I have a dalmatian dog I’ve had since he was three months old. He’s almost 2 now. I purposely got him when he was small so I could raise him with my pomeranian and my small terrier and they would get along when he got huge. It was working really well. My terrier is the most dominant of my little group and she kept the dalmatian in line as he was growing.
I live in a townhome, so I had been walking the dalmatian twice a day for several miles each time and we were working steadily on training. He is 65 pounds of absolute solid muscle. He would do well on walks 90% of the time, but occasionally he would see something he desperately wanted to investigate or we would walk past someone he decided he didn’t like and he would quite literally pull me off my feet to do what he wanted, even while wearing a metal slip collar, a harness, and a super short leash. We also took a weekly off-leash walk in the mountains where he got to sniff and sprint and do what he wanted and was surprisingly better behaved with just verbal commands than he is on the leash.
I had been told years ago I could never get pregnant and I had accepted that after several years of mourning and was moving on with my life. Then, surprise! Two months ago I found out I’m pregnant, though still considered a slightly high risk pregnancy because of my previous problems. Shortly afterwards, my boyfriend took over the walking responsibilities since it could seriously hurt me and baby to be dragged off my feet and because I have a prior injury that puts me at high risk of breaking a hip early in the pregnancy and ending up on bed rest until I deliver so the doctor wants me to only do yoga and swimming as my exercise as much as possible. The dog is really unhappy.
He and I were really close and he was a constant cuddler. But the more my pregnancy progresses, the more aggressive he’s becoming toward both me and the little dogs. He attacks the pomeranian multiple times a day now with almost no warning so that the pom cries if he’s even in the same room with him anymore so I have to keep them constantly separated. On top of that, when I try to stop him from attacking the pom, he turns all the aggression and snarling and teeth toward me so I have to stuff something in his mouth to keep him from biting me and wrestle him into the kennel until he calms down. I’ve also been really struggling with morning sickness and every time I’m throwing up he charges at me to start snarling in my face. He won’t do it when my boyfriend is around, only when we’re alone. But my boyfriend works nights so he’s almost never home when I am. The biggest problem here is that my terrier has become excessively protective of me during my pregnancy and so she tries to get between us and so he attacks her, all while I’m busy being sick and I can’t stop them.
I posted in r/amitheasshole to try to see if rehoming him would be appropriate since I don’t have the energy, time, or money to fix this problem with additional training and I was ruled the definite asshole and people told me I should never have pets again. I’ve doubled down on trying to spend time with him and enforcing the training, but it’s getting worse by the day to the point where I’m afraid of this dog.
I’m at the end of my sanity here. I hate to rehome him just because my life is changing, but I’m not sure anymore how to keep myself and the other dogs safe while also giving the dalmatian what he needs to be happy (since he’s obviously not happy with everything right now or he wouldn’t be so aggressive)
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/epuovs/this_dog_is_scaring_me/
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