Thanks for the vaccine info. I actually decided to reschedule my vet date until after I had read some of it, plus I’ve been feeling sick, so postponing going out was probably a good choice for me since the weather has been really bad.
Ok, I warn you this is a very long explanation and I could have gone longer, but I didn’t think that you all wanted to read a book. I do think it is necessary for you all to understand why I think the things I do and to get some feedback about it. I was looking back at some of my posts and realizing that I have not made it clear why I think Garm has dominance issues and why I didn’t think that “running into a wall” was such a strange thing for this dog. It is just possible that there's someone out there who might recognize the signs of something that has escaped both my veterinarian and my trainer's attention.
One thing to note is that he doesn't always run into walls when he wakes up, he just wakes up angry or upset, most of the time. He's only done the wall thing maybe two times that I could see and my husband has never witnessed it. I figured that he ran into the wall because he had his head only a foot or two away from a wall and when he woke up startled he just jumped up in fear and took off running in a straight line and hit it. It’s not like he just runs into walls all the time. He has woken up startled and angry/scared from a pretty young age, so from what you guys have been saying I think it must be genetic. Back when he had his crate in the house he thought of it as a safe haven and sometimes when he woke up startled and upset because he’d heard a scary noise he would take off running for his crate and hide there. He used to get very scared by the sound of a fart or the “raspberry sound”, even if it was his own fart! I know that sounds funny. He would take off running for his crate every time he heard it! I desensitized him to it by making the sound with my mouth and giving him a treat every time he heard it. Now when he hears that sound he will come running to me expecting a treat. It is so funny.
A lot of Garm’s behaviors seem contradictory and it’s been hard to put a label on him so I’ve been thinking that he has several issues that are all overlapping. Although Garm does show a lot of insecurity he has other behaviors that have led both me and his trainer to believe he is dominant, or at least has dominance issues and these are characteristics he's had from puppyhood as well, so I don't think vaccines have caused it. I’m starting to wonder if he is truly a dominant dog myself and isn’t just displaying some acts of dominance because he is actually very insecure. Like when the bully at school actually gets stood up to by the little guy and it turns out the bully was only acting that way because he wanted to feel important and feared because he was really the one that was afraid and insecure. Here are some situations that make it hard to tell. Let me know if you think it is dominance and if you think that the way I’m dealing with it is the right way to handle it.
Sometimes when my husband or I try to take a toy/food away Garm will growl at me and if we continue to try to take it from him he will snarl and bite. Likewise if he is eating his food out of his bowl he will growl at us if we touch him, but only sometimes. Since we have been addressing the issue ever since he was a young pup and making him wait to get his food and only eat on command he will very gingerly take food, checking back with us about 4 times before finally taking a bite and then he will watch us most of the time he’s eating as though to make sure we don’t plan to take it away. Also, when he gets a treat he will run to a secluded spot and constantly be checking to see if someone is trying to take it. We have traded him for his toys and food in the past unless it was something very dangerous that needed to be taken away right then and taught him “drop it”, but he still seems to have an unreasonable fear that we want to take his nasty toys and treats from him. Now, this sounds like a typical possessive dog, maybe it is dominance displays with an underlying fear motive, but then he has behaviors like this that make me not so sure:
Vidar will be eating his rawhide treat peacefully a goodly ways from Garm and Garm will decide that he wants Vidar’s treat even though he isn’t even done with his own yet. He will go up to Vidar and snarl and snap at him and take his treat away (Vidar is a real push over and will easily give up anything to Garm and show him his belly) and Garm will then have two rawhides that he is jealously trying to stuff into his mouth at the same time when we find him. Garm has also done this with toys even though we go out of our way to get identical toys for the two dogs. Of course I want to take back the stolen treat/toy and that is not always an easy thing to do since Garm is so possessive. We tell him “no, drop it!” sharply and since we’ve been doing this for a while Garm will often give up the stolen toy and look ashamed, but sometimes he isn’t so easy about it. Sometimes we have to use the leash (the dogs always wear leashes in the house) to put him down in a full submissive position and then we have to take both toys away to keep the peace. It is a common occurrence in our home that when we leave the dogs alone with two identical toys we come back to find that Vidar doesn’t have his toy anymore and is whining and looking at Garm. Garm will appear to be holding only one toy, but when we turn him over we find that he is laying on Vidar’s. It isn’t that he even wants the toy, it’s just that he doesn’t want Vidar to have it. He’ll horde several toys on his bed and growl at Vidar any time he tries to take one of them. When we discover this we always take all the toys away and put them up where they can’t be reached. I feel bad for Vidar sometimes because it really isn’t his fault. Sometimes I’ll give Vidar back his toy and separate them with baby gates so that Garm can’t do it again.
Garm learns commands very easily and used to be very good about doing them whenever we asked until he hit adolescence. After that, getting him to do anything he didn’t want to do became a battle. He knows the command “shake” and doesn’t mind giving his paw for a party trick when friends are over and they have treats to give him, but if you try to take his paw to examine it or clean it off with a wet nap when he isn’t in the mood for it he will usually first pull his teeth back like he is going to bite and then he will start to growl, then if you continue to mess with his paw he will flat out bite you. We started addressing this by making him lay down in a full submissive position with a leash and a pinch collar, every time he showed his fangs at us and most of the time if you just tell him “lay down and roll over” he will do it with little fuss now, but occasionally he will refuse to lay down at all costs and will snarl and attack the leash. In fact, he doesn’t like the “lay down” command at all and sometimes it is very difficult to get him to do it without using a leash.
Garm used to be very big on pulling at the leash on our walks and he insisted on leading the way. He would also show aggression to some people and animals that he met on the walk as though he were in charge and he should do the protecting. Now, Garm did not act at all fearful when he barked at strangers. He stands tall, tail out, head up and looks very aggressive. This doesn’t look like fearful aggression. At our trainers suggestion we started using the pinch collar to make him walk at a heel and that really cut down on his aggression immensely. He now only rarely barks at people on our walks and the only real problem is other dogs. One correction from the collar and a firm “no” is all it takes to get him to fall back into a heel, usually a couple of paces behind me and he will remain silent. He seems to be accepting that I will be the protector now.
Garm also has a very pushy personality and when he wants to play or get petted. He might nip at your hands, put his paw on you or bump you with his head to force you to give affection. We’ve taken to just telling him no, pushing him away and ignoring him until we are ready to give him attention, and most of the time he will relax and sit down patiently waiting for you to see how good he is being so that he can get petted.
Garm’s pushy personality extends into his play time with Vidar. We have to watch them very closely together as Garm gets very rough with him on occasion. The dogs rarely ever fight in the house because they know they will get in trouble and be told to go lay down in their respective beds in time out until they cool down, but it isn’t always so easy to control them outdoors and they know it. At first they will be happily romping around the yard nipping and running in circles, playing like happy puppies. Then Garm will start to get more serious and will start growling and trying to hold Vidar down while he bites his neck and throat and Vidar will be yelping in pain. Vidar might instigate some of it with his relentless playfulness, but it’s obvious that Garm is playing dominant dog and attacks first most of the time. A lot of it seems to be Garm trying to herd Vidar. We have stopped Garm from herding humans as he used to do when he was young by nipping at people’s heels and running in circles around them, but he sometimes still does it with Vidar. We have to pull the dogs apart with the leashes and separate them for a little while sometimes, but more often than not saying “no” and using a blow horn will snap them out of it and calm the situation. Usually I avoid the situation altogether by not letting them play together outside without a chuck it and a tennis ball in hand because Garm would prefer this game to fighting with Vidar any day. Usually he is too tired to fight with Vidar by the time he is done playing. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time my dogs are best of friends and get very upset when they can’t be together. Garm just turns into a bully when he thinks he can get away with it.
Now, it is hard to believe that this bully of a dog was once a puppy that was afraid to play with other puppies in his puppy socialization class. I enrolled him when he was very little after he’d had his first shots. I know that not everyone on the forum likes these kind of groups and I’ve read up on the “whys” of it, but I felt it was a good way to socialize my dog with other dogs so that I could bring him with me into places like Pet Smart and dog parks. Garm didn’t do as well as I had hoped and now I’m reconsidering my choice to put him into the class, but what’s done is done.
He would shy away from all the other puppies, unless they were a cute female- then he might try to hump her. He would hide behind the humans any time another curious dog started to come near him and if they tried to play with him roughly he would act submissive or fearfully snap at that dog. I asked that he be moved to another play group that had smaller dogs because I didn’t think that he was getting the right kind of socialization with dogs his own size and he seemed fine in the small dogs group, though not very sociable unless they were a female that he had the hots for. After I spoke with the instructor about Garm needing to be in a special group he was later able to be among dogs his own size in a smaller group that had only low-key, submissive pups in it that didn’t want to play too rough and were mostly female.
So, you might wonder, why did I say that he had shown the aggressive tendencies since he was a puppy if he acted like this with other dogs when he was young? Well that is because this was going on at the same time as the other behaviors I’ve listed. He’s a very contradictory dog sometimes. He’ll be submissive in one circumstance and then the opposite with a different circumstance. It’s very weird and I haven’t been able to explain it myself. Garm doesn’t show the fear he had as a pup when he sees other dogs now, he gets just down right aggressive with some dogs (usually males) and will take on an alpha stance, or he just looks playful and excited by others (usually females). I don’t take him to dog parks because of this as he would be totally unpredictable off leash, but he does all right at regular parks on a long flexi leash. If he sees another dog and acts aggressive I just try to get his attention detoured and take him to an empty section of the park.
He is mostly fine with the children at parks, but I always decline smaller children when they want to pet him for obvious reasons. I’ve let older children pet him and he seems fine with them. I always mention to them that they need to be gentle with him and I will keep treats around for the kids to give him so that he will have a favorable reaction and the kids are entertained by the variety of tricks he can do. He might try to jump playfully on people, or even show his pushy behavior of trying to force affection out of someone, but I’ve not had him show his fangs with strangers yet. I am pretty choosy about who gets to pet him though, and I only pick people that he seems to like anyway.
Oh, actually there was a couple of occasions where he bit someone when he was about 3 months old, but I thought he was so young at the time that it couldn’t be aggression related and was more likely related to his teething. He was being pushy with my friends 9 year old daughter and I had told her that if he gets that way then she should do what we did- tell him no, turn away, ignore him and he will stop. Apparently this didn’t work for her and we were in the other room at the time. Garm got more insistent probably because she was a small girl and she put up her hands to shield herself from him and he bit her on the arm breaking the skin. I now regret leaving the two out of site in another room, but honestly I had not thought that such a small puppy would do something like that. Within the month I found out he had an inflamed tooth from his teething so I took him to the vet. When the vet was examining Garm’s mouth he freaked out, bit the vet’s finger drawing blood and then would bristle and snarl at him every time he tried to touch him after that at that particular visit. I expect that was because of the pain of the inflamed tooth and fear, but the vet said that he still shouldn’t be that aggressive at only three months. I told him about the incident with the girl and about Garm’s pushiness and he suggested we start doing dominance training with Garm.
My trainer seems to think it’s dominance too from observing Garm first hand, but then I could see how Garm could be misjudged if the circumstances weren’t right. Since both my vet and my trainer agreed that he has dominance issues I just figured they must know what they are talking about. From what I’ve read in books, he does seem to have some dominant traits, but I can also see that he’s got some other traits that don’t match this description. So what do you think? Dominant? Fear Biter? Bad genes and neurological disorders? All of the above? What am I dealing with here?
Juliana McKenzie
Re: My dog is not good with kids. What can I do?
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