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Rescue Dog
Comments
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Hello Tina, your situation is a carbon copy of mine around 4 years ago when we rescued an 18 month old neutered male. We already had a 3yr old neutered female. FIREWORKS.
It was a nightmare, and I was beside myself with worry. My timid little baby was growled at and so were we. I must be honest I was terrified. My DH refused to return George as he knew it would be a death sentence, despite my begging to be rid of him. He had so much aggression and should never have been rehomed in the first place. So, despite my protests, George remained, growling snapping and making homelife a misery.
Over time we have learned how to work with him and the surprising thing about it all was that Amber (our female), who is smaller was the best teacher of all. She changed from a timid little lapdog into the leader of the pack and George fell into line, and that dynamic remains to this day.
It has taken a long time and a lot of adjusting over the last four years but we're mostly a happy family now.
Problems we had0 -
Sorry half way through that post when I pressed the wrong button. These are the most common problems we had and how we sorted them.
1) Fear aggression, we never tell George off, he just cant handle it and it makes him twice as bad! The minute he growls we talk nice and calmly to him and he immediatly changes his attitude and starts wagging his tail. Poor thing he's just a big coward!
2) Food aggression, he gets very stressed over his food, so we feed the dogs separately. In fact we most often scatter his kibble all over the back garden and its become much less stressful for him as he now sees this as a sort of game and his tail wags as opossed to being tucked under when presented with a bowl of food.
3) We always feed and pet Amber first as it is important to make her leader of this small pack. Most of Georges problems stemmed from him being 'Leader' in his first home which caused him great stress and anxiety.
I hate to suggest this but it would be wise for you to know how to safely separate two fighting dogs. We have had to do this many times. We found that pepper and throwing water on them does not help. It takes two people to stop a fight safely, each person behind each dog taking thier hind legs and stepping them back from each other, this works and is safe. I do hope that it does'nt come to that for you.
It has been a very long road, and If it had been my choice I would have given up a long time ago but to my DH's credit we marched on and we now have reached peace and harmony and have two dogs that we love and cherish.0
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