Reactivity. Regression, & Responsibility

Reactivity

Regression

Responsibility


Today's post is brought to you by the letter R.

Sometimes I have dreams that I'm at an AA style meeting, sitting in the crowd with lots of people not making eye contact with each other. I stand up, nervously walk to the podium at the front, take a deep breath and introduce myself:

"My name is Julia and I have a reactive dog".

As melodramatic as this seems, these are my "go to school in your underwear" dreams. These are honestly my nightmares.

It was November just before Target turned 2 when he first started having issues. On two separate occasions women with flowing coats spooked him when the fabric caught in the wind and flapped towards him. He barked loudly, and bounced around them, taking shots at their jackets whenever he got close enough. The women were just as scared as he was (and I was), in between trying to avoid his maneuvers they were shouting at me to get control of my dog. A near impossibility for a scared deaf dog (he's also surprisingly slippery which didn’t help matters at all...)

Both times, I apologized, and took the walk of shame leading a deflated, nervous Target with me. At the time, I hoped it was a one-time thing (or a two-time thing?), but resolved to try and desensitize him to jackets and flapping clothing all the same. The next windy day, I put a silk robe on over my clothes and took Target outside. I was armed with treats and tried to put the idea out of my mind, that at the first gust of wind he'd try and "save mom" by knocking me over and ripping up the robe.

As the wind picked up and my robe started to float I started to dance. The corners of the fabric lifted and snapped back and forth. Every time the wind seemed to slow them down, I'd flap them back out again. I was about ten minutes into an elaborate dance routine before I realized, my dog, the sole purpose of this lunacy, wasn't in the picture at all!

I looked up, and there he was, about 10 feet away, sitting like a good boy, head slightly tilted, watching me dance like a fool. This would be an exercise I would repeat with all kinds of weird paraphernalia like hula hoops, umbrellas and hats (when my boyfriend was at work and there were few witnesses, of course).

I put Target in doggy daycare to try and increase his socialization and exposure, but if anything that made him worse. One day when I picked him up he had a puncture wound on his back that nobody could answer definitively as to how he got it. Now, he wasn't only terrified of some people, he was ready to react to dogs too.

At the dog park one evening he snapped at a little Boston Terrier and I had to make the hard decision to muzzle train Target until I could get these issues worked out.

As usual, Target, the dog adapted very well to wearing his muzzle. Since we only wore it to go to the park and he liked the park, he'd usually be excited to wear it.

The people though? People didn't get over it at all. Lots of them felt bad for him, but for the wrong reasons. Their perception (and sometimes their words, out loud to me...) were "look at that poor dog in the muzzle, that woman is so mean", when the reality really was "that poor dog is wearing a muzzle he must be terrified".

It's amazing the way the perception of you changes when you have a reactive dog. It seems that it's natural and socially acceptable for us to defend our dogs against, even the smallest, criticism. Often I see friendly dogs jumping on people and hear "he's just so excited to see you", or their dog will beg relentlessly and I will be told "he just really loves green beans". For these dogs, excuses like this are played off as a human who just loves and is protective of their dog.

For an owner of a reactive dog, anything you say is seen as excusing the bad or destructive behavior of your dog, even though a dog is a dog and my reactive dog was as faultless as the dog that begs at the table. Dogs will be dogs and it’s a human’s responsibility to speak the dog’s language not vice versa, which I feel like we all some times forget. Human's that don't ask why they can't get their dog to stop jumping up on people won't be anymore successful at getting their dog to stop, than I would be helping Target if I didn't know what was scaring him.

I was always searching through the encounters Target freaked out about to try and see it from his hypersensitive perspective. I wanted to know so I could be prepared for other cases, but to many people, my searching for the reason was searching for a way out of taking responsibility. It is hard to win with people in general. You don’t muzzle your dog and you’re an irresponsible dog owner, if you do muzzle your dog you are being cruel to the dog. If you don’t look for the things your dog is reacting to you’re doing a disservice to your dog, if you do you are judged as trying to avoid admitting your dog has a problem or placing blame on somebody else.

In the end, I was devastated. Not because of what people thought, but because despite my best efforts to socialize him, to desensitize him and show him that the world wasn’t a scary place he was still afraid. I felt like I had failed him and it killed me that he was this upset by experiences that should have been fun. How could I help him just Dog? It also scared me that he could bite and really hurt somebody, perhaps costing him his life as well.

One night, I sat in the bath tub thinking about Target’s deafness and looking around the bathroom. I tried to imagine what the room must look like to a deaf dog. I covered my ears with my hands and tried to notice every detail. The water ran into the tub and the window was open so the valence ruffled in the wind. Target was sitting next to me by the side of the bath and his tail wagged when I looked down at him. A fly caught my attention and I followed it as it weaved around the bathroom. While I traced the flies flight path, I tried to think about all of these things, without human context. How weird did that valence look to a dog? A weird flapping fabric over a window that served absolutely no purpose? I remembered the time Target saw a dad with a small child on his shoulders and had barked loudly at them. The dad laughed, swung the boy to the ground and said,

“Don’t worry buddy, I bet that looked weird!”

Suddenly, somebody touched my arm and I jumped. In my trance, I hadn’t noticed my boyfriend getting home from work. I burst into tears. Not only did I understand how weird the world must look to Target, I realized what it was like for somebody you love to sneak up on you. How many times had I gotten in from work and Target had still been sleeping because I hadn’t woken him up? How many times had myself, my boyfriend, Comet or one of our cats woken Target with a start completely by accident?

For almost two years Target had been part of our family and I had been preaching to the world that a deaf dog was the same as any other dog. I had a very “well he’s deaf, what’s your excuse?” attitude to people who had judged me for keeping him. However, what I thought wasn’t true at all. Target adapted to his deafness, but he was not the same as other dogs; and I had my work cut out for me.