Chihuahua turns bad, got help from dog trainer.
Last Tuesday our local paper ran a story about bad dogs - including a snappy Chihuahua, who were turned around by good dog trainers. The story reminded me that we all love our dogs, and we want them to be loved by our friends and neighbors, too. But sometimes things can turn ugly.
Even little dogs can do some damage to your ankles if they become aggressive, and can’t be controlled.
One of the few dog breeds for which I have a strong dislike are dachshunds. I don’t care that they’re cute, that they like to sleep under the covers, that their owners all love them to pieces. I was subjected to an untrained doxie when I was a kid, and that one dog’s bad behavior turned me against them. I know better now, but it doesn’t help.
A recent conversation on the Portland Craigslist started because a woman tried to adopt an adult doxie from a dachshund rescue group, but her offer was rejected, and it hurt her feelings. The rejection was based on the fact that the person wanting the doxie already had two small children. The rescue group said one reason the adoption wouldn’t work has to due with the very expensive back surgery that many of these elongated dogs need after kids pick them up or roughhouse with them.
But the other reason was that doxies can’t really be trusted around kids - they were originally bred as hunters, they said, and they tend to chase anything that moves.
The dachshund I experienced as a child would hide under our couch, which had legs just long enough to give him a good hiding place. When a child sat on the couch with bare feet, the dog would “hunt” our toes. Sharp teeth. Not fun.
I honestly don’t know if all older doxies need to be adopted by families with no small children - I suspect that there are many examples of when it turned out just fine. But I would tend to pay attention if a rescue group was discouraging me from taking one of their animals - they know their dogs, and don’t want to see them rejected by another family. And they have a right to choose who their dogs go to - it’s their passion, after all, or they wou’dn’t be doing it.
That brings up another point - can a good dog trainer change a dog’s inbred behaviors, if those behaviors don’t fit the family it lives with? And how do you know if it’s just a badly trained dog (like my mother’s dachshund, perhaps), or a dog with a built-in bad temperament? Will a good trainer help in either case? Or should you resort to muzzles, t-shirts, and double leashes so you can keep a dog with a bad attitude, as one dog owner-turned-trainer who was interviewed for the newspaper article?
A coworker has a 5 month old Ausie who is starting to guard her bed from her 7 year old child. (It was kind of “cute” when the pup guarded her from her husband, but now it’s getting out of hand.) Is it “just natural” for Ausies to be overly protective, or can a good dog trainer change the owner’s behavior enough to save the dog? In the next month or so, we’ll find out.
If you have any comments on training, dog behavior, dog adoptions, or any other issue that is related to dogs, please feel free to submit an article to this blog. This is a new blog, which I created to make it easier to add articles of interest to my older-dog.com website. Your participation is encouraged - if you love dogs, we’d love to hear from you!