u/caffieneaddiction

Hi- this is my first time posting here and it’s going to be a long one. I hope I used the right flare and wording to explain my situation. Thank you for reading and any support offered.

I am needing to just talk about my entire situation here to people that understand, because I feel sort of hopeless, defeated, and like I have failed my dog. I have a background that includes a past dog, and my dog now, so I’m going to write about everything.

So to start- in 2022, my wife worked at a dog daycare that had this dog as a regular customer who had had one minor bite and one severe bite. She was epileptic and medicated for it, 7 years old and had a background of being a breeding dog before the family that had owned her at the time. She was good with other dogs, and fine with people, but when she was approached too quickly with someone she was unfamiliar with, she would bite. After her severe bite, the family who owned her wanted to euthanize her. (It was her first severe bite so it was not required by state at this point but the family opted to do so) My wife kind of stepped in and basically said that she knows this dog and she is a sweetheart and just needs the right home to prevent another severe bite and she doesn’t deserve to get put down. I was 19 at the time and living at home, and I decided to take her in. She did great with my mom’s dogs and everyone in the family, and they were all aware not to approach her quickly in any scenario. I was going through a hard time with mental health at the time, and she really pulled me out of it. Due to her medication schedule, I was thrown into a solid routine for her, which helped me with my mental health a lot. I became attached to her very quickly, after only 2 months of having her around.

2 months into owning her, I was downstairs getting ready, and we had an unexpected visitor. I wasn’t aware that this visitor was in our house as they were upstairs and I was downstairs. My dog was upstairs with the other dogs and she ended up biting the visitor quite badly. She needed stitches in her face and it caused a lot of harm. After that bite, I was back and forth with animal control as it was Christmas time, and she was required by state after that bite to be euthanized. It was 2 days after Christmas and it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through. I had so much regret and feelings I have never felt before.

Fast forward about 3 months, my wife got me a Weimaraner puppy. Partly due to my old dog being a Viszla and the breeds being so similar. I know it was fast…I did so much research on the breed as I wanted to be prepared because at this point I was only 20 and we had just moved out together. Things were going good with my weim, we had no aggression issues with dogs or people, I tried to socialize her well to prevent this. Until she was about 6 months old, I (regrettably) took her to a state fair type of thing. fireworks started. She backed out of her collar and she was gone. I was running around looking for her while there was a firework show happening above, sobbing and asking people if they had seen which direction she ran. We asked the stage announcers after the show to keep an eye out for my dog. We had teams of cute helpful teenagers helping us look for her in all directions. I ran around for 2 hours calling her name, looking, etc. we drove around till 2 in the morning looking for her. We could not find her, we posted alerts about her being missing in multiple city pages. We went home and woke up every hour of the night looking for updates on if she had been spotted, and got up at 8 am to start driving around looking for her again the next day.

After 2 hours of driving around, someone reached out and said that they had found her on their porch that morning. I went to their house and sure enough, it was her. She had been hit by a car on her back leg, we went straight to the emergency vet and luckily she just needed a cast. She healed nicely. This event was quite traumatizing for both of us, and I have since been diagnosed with a trauma bond to my dog because of this and my past experience with my other dog. I became a lot more protective of her/attached to her after this.

A few months after this event, I started noticing her getting snappy with other dogs. It was harder to socialize her because she would snap on other dogs and it started becoming unsafe. So I started to only have her around dogs she already knew, and not introducing her to new dogs to prevent harm to them and her. This only worsened her behavior because she started forgetting how to be around new dogs and would immediately snap on them. My dog is not necessarily reactive to other dogs walking by, but if they approach her or run up to her, she will pin them down. When she does this, she never punctures or hurts the dog, she just pins them on the ground and holds them there until I can get her off. But it’s like something takes over her if that makes sense. I have to physically remove her, and she won’t listen to any commands until she snaps out of it.
She was 7 months old at this point and I decided to get her into training. We went with a 3 week board and train program, they train with ecollar commands so that when other new dogs come around, I can essentially tell her to go to her place/sit so that she doesn’t snap on other dogs. The results were great and she came out of the program her happy self, I had no concerns.

Later that month, I was going to be gone until late in the night, so I had my brothers girlfriend come over to watch my dog. My dog knows her and is comfortable with her. And at this point my dog had no issues with people at all. I was not aware that there was going to be fireworks near my house that night. My brothers gf had left the house for about 30 minutes to run an errand, and kenneled my dog while she was gone which I told her to do. The fireworks started while she was gone, so my dog was home alone with the fireworks booming and terrified. By the time my brothers gf got back to let her out of her kennel, my dog darted under the bed and hid there for a while because she was scared. She came out and my brothers gf had brought a friend over that my dog hadn’t ever met. Because my dog had been re-traumatized from the fireworks that night, she was sitting on the couch with my brothers gf and her friend, and she bit the friend on the face. It did break skin, it was luckily nothing super severe but he did have a scratch mark from her tooth on his forehead. She called me immediately after it happened and I had her put my dog in her kennel and leave the house and I came home immediately. I was in shambles because I did not want what happened with my previous dog happening to my new dog. I felt like I had failed her. I understood why she bit, she was scared.

After that, I started being extremely vigilant with checking for fireworks in my area. I also made sure that when I wasn’t around, my dog wasn’t being introduced to people she didn’t know. I will admit I became weary of her meeting new people after that situation, and I think she could sense my hesitancy around it because she started acting weary of strangers too. She still does well with people when she knows them. When she knows someone, she LOVES them and is an absolute sweetheart. But it’s hard to get her to that point when meeting someone new. I think I definitely have a part to play in that because I was scared and didn’t want another bite happening. We have both become a mess of anxiety and fear. We rub off on eachother and it feels like I’m stuck in this tornado of shame, hopelessness, unsure-ness. I know, and take full accountability, that a lot of this is my fault. Really all of it is my fault. My dog and I have such a strong connection that it is almost toxic. I have tried working on this in therapy, but every time another incident happens, it feels like it gets worse. There is so much emotion behind it that I dont know how to articulate.

I keep her away from all dogs she doesn’t know. We still socialize her with the dogs she does know and she does good for the most part, very rarely will she snap on them. And if she ever does, it’s when she’s cornered or in too small of a space with them. I’ve become very in-tune with her body language. I can always tell when she’s about to snap and can prevent it. But for the past few months, when we have people she doesn’t know very well come over, she will sit next to them on the couch and then side-eye them. It seems like she is about to snap on them and it makes me very nervous. When she’s done this, I’ll make her get off the couch and everything is good. But since she started doing this, I’ve been kenneling her when strangers come over to prevent any circumstances. I just don’t know if this is right because eventually I’m worried she will stop remembering how to be around people and the same thing will happen that happened with being around dogs. But it’s just so risky.

To note, I do make sure she is adequately excersized every day, because when she is under stimulated or stressed, she is more aggressive.

2 days ago, my neighbors (that my dog doesn’t know very well) approached the fence while my dog was in the yard. I was not expecting them to come over so my dog was not wearing her ecollar. I told them to wait outside the fence while I put my dogs inside. Before I could even get inside the gate, my dog saw the neighbors from across the yard and bolted over to the fence, jumped up on it and snapped on my neighbors arm. I don’t think my dog really realized what she was doing? Typically she will jump on the fence and bark, but let the person approach her and pet her. But this time she just immediately snapped. Like she does with other dogs. She didn’t break skin, but all 4 of her canine teeth left bruises on my neighboors arm. I put my dog inside and went out to assess the situation.

After this happened, I was in a complete spiral. I see my dogs behavior declining. I dont know what to do. I feel like I have done everything wrong, and like I have failed my dog. I feel embarrassed. I feel ashamed. I feel hopeless. She is only 3 years old at this point. I worry that with this pattern, she is going to end up like my previous dog. I struggle between trying to work on this by exposing her to situations the right way, and just completely isolating her from meeting new people. When we are on walks, or in public, she does not lunge at people. I have let people come up to pet her slowly, watching her body language, and I’ve told every person who meets her to not get in her face or approach her quickly. And doing this has worked out fine. But in the situations where I’m caught off guard, like with my neighboors, I dont know what to do. Nobody in my circle has dealt with something like this, and I feel ashamed talking to people about it because I feel like a bad dog parent. I do everything I can to make sure my dog is excersized, stimulated, and happy, but I feel like that is not enough. I just feel lost. I needed to get my story out there and vent to people who might understand. I will gladly listen to any advice or other stories, thank you so much