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"I've got your "dog training" riiiiggghhht here...." |
Once we sent away for one of those canine DNA tests out of curiosity, and I'd have guessed Great Dane with either Doberman or pit bull, but it came back Great Dane and Rottweiler, about equal parts, and no other breeds. This really does not compute, but it was good enough for us. Does he look like a Rottie to you? Since then, I have read quite a bit about these tests, and if I send it away again to the same company I might get a different answer, and almost certainly will if I send away to a different company. That's okay - we are always being asked about his breed but we'll never really know for sure.
We did not have to do much work with this dog when we got him, and now I realize this might have worked against us in the long run (the photo at the top is just for the ironic imagery, and is NOT the work of Sirius! Click on the text for the reference). He went right into a crate when we got him home from the rescue location about an hour away (I was a nervous wreck when I realized I never asked if he was crate trained! What if he wasn't? I rely on crates for dog training) and never had any accidents in the house. He got along with our bullmastiff wonderfully, and was a great addition to the house. He didn't do anything we didn't want, and if he did, one correction was enough to cure him forever.
Over time, several years, he started to get more and more excitable when we would see other dogs out on walks. When we went to see him for the first time, he was not leash trained at all, and my husband was almost unable to hold him with a leash. I was ready to go home right then with no dog - it was a deal breaker for me. The rescue folks got out a Gentle Leader/Halti collar type device and that worked like a charm, and he was easy as pie to control. Whew! A very close call.
Once on a walk he was dancing around in excitement about a dog he saw on leash and he shook his head just right and got out of the head collar. Another time he was able to bite right through it, like he had used scissors, while he was in the car on our way somewhere. I decided to switch to a choke chain, which is what I've always used with our bullmastiffs, enabling me to give short "corrections" that keep the dog under control; this is important with a 150 pound bully breed for sure, and has worked very well for me, so I figured it would work on this giant dog too.
Well, work it did, but, unbeknownst to me, I was conditioning him to get more and more excited and upset at the sight of other dogs, since his behavior would be corrected with pain and my displeasure. At some point he was impossible to take out without his excitement level turning him almost "red zone" before we got out the door. He gets himself worked up in anticipation of just about anything.
In the house, this dog is the model citizen - probably the best behaved dog I've ever known. He does not counter surf (though with his height he could do so easily), does not take food from children, does not take food from the coffee table (I would not blame him for that, but we've come home from being gone and a sandwich was left by one of the kids on the coffee table, untouched). He does not get up on the sofa unless invited, and NEVER has used the sofa in our absence - he seems to have no desire to be on the sofa unless one of us is there too. You can call his name or simply snap your fingers and point, and he'll go lay down on his bed. I can stop him on a dime in the house.
However, leaving the house became another story altogether. There were more than one instance where he was dancing and stepping on my feet, causing me to fall down at the sight of another dog, and one of the last times I took him out he reacted very badly to another dog that nipped at him as he was being walked by - Sirius was labeled the "bad dog" and I took him home. It used to be that we could take him to festivals and events where there would be a lot of dogs, "flooding" him with so many other dogs that he could not concentrate on one in particular, but that was no longer the case, and we had to leave him behind.
There was also an incident where we were walking down the street and a very small stray dog (loose dogs are very rare in my neighborhood) that was chasing us, barking and trying to nip at his face, and me unable to get us away, since that dog was loose and was running alongside us, determined to engage with Sirius, a 130-pound dog versus a 12-pound dog. Sirius bent down and picked up this little thing, shook it, and tossed it down. It got up and ran under a car, and fortunately I saw it several weeks later, apparently unharmed, but that was a big scare and alarmed me badly. If he had killed that dog, which he could have easily done, he would have been labeled a vicious animal and I'd have to muzzle him in public. It was not his fault, actually, and I don't really blame him, the little dog was biting at his face and would not leave him alone.
Since then I've taken him out only to vet visits, and that is such a shame, and not fair to him. I tried a variety of methods to train him, but none of them had any lasting results. They'd work a time or two, but then he'd ignore them - excitement was the problem, and my own impatience was not helping.
We recently lost our 3rd bullmastiff, Major, to a very sudden and terrible kidney failure (see prior post) and we now felt it was a good time to really focus on helping Sirius become a better dog in public, and have a more fulfilling life, able to go with us on our many outings to dog-friendly locations, as well as hiking and camping. I hate that it took the loss of Major to get me to take more decisive action, but it is hard to really focus and direct specific training when there is another dog in your way trying to get the treat or distract the student. No excuse, but it is the truth. Plus, we could take Major absolutely anywhere and it was easy enough just to grab the "good dog" and leave the "bad dog" at home. *Sigh* Live and learn.
We hired a trainer, Janet Velenovsky, and have learned a lot since consulting with her. I knew that I had caused Sirius' problems, but I was not completely sure how. We now realize that Sirius is very "soft," and needs to be handled differently than we are accustomed to handling our dogs, after 20 years of owning stubborn and independent bully breeds, three bullmastiffs and one bulldog mix. You can't bully or be forceful with Sirius, as he gets confused and overreacts, and then tries to mitigate the "punishment" by trying to anticipate what you want, then you don't want that, and he gets confused and overstimulated. I needed to be able to control my dog, who could very easily overpower me and get away, being such a large dog, but the choke chain, then the prong collar, were doing nothing but aggravating him, and making him more anxious about leaving the house. If people can control 1000-pound horses with a head collar, then why not a 130-pound dog? He got out of the head collar once, but it was probably not fitted properly and I needed some handling lessons for myself.
He needs to learn to focus on ME, or my husband, or whomever has the leash, and not be distracted by dogs approaching on walks. We needed to train him to face us on command, and over time he'd learn to trust us on leash.
This training had mixed results, and I've had to backtrack a bit - this is why I say that maybe we should have done some basic training with him when we got him. We didn't think he needed any training, since he seemed trained already, but the simple routine of performing a command and receiving a treat is now enough to send him over the edge with excitement. Again, the excitement. He began to lunge and bite my hand with the treat in it, anticipating when he'd get it, and ignoring the exercise. Keep in mind that normally a treat does not send him over the edge - he will take his treat and go on about his business. However, this training exercise somehow made him anticipate getting the treat, and he loses his composure.
Now we had to backtrack, as I mentioned, and teach him HOW to take a treat, and what is acceptable. After that, we start working on his training of specific behaviors. This is a slow process, but I will learn some patience in the process, no doubt.
In the meantime, I have also purchased a head collar, a Halti this time (the first was a Gentle Leader) and we've been using it in the yard. It is working very well, and I think it fits his head in a way that will make him unable to shake it off. It also comes with a little snap strap that you attach to their regular collar, so in the introductory phase if they shake it off you'll still be attached to their collar so you can get hold of the dog. This snap is not strong enough to hold him, but it will buy me a second or two to grab the collar.
I have also purchased a spray can of citronella, designed to be used on dogs, so if a stray dog approaches us with aggression I can spray towards the dog and chase it off with the strong and unpleasant odor that is very powerful in a dog's sensitive nose. Plus, if it gets on me or Sirius it won't be as much of a problem as pepper spray blow-back can be. That will give me extra confidence when I've got him out in public, since I won't worry about a loose dog putting me and my reactive dog in a bad situation. Janet recommended this to me and I think it is a great idea.
He did very well today, just on a short walk down the street a few blocks and back, and we even saw a cat under our front bushes, darting out in front of us, and he was not too excited by that, and we went on our way. I'm not going to get too optimistic too soon, since it will take a lot of time to get him deconditioned, with so many years of being that way, but I do think we can make this work. I can't be yanking on his collar and issuing "NO" commands left and right; I have to treat him differently and teach him a Pavlovian response to a word or term, like "come to front," "this way!" or, my favorite, "ten hut!" If we can get this done in the house and yard, with few distractions, to the point where it is 100%, then we'll start working with distractions, and little by little we'll get him there. I have volunteers in the wings, ready to walk their stable dogs past my house, or walk ahead of us down the street, or come up behind us on the street, etc., when the time is right.
He is an old dog for the breed, technically, but he's as fit and agile as the day we got him, though he's getting a little gray around the muzzle. He can learn new tricks!
Incidentally, and not to be overlooked, is that I have taken him to a new vet, recommended by Janet, and she discovered an infected anal gland (we had no idea!) and is also running a complete blood panel, including thyroid, to be sure there are no health issues that could be contributing to his behavior problems. This is a very important part of dog training. Aches and pains, hormone or other chemical imbalances can definitely cause unwanted behaviors that have nothing to do with obedience, and sometimes (often in big dogs, especially) they don't let you know that they're hurting.
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