Roxie's Bad Day

Roxie and I had a bad start to our day on Tuesday. There we were, innocently going for our morning walk, all was well in the world. Ok, not all was well, but a lot was! I had overslept a bit that morning (just couldn't get my butt out of bed) so I had to cut our morning walk a bit short. So we go down a road we don't normally walk on (but have a few times in the past).

I heard a door open as we were nearing the end of the street, but think nothing of it. Next thing I know this big white dog runs right past us onto the road, her owner yelling at her from the doorway. I blink, and the dog has attacked Roxie. Looked like she got Roxie's right back leg firmly in her mouth- Roxie is screaming, I grab Roxie and lift her into the air with one hand, and am reaching for the big dog with the other. I think I was going for her eyes to make her let go of my dog! The dog's owner comes running full tilt out of the house, almost knocks me over to get to his dog. We break the hold on Roxie, and it takes the owner a few tries to grab his dog (she is dancing around out of his reach, not looking away from Roxie). Owner finally grabs the collar and drags the dog into the house. I tell him I want his name and phone number for any vet bills.

While he is in the house I am checking Roxie over. No blood, but she won't let me look at the back leg. Owner comes out after a few minutes, apologizes and says his dog has never done that before or he would never have just opened the door. He gives me a piece of paper with his name and phone number on it, and I meanwhile had left myself a voice mail with the address. He hopes Roxie is okay.

So a few minutes have passed since "the event" and Roxie seems to be limping. We head home (we were only about 10 minutes from home) and after a few minutes the limp appears to be gone. When we get in the house I do a more thorough check, and I can't see any marks on her. She is running through the house chasing her ball, with no sign of a limp. I phoned Saanich to report the attack, and left a report. Around 9am (I am at work by now) Animal Control calls me back and I give another statement. The ACO tells me the address has no prior complaints, and they will stop by later that day to talk to the owner. That's all I wanted - just to scare some common sense into the owner!!

Next day Roxie is still looking fine, but when I am checking over her backpack that she wears I can see a tooth mark - looks like the dog grabbed mostly her pack, and didn't get a good grip! Thank goodness she missed on the first run, or she would have gotten Roxie by the head or throat.....

So the most frustrating thing about all this (once I calmed down)? It was a young male with a pitbull. I am a strong supporter of pitbulls, and I am out there every day fighting the stereotype, defending the breed. And what do I run into? An owner with his head up his ass. I was so mad at him for allowing his dog to get into that situation, I wanted to go back to his house and yell at him.

So Roxie and I are out for our walk the next day. We do the full loop we normally do, and are walking up the hill to the house. We come across a guy walking another little dog. Roxie has her normal pull/bark/freakout reaction. Guy asks if the dogs can meet. I say sure, as usually Roxie calms if she can sniff the other dog. Today, no sniff, she just lunges for the other dog and tries to bite it's face. Lovely, six months of working on her dog reactive behaviours, flushed down the drain. Back to square one......

How much I love my dog

So in school we treat reward when working with the dogs. Michele suggested on class day that we feed our dogs less than half their normal breakfast, and bring the rest to class to use there (so the dogs don't get fat). That works if you feed kibble, but I feed raw so that won't work for me. Last week I had a sample of a decent kibble that I used for class, but after that Roxie was scratching a lot, and the poop wasn't so nice (ummm, not that poop is ever nice, but on raw Roxie produces small poops that are very firm, since there is no filler in her food). Anyway, Michele suggested buying some liver and cooking that as a treat.

So how much to I love my dog? I am a vegetarian, and I bought raw sheep's liver from a butcher (The Village Butcher in Oak Bay). Seriously, totally gross. Then I took it home, cut it up, froze half, and cooked the other half. Roxie likes it (which she had better, given what I had just done for her!!) The people in the butcher shop were great, very helpful. Didn't even throw me out when I told them I was a vegetarian - suggested a couple ways of cooking the liver to use a training treats.

Roxie's first day of class

Ok, so I totally forgot to talk about Roxie's first day of class, which was last Sunday. There were 4 students (a new person will be joining us this week) - 1 large dog, 2 medium dogs, and Roxie. The best part is they all had anti-dog attitudes (but not dog aggression). There was a whole lot of barking and snarling going on. Yet within a few minutes of class starting, things quieted down. We worked on "sit", "look", "leave it", "forward" and "down". It was kinda funny, as we were working with our dogs, they sort of forgot about snarling at each other (unless two dogs got too close). Roxie already knew "sit", "look", and "leave it". She pretty much knew "forward" but I don't use that one a lot - only when I have stopped her for some reason. I need to get into the habit of using it more often.

"Down" we had problems with. Roxie would either do nothing when I gave her the command, or she would back away? Weird. Michele came over and worked with us on this one. The idea is to reward Roxie if she does anything even close (eg just front end goes down, or just head lowers), and work up to a full down. By the end of class she had done 3 full "downs" and I was very proud of her. I realized the next day that I use "down" to order her off furniture, so that was probably confusing to Roxie. From now on I will use "down" for lay down, and "off" for getting off furniture.

The other thing we worked on was direction changes while walking. The technique here is to step into the "tickle spot" on your dog (very lightly) and turn their bodies, then continue in the new direction with a "forward". Because Roxie is small, I have problems with this one. I feel like I am kicking at her, so I definitely need to practice. Much easier on larger dogs! We have been practicing on our walks. I come to a stop, step in to turn her, then continue on. Coming to a stop seems to give me more control over the nudge.

Sadly I will be missing tomorrow's class, as I have a couple of meetings at the shelter. Bummer :-(