So, a little backstory: Four or five months ago, I adopted Larry. He is a three year old Chihuahua-Miniature Pinscher who had been picked up from the streets and taken to the shelter where we found him. We had been fostering different dogs for months as I am pretty selective when it comes to pet personalities. I had another Chihuahua for thirteen years who passed in 2017 and was my baby and her loss was really wrenching for me, and I knew that I wanted another to be like her.
Larry was perfect. Until recently, he has been our sweet little man,m towards everyone. He definitely prefers to be with just us, but he has generally let that preference manifest into shyness. He can be aggressive with other dogs at first, but only if they try and play with him or sniff him and after some time to socialize and get used to them, he warms up. He’s never done anything to indicate any sort of mean streak towards us for any reason.
Recently, my husband started to complain to me that Larry was getting aggressive with him in certain scenarios. I brushed it off as him being the same sort of “faux-aggressive” that he is when he plays with toys. I see now that this is not. Yesterday, I took him for a long car ride which he LOVES. When it was time to get out, he kind of tried to avoid it and ended up crouching in the corner of the floorboard. Not unusual. But then, we I reached down to pick him up, he bit me quite hard. So hard that it took me a minute to process what had happened. And then I tried to reach down again the same thing happened. The only reason I was able to get him out of the car is because I quickly grabbed his snout and picked him up but not before several more failed attempts with him snapping at me and me scolding him. I gave him a time-out and a light pop on his hiney and he was fine the rest of the evening.
Then, this morning it happened again. He was laying on top of the comforter on our bed and I tried to move him initially to go beneath it, where he typically goes to loaf near our legs. He growled. So I tried to move him over to the empty side of the bed. He bit me as hard as he could and once again started growling and snarling.
I am absolutely heartbroken, upset, and a tinge bit angry. We’re not very far into this relationship. I know that it’s probably our fault as we haven’t set really any boundaries for him. He rules this house and goes wherever he wants, doesn’t get in trouble or penalized for any mischief, and gets babied constantly. When we go out, unless he wants to walk we take him in a stroller. We don’t kennel him except when it’s absolutely necessary. We should probably have been more strict with him about discipline and routines.
My question is this: what do we do going forward? Because, at least for now, car rides are over and he is going to be kenneled except when someone is interacting with him directly. I’m also considering muzzling him when he does have to go somewhere. I don’t want to make his life miserable, and I love him more than I love myself, but I can’t have him be aggressive with me like this.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/c06l7l/our_dog_has_started_to_become_very_aggressive/
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