by Pajarita » Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:35 am
I have found that aggression elimination in all kinds of companion animals is just a matter of time, patience and love. It takes a long time because you have to 'untrain' the bad behavior before you can start 'training' them to accept certain things like touch, etc but it happens. I am now 'working' on the yorkie mix (Havashire) that I found on the streets. He appears to have 'fixated' on me for love although he still shows his teeth and growls when I try to approach him with something in my hands but we are making progress - very slow but progress nonetheless (he still bites my husband though). We decided not to send him to a rescue because the poor thing has real serious trust issues with people and I think he must have been passed from one rescue to a home to another rescue to another home for a while as well as mishandled by a number of people so sending him to a shelter is out of the question as he would NEVER get better in one (he goes NUTS when you lock him away from where the people are), and there aren't that many foster homes that would take a dog that is aggressive to both people and other dogs (he doesn't do it all the time, only when he gets overly excited, but he is beginning to obey my "STOP IT!!").
I once fostered a dog like him. His name was Lucca and he was a cream colored Peke/Pomeranian mix that was going to be put down by another rescue for aggression so one of the volunteers took him for herself but couldn't handle him so she called us and, because I kind of specialized in special needs and aggressive dogs, he ended up fostered by me. He was blind in one eye but he was a beautiful little boy! When he came to me, nobody could touch him but, after months of working with him (you couldn't approach him on his blind side and had to talk to him prior attempting touch), he turned into a wonderful little dog so we adopted him out and he was returned two months later because he was biting again. I took him back and he was perfectly fine in my house so we found him a home with a lady who claimed to have experience with aggressive dogs and this time he lasted four months and, by then, he had developed food aggression as well (sigh). But, again, he had no issues whatsoever in my house so we kept him. And Augie appears to be going in the same direction... I think there are animals that having had their trust in humans betrayed over and over by different people, they do relearn to trust but they only do it with the one or two people that did the 'work' and won't give anybody else the chance... but we will see what happens with both Augie AND Nigel.