ve told me.

Tod was and is a Town Board Member. Coincidentally a week later at the Board meeting, he and I were singled out as troublemakers and our dogs were declared a nuisance at Dogland. The whole thing was a sham which I covered in a series of blog posts (see December 2006). Because Mr. Bully’s complaint and the Dogland complaint seemed to rise out of thin air at the same time we wondered if they were connected somehow. It was no secret that some of the other Board Members did not like Tod. Typical small town politics. We had good reason to be suspicious. 

Since the Board was planning to impose a leash law at Dogland because of our dogs, I attended the next Board meeting to defend myself and my dogs. Both Tod and I were at the meeting. I was gone for a little over an hour. A half hour of that I stood outside the Town Hall talking to other dog owners, which is about 3 blocks as the crow flies from our house. There were no dogs barking. I walked home. When I was a block away Venus barked excitedly. When I walked inside I heard a voice on the answering machine. It was Mrs. Bully complaining about the barking. She said that Venus had been barking all night long. She was lying.

One evening in early January 2007, we went out to the annual Town employee appreciation dinner. We were gone 2 hours and returned home to a message on our answering machine from Mr. Bully, swearing at us about Venus’s barking. He even played a recording of loud dog barking. It sounded like the dog was barking into a microphone.

Wait a minute. If he was close enough to our fence to record her barking, then he had provoked her. Wasn’t that entrapment?

Since we had no way to prove she was not barking excessively when we were not at home, we bought a bark collar. I hated the whole idea.

“Pay attention,” I told Tod. “Every complaint happened when we were doing something related to the Town Board. I think someone on the Board is encouraging people to complain about our dogs.”

“That may very well be,” he said. “So if we use the bark collar that will put an end to their complaints.”

Tod approached Mr. Bully and told him about the bark collar. He enlisted his help in determining whether or not it was working since he was the only one who had the problem with her barking and it was only happening when we weren’t home.

“Bark collars don’t work,” Bully told hm. “Besides it’s no big deal. I don’t pay that much attention when the dog barks.”

Say what?

In February I circulated a petition to designate River Park (aka Dogland) as an off-leash dog park, which I also covered in my blog (January, February, March 2007). My petition had met with plenty of opposition from some Board Members. If my petition was successful (and it was) the Board could not reject it, they could only approve it or send the matter to a Special Election.

Collecting signatures gave me the opportunity to ask all the neighbors around us if Venus barked a lot when we weren’t home. They ALL said no.

I used the petition as an excuse to pay a visit to the Bullys. They signed the petition. I knew they would. For them it wasn’t about the dog park. They just didn’t like us. They had tried to engage us in petty squabbles in the past but we had just ignored them.

I asked them how Venus was doing with the new bark collar. “Has she been barking when we’re gone?” 

They said they hadn’t noticed. I thought that seemed like a vague response and they seemed kind of nervous. Mrs. Bully changed the subject and asked about our granddaughter.

The next day we returned home from a day of downhill skiing (no dogs allowed) to 2 very agitated dogs. Venus was wearing the bark collar and she was hoarse. A warning ticket was attached to our front door. We noticed fresh tire tracks in the snow in our driveway and figured she had been barking because someone was on our property. Tod called Officer Doolittle, who had issued the warning ticket. He said he had received a complaint so he had pulled into our driveway and stayed there for 10 minutes and she had barked all the time.

Yup, that’s right. Officer Doolittle came to our house, parked in our driveway, and provoked Venus so she barked herself hoarse through the bark collar. Cruelty on top of entrapment.

The following week I talked to Mrs. Magpie and our other neighbor, Mrs. Dove and apologized for Venus’s barking. They both said they had not heard her barking until they saw a police car in our driveway and assumed that’s why she was barking.

A few weeks later, around the same time I turned in the dog park petition with more than enough signatures, we arrived home at 9:00 pm from an evening out to a message on the answering machine from Officer Doolittle again. He asked Tod to call him about our dog barking.

So he did. Doolittle told him that he had a complaint about our dogs. He had driven by but they weren’t barking.

“That’s because Venus was wearing a bark collar,” Tod told him

Doolittle added that the caller had also complained that we were neglecting our dogs. That we had left them outside in the cold for hours without any food, water, or shelter. It was 20 degrees and we had been gone for 3 hours.

Tod couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s ridiculous. The dogs have shelter on the porch and they can get in the garage. We keep their water pail in there. We don’t feed them outside. I invite you to come over any time and see how my dogs are treated.”

“A garage isn’t warm enough,” Doolittle said. “You should have doghouses or keep your dogs inside when it’s cold.”

They bantered back and forth until finally Tod said, “So was my dog barking or not?”

Doolittle replied that he hadn’t hear the dogs barking but that someone had complained about them. Tod reported both incidents with Doolittle to the Police Chief.

The complaint was so far-fetched it only added to our suspicions that some Board Members had encouraged the Bullys and Officer Doolittle to harass us about our dogs.

In April, my petition was begrudgingly approved by the Town Board and River Park became an off-leash dog park. None of the Board Members, except Tod, thanked me for my efforts.

During that spring things heated up politically in our little town. The town administrator and planning director, plus the town treasurer resigned amid allegations that the some Board Members had been harassing them. Also Officer Doolittle was fired for reasons unknown.

Even curiouser they were the same Board Members we suspected were promoting the harassment of us and our dogs.

Months passed with no complaints from the Bullys or the cops. Venus wore the bark collar when we left the dogs at home. Until July 11, 2007. Tod and I met at the home of the former town administrator and planning director to discuss forming a recall committee. As we sat outside on their deck I noticed Officer Piddle drive by very slowly.

We were gone for about 2 hours. Venus was wearing the bark collar. When we got home both dogs were extremely agitated. Even Zeus was barking. Venus was whining and hoarse. There was a warning ticket on our door. Upstairs on the answering machine was a profanity-riddled message from Mr. Bully. However the time on the answering machine was AFTER the time on the warning ticket.

What the hell?

In the days following we conducted our own investigation into the incidents that night. I can’t say who are sources were or how we gathered our information. What we learned about that night confirmed our worst suspicions. A Board Member, Mr. Dittohead called in a complaint about our dogs barking to Officer Piddle. Except Dittohead lives a mile away. When Piddle delivered the warning ticket the dogs barked at him, which prompted the call from Bully. Piddle also happened to be working his final shift that night, as in leaving the department.

We knew it wasn’t the first time but we still couldn’t prove anything. With all the harassment going on, our sources had good reasons to keep silent.

Several people had predicted that if we went through with the recall we would be harassed. By then we had already been harassed for 8 months. We felt we could handle it. We also believed we were protecting our dogs as much as possible. We selfishly thought it was all about us.

We refused to be intimidated. Our recall committee filed petitions against Mr. Dittohead and the Mayor. Dittohead resigned.

We were concerned about our dogs’ safety during the petition drive so we kept them indoors while we were gone. We hardly gave the Bullys any opportunities to complain. But they grasped at every straw. In August we accused the Mayor of violating Town Ordinances and provided the evidence on my blog. The next Saturday we went for an hour-long bike ride and left the dogs out. Mrs. Bully left a message on the machine that Venus had been barking all day long. A lie. In September we handed in our recall petitions with more than enough signatures. The following Sunday we left the dogs out while we were gone for a few hours. A half hour after we left, Mrs. B left a message that Venus was barking all morning long. Another lie. We ignored her. The timing of her complaints was so obvious, not to mention the bold-faced lies.

The first week of November we went to Hawaii for a week. We left the dogs in Ema’s care. She planned to keep Venus at her house. But all hell broke loose anyway.

Stay tuned for Part 10

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

Part 8: The Two-Headed Dog Visits the Vet

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