What Is Life Like with a Difficult Dog?
Get insight into what it’s like for people to live with a difficult dog, and how you can help.
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
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What Is Life Like with a Difficult Dog?
A couple of months ago, I did a pair of articles about shy and fearful dogs. A reader wrote me to say that she wished I’d said something about the human experience of living with a dog who has behavior problems. This week, life with a difficult dog, and how you can help..
A Difficult Dog May Not Be the Owner’s Fault
In Dog Land, there are still plenty of people who claim that if a dog has behavior problems, it’s all the guardian’s fault. If only they would do … something, or had done another thing, or would try that thing, their dog would be perfect. It’s hard enough living with a behaviorally troubled dog, even minus the piled-on shame and guilt. So let’s knock that one out right away.
I admit I wince inwardly when a client has ignored or minimized what could have been a relatively small problem until it got much, much worse. But almost all the people I work with have done the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time. They looked for a reputable breeder online and believed the smooth talk that went with the website photos of puppies playing in the grass. A rescue group representative assured them that the timid, lip-curling adolescent they felt sorry for would turn right around if she got plenty of love. A book that trumpeted its author’s expertise prescribed repeated alpha rolls; now their dog has learned that human handling is a cue for self-defense. Each of these things has happened to clients of mine. They all felt guilty, even though they were the ones who’d been taken for a ride.
People with Difficult Dogs Suffer Public Shaming
In public, my clients are sometimes treated cruelly. The glares are nothing. “Why do you make that poor dog wear a muzzle?” my client Rose was asked just the other day as we walked together on a crowded street. (1) The answer, which neither of us voiced, was “To protect you from him, because he’s fearfully aggressive and prone to lashing out.” In the park one day, a friend politely asked a woman standing in the middle of a narrow path to step to one side so she could pass without her reactive dog snarking at the other woman’s dog. The other woman opened up on her about how she wouldn’t have an aggressive dog if she weren’t such a nasty person herself.
I’ve had similar things happen during training sessions many a time. You might be tempted to write it off to urban rudeness, but having lived in New York for 30 years, I’m here to tell you that in most circumstances New Yorkers are as kind as anyone. I suspect the meanness is a distancing move. Because if that inept human is completely responsible for her dog’s embarrassing behavior, you can be sure you’ll never be in her shoes. News flash: if you have dogs in your life, your odds of running into behavioral trouble one day are high.
Difficult Dogs Change Life at Home
The conscientious guardian of an aggressive or fearful dog changes his life in many ways. Among my earliest clients were a couple who’d gotten the “She just needs a little love” line of hooey from an adoption group; their undersocialized adolescent Lab mix, Cricket, was afraid to go outdoors at all. We got her to the point of enjoying park trips in the morning and accepting street walks at night, but the daytime was a lost cause. Cricket’s people loved her to pieces and were willing to leave her a pad-lined corner of their four-room apartment to eliminate in. I’m sure Cricket livened up their dinner parties quite a bit.
How to Be a Good Guest Around an Aggressive Dog
In New York’s tiny apartments, a dog who’s crated in the bedroom may not even be 20 feet from the front door. For many territorially aggressive dogs, the sounds and smells of visitors are still way too close for comfort.
Some of my clients haven’t had a visitor in years unless their dog is staying somewhere else. Even when behavior problems are less extreme, or the apartment is huge, the difficult dog’s people have to manage carefully. “Can’t we meet your dog?” the naïve visitor asks. Well, no, you can’t. It is so hard on people to be socially weird in this way that sometimes they take irresponsible chances. The result is often exactly what you might expect–a bite. If you’re visiting someone at home and your host crates the dog in another room or asks you not to interact, do honor the request, and don’t give your conscientious friend a hard time.
How Far Should You Go?
If you’re wondering what’s reasonable in accommodating your life to a behaviorally troubled dog, the line is different for everyone. How much vigilance can you manage consistently, day after day, month after month? How easily can you learn the skills you need to keep your dog out of trouble? Good behavioral help isn’t cheap, and it’s labor intensive; plenty of people just don’t have the time and money. A large dog who growls at children on the street is much tougher to live with than a small one who barks her head off at the city bus. Someone who has multiple responsibilities–to an elderly parent, to children, to a job–may feel overwhelmed by a problem that a single person with a trust fund can take in stride. An overriding question for many people is whether they themselves are afraid of their dog.
You might ask why people put up with behavior problems that limit and distort daily life. Some people do martyr themselves and put other people and animals at risk by keeping alive a dangerous dog without putting enough safeguards in place. Yet life with a difficult dog has its satisfactions, too. If you’re actively working on her behavior, every step forward brings a sense of accomplishment and joy. Because modern training and behavior modification are reward-based and noncoercive, they deepen the bond between person and dog. And it’s moving to be on a troubled dog’s shortlist of people he trusts.
If you see someone in public dealing with a difficult dog, remember, odds are good that the behavior you see isn’t her fault. Respect the problem dog’s space. And if you want to make the person’s day, offer a smile or a supportive word. If your own dog is an easy one, thank her now, and take her for a nice long walk.
And after your walk, relax on the sofa with your dog and your free audiobook from Audible.com. For a free 14-day trial membership, click here.
You can follow The Dog Trainer on Twitter, where I’m Dogalini, as well as on Facebook, and write to me at dogtrainer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. I welcome your comments and suggestions, and I answer as many questions as I can. That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).