By Til Niquidet, Your Pets & Mine
As a dog breeder and a rescue advocate, I often get inquiries from people hoping to provide a home to a deserving dog. Many people who are looking to adopt have visions of an angelic pet who is grateful of having finally found a safe haven.
The reality of a rescue dog is usually not such a pretty picture. Pets often find themselves in rescue situations because those who first own them are not willing to put the time and effort into making sure they are provided with proper health care and socialization. In fact, they give up their pets because they are ill or because they are badly behaved.
Those of us who work with animals and love them know that it takes time, money and effort to make a pet into a healthy, happy, dependable good pet citizen. They aren’t just born that way.
I have raised Finnish Spitz for more than 35 years and feel that rescue is part of my commitment to the breed. One of the rescues we have here is 12-year-old Finnish Spitz “Nanny”. She was rescued out of a shelter in Pasadena, California, where she was surrendered by her family when she was nearly nine years of age.
My first question would be: Who gives up a dog after owning it for nine years? Wouldn’t you think that for all that time she was a loved and loving member of the family? Her surrender papers tell of a perfect pet: quiet, contented, great with kids, happy indoors or out. So I ask the question again, why would they give her up?
I adopted Nanny through the Finnish Spitz Rescue Society, originally thinking I would foster her for the society until I could find the right home for this little girl. I soon found out why Nanny was placed in rescue.
She bites. And she barks. When she wants attention she barks and if she feels you should feed her, she barks.
She steals food; no food is ever safe. If she gets food and you try to take it from her, she will bite you. And if you correct her for barking, she bites. If she wants out, she barks; and if she wants in, she barks.
When we first got her, I tried to keep her in one of the kennel runs but she would bark and bark and bark. One of my neighbours, who is not happy to have a kennel in her neighbourhood, started complaining.
I tried a shock anti-barking collar but she was so determined to bark that she had burns on her throat. We tried muzzles, citronella collars, spraying with water. Nothing was working to keep her quiet. Nanny’s barking was getting to be such a problem that we started talking about putting her to sleep. This is such a distressing idea when we had rescued her in the first place. Then two things happened to change her situation.
The first was a discovery that I am not sure anyone had made before. I was working on our property at the back of our house and could see Nanny at the door in the backyard. She was barking to go into the house.
From about 35 feet away I called her name. She did not turn but continued to stare at the door and bark. I called her again. Again she did not turn.
For the first time I made the connection between her problem barking and the idea that she was probably deaf. Deaf dogs do seem to be problem barkers; it is as if they can’t hear themselves. As well, they can’t hear if you correct them for barking. Deafness might also explain Nanny’s biting issues.
I believe that all her life, Nanny was punished too harshly for barking. It started with “Shut up, Nanny.” escalated to “SHUT UP NANNY!” and then after numerous verbal corrections, none of which she ever heard, there would be a whack out of nowhere.
This poor dog was punished harshly and often without any warning and without ever making the connection between the behaviour and the punishment. Her aggression is worst when she is in a cage, in fact when we first got her she would not enter any cage without immediately turning around and then attacking the door and whoever was closing it. Any kind of correction would make her aggression worse.
Well now that I realized that all corrections came without any verbal warning, I now understand why she can be so aggressive. It makes me much more understanding about working around this possibly dangerous behaviour.
The other discovery we made also helps us manage her difficulties. While we were struggling with the idea of euthanizing her, it occurred to me that a lot of her negative behaviour centred around keeping her locked up, whether it was having her in the backyard or in a pen or in a cage.
“What would happen”, I proposed, “if we were to let her go free? No more pens, no more cages, never any confinement at all?”
Sure there was a danger she would run off — Finnish Spitz are a hunting breed and tend to wander, looking for game. Or she might get taken by coyotes. But if we were already considering having her euthanized then what did we have to lose? She had a better chance of learning to stay home and learning to keep safe, then she would if we just made the decision to have her put to sleep.
This was the best gamble we have ever taken. Nanny is now a pretty darn nice dog — a little overweight because I have given up trying to keep her on a diet. Restricting food only made her that much more determined to steal food and be food aggressive around us and the other animals.
She does bark to go in and out, and I instruct everyone to not let her out every time she barks because this makes her even more demanding.
She demands love the same way. Any petting keeps her quiet — when you stop she gives a little woof. Most people respond by petting her again. If you don’t pet her, she will all-out bark at you until you pet her out of desperation. Now you can see what made her into a barker. She is very good at training people.
The problem with most dogs in rescue is that it takes a great deal of effort, time and thought to work through negative behaviours. Few pet owners will try to work through a problem for over two years. I am glad we have found a way for a loving dog like Nanny to find her place in our family. There are no more thoughts of not keeping her. She is here until her last days. We love her, sometimes in spite of her bad behaviours and sometimes even, because of them.
