My boyfriend poked and kicked my dog when he was drunk. Now my dog is afraid of him. Could this affect his behavior towards other people? What do you think?

Hi,

Last year a family member rescued a mini-dachshund vet estimated him at 4-5 months old from an abusive situation. The people in the house were being rough and generally neglecting him, allowing him to run loose and get into garbage, he was regularly "spanked" and smacked upside the head. In short these people lacked all common sense.

When I got this pup he was obviously extremely submissive, submissively urniated at the drop of a hat and flopped on his back if a person even stood up near him. He was obviously handshy.

I kept him in my bedroom, allowed him to sleep on the end of my bed and aside from matter of factly taking him outside(he would follow me with encouragement in just a day or two) and prasing him just enough so he heard me but I didn't scare him(any direction attention was obviously overwhelming) and feeding him I ignored him. I wanted him to settle in Then I introduced clicker training, which he got the idea of very quickly. Within 5 sessions or so he went from shy and giving "unsure" body language to giving me a more calm, confident dachshund attitude while we were working.

Using that training I introduced walks(he was horrible at first and still is unconfident at times, but we investigate what scares him at his pace, every time and he has made great progress overall), what I call Touch training where I taught him to associate my touching parts of his body while he held a stand/stay with reward, we worked at his pace and he progressed to where I could do the motions and body language of someone "hitting" at him and he doesn't flinch, it's a game now and his general reluctance to be handled is gone. I can do anything to him(brush teeth, clip nails, clean ears, etc) and he calmly accepts it. So can other people, including the vet now!

In short, I did a lot more than I even care to write about and I worked very hard for months day in and day out to make this dog into a comfortable, safe, submissive, gentle pet in every situation for myself.

Except for my stupid boyfriend. I've had to have talks before to my boyfriend about what is, and what is not his place in relation to my dog while he's a guest in my house. I do not allow him to disciple this dog just whenever he wants or feels it's needed, because he is used to large dogs(Shepard, pit bulls) and he can be rough and he a lot of times does not understand what's inappropriate(Once the dachshund was just a pup and this was while he was being wormed in the first few weeks after I got him he woke up and started to throw up and my boyfriend poked him in the side hard grabbed him up shouted "NO!"
and was shaking this puppy and was of course peed on and I entered the room just in time to see this) it's not all the BF's fault, he has OCD and Depression and doesn't always act right because he's not ok. He's a germaphobe so the throw up was a big deal to him.

Anyways, several weeks ago the boyfriend showed up at my house at 3am very, very drunk, I let him in and got him some food, the dachshund woke up and came up to him to say hello and my boyfriend invited the dog up onto his lap, the dog sniffed *at* his food, so the guy pokes him hard in the ribs 5 times before I could stand up to get the dog off his lap I absolutely wasn't expecting that and knocked the dog off his lap with the last poke and then kicked the dog hard, he was drunk so his aim was off it was only a glancing blow but it was hard enough to move the dog several feet and knock him off his feet and make him yip and run out of the room to hide.

I immediately kicked the BF out at some risk to my safety. Banned him from my house for a week, but didn't do anything to the dog even look at him till the next morning because I was upset and I didn't want to 'share' that state of mind with the dog. I was matter of fact business as usual the next morning with him.

The next time the boyfriend was in the house the dog wouldn't go near him, his hackles were up and his bark had a different tone(I allow him to bark 3-4 times from his rug as the door is opening, but it's always usually an excited noise and he's giving very submissive/placating body language). His behavior towards me hasn't changed, or to anyone else, just the boyfriend except that now as people enter I'm starting to see a little bit of hackle go up.

The guy is very very sorry, before that they had enjoyed a friendly relationship but now the dog won't come near him aside from sitting heel position next to me and he leans away if my boyfriend tries to touch him and growls hackles go up more and he starts barking and backing away, we tried it twice, both times he also peed a little during this. My boyfriend is now getting angry at ME and the dog, and I just don't know what to say anymore. I would have just prefered to leave the dog be and give him time to accept my BF while he's being calm and ignoring the dog while we're at my house but he insisted he wanted to 'make up'. He's banned from my house again, is it wise at any stage to try and make ammends between my dog and my boyfriend?

I don't know what to do do you have any ideas? The dog will not touch toys my BF throws, will not come over to take food from him or eat at all when he's in my apartment and wants to leave the room whatever room the guy is in and seriously wanted to shut down/tried to lay down each time I tried to walk him into the room with the BF. The BF has a limited amount of patince and gets frustrated/upset easily.

Could this affect his attitude/behavior towards other people? How bad could this get? What do I need to be watching for? What do I need to do? Am I right in thinking this dog is possibly now on the road to fear aggression?

Thanks for your time this really sucks and I'd appreciate advice!

Tiffany