I posted on here a while ago about my Rottweiler puppy, Omar. Well, he's now a year old, but we no longer own him. Let me try and explain breifly. He was owned by my housemate and I, but me and him moved into my parents house as they'd moved out and the rent would be cheaper etc. But anyway, the plan was we would bring him with us, he'd have a nice big garden and we'd slowly introduce him to my cat, who was living with my parents still in house. But because she's old and doesn't get on well with other animals (stops eating etc.) we decided the best thing would be to sell him to my housemates parents/family. Then we could still see him and be involved, he'd have a dog friend there, a garden, and there would always be someone in the house with him so we thought it was win-win. That's a brief and confusing history to get to where I am now. I'm currently with my housemate staying at his parents house, with Omar, for two weeks, as we do sometimes.
I don't know where to start really. First, the family's other dog, Omar's friend for the last year, died of old age just last week. Then, the next day, me and my housemate arrived and Omar recognised us and was extatic. In the last week, he hasn't been eating though. We tried to investigate, worried about him, and my housemates mum (who basically runs things around here) said that they leave food down all day and assured us that he comes and goes when he wants to eat, because he's an 'independent dog' and she doesn't want to tell him what to do. After a few days though, the food didn't seem to be going down at all every day. It was being changed every day, but hardly any was going down, and it was just a normal sized bowl. Then it comes out that pretty much everyone in the house feeds him off their plate, and the mum often shares her breakfast with him, as though it's just a normal part of the day. That's his breakfast as well as hers (a slice or two of toast with butter). And despite assuring us that he eats fine, we start to notice things in his bowl like a prawn cracker, or uncooked (defrosted in microwave) mince, or sausages, mixed in with his normal tinned food, or just put on top, like an incentive for him to eat. So, we've been trying to get her to give him set meal times, like he always did when we had him - he would get up, go for a walk, then we'd come back and give him his food and be all excited and eat it all up straight away, and have regular bowel movements etc. And now it's got to this. So we tried to tell her its better, but she said she knows what she's doing, he's an 'independent dog', she's raised a dog for 17 years, and we basically lost the 'argument'. We had nothing to say to her. She completely thinks she knows what she's doing and laughs at us turning up like supernannies thinking we can solve everything. She doesn't even think there's a problem. At least, thats what she says, but the fact she's having to bribe Omar to eat and the other day fed him his normal tinned food from a fork, suggest she does.
Secondly, his walks. He doesn't get walked often at all. Maybe once a week if he's lucky. One of the conditions of selling him was that he'd get walked every day - if we'd known they wouldn't, then we wouldn't have sold him and would have found a way to make it work with the cat. But anyway, they say they work and have school etc. so they don't have time to walk him. Unsurprisingly, this has lead to him developping pretty bad pulling habits, and developping a fear of people and other dogs and cars etc. which made walking him harder, which meant people were even more reluctant to walk him. We've been walking him twice a day since we got here, turning when he pulls, and he's made huge improvements. He walks calmly next to me holding the lead for most of the walk, sits at the sides of roads and crosses calmly now. He also doesn't pull and try and chase or jump at cars. Also, with people, he seems to have calmed down slightly. He still gets a little on edge, but if they're walking on the other side of the road he just watches then and then continues. We haven't tried with people closer -the few times it has happened, it's been a surprise around a corner or someone coming out their drive, and then he's jumped and pulled and made breathing noises. He wears a muzzle and while I'm reluctant (will get to that in a minute) it seems it might be necesary. I have no idea if he got to people if he'd lick them and rub against them, or jump and bite. So, all we know is that when he sees people or dogs, he jumps and pulls on the lead, which pulls on his neck (which I HATE) and breaths deeply and heavily. Dogs and cats, he's gone. Pulling and jumping towards them. The other day, we took him out at 10pm to avoid people and dogs as much as possible, and another dog appeared, off the lead. We all froze in surprise, including Omar, and the dog came over at a brisk pace and looked as though he was going to sniff Omar. Omar was obviously terrified, and started jumping and doing the breathing and growling and it was all noisy and frantic and thankfully the owner decided to appear and took his dog by the collar and said sorry and walked off. It was the last thing we wanted at this stage.
Now like I said, his walks go generally fine once we get going. But, to get out of the house and onto any road, we have to pass serveral dogs in either direction in the yards of other houses. They're unruly, and bark at Omar, he pulls and leaps back at them, so every walk starts off with scuffling and pulling and stress and noise and panic. And of course, every walk ends this way too unless we're lucky, because we have to walk past the dogs again to get home. I don't see how we can get around this at all. I read on here that some people just stand completely still and wait for the dog to get kind of bored and stop pulling, then they let the lead go loose and the dog stops pulling. Well, we tried that today, and he eventually stopped jumping and the lead was tight, he sat down, so I stepped forward to let the lead go loose, he was still for a second then the other dog barked again and he started leaping. About three other dogs were barking all around us too, and we had to just walk on eventually before upsetting the neighbours. And it seems like we'll get past one dog, and there's another, or there's a cat, or someone on a bike, and since he's so worked up, he goes for anything in that state. So we have to just wait for a period of calm before he calms down and we get some kind of control back.
I know when we see other dogs on walks, we're supposed to sit him down and try and distract him. We've tried that a few times now but have been too late and he's already gone, so this is something we'll try tomorrow and in future, but I can't see it working. He doesn't seem interested at all in the treats, the dogs are much more exciting. Today was a particularly bad walk for dogs, and by the end of the walk we'd say sit at the side of the road and he wouldn't, he'd be searching around on edge and only sit after about 20 seconds. And he wasn't accepting any treats.
No one trains him either. When we first brought him down, he'd already learnt Sit, Lay, Paw, Up, Come and his name. THen when I got him here I was here for 3 weeks, and in one day I taught him "touch" where he'd jump up to touch my hand with his nose, or run to me to touch it. He's since forgotten this skill, and today we tried to reteach it by making him touch the end of a stick with his nose. The difference was huge, he didn't seem interested at all, and I don't think even after repeated attempts he got what was happening. It's not because he's stupid or incapable of learning, it's just like...as though its his first day back at school. Completely unstimulated by this kind of mental exercise. Add to this the fact we'd got some really tasty turkey bits for his treats - we'd used them the day before to try and get him used to his muzzle and he loved them and was even putting his muzzle on to get a turkey treat - but today, in another attempt to get him to eat, his mum, unbeknownst to us, fed him a packet of the turkey bits on top of his food and he ate them all up, so I think by the time we were then sitting there with another pack using them as delicious treats, it was almost like he was having to work for his dinner, and he was like "I can't be bothered, I'll just wait til it's put in my bowl".
Finally, the muzzle problem. They made him wear a muzzle when they walked him after we'd left him with them. He hated it, and it got to the point where they started using it as a punishment. They'd wave it at him to get him to stop biting something or whatever, to regain control, and he'd cower and run or bow his head. Then, of course, they'd put it on him to take him for a walk. We came down again for another two weeks before, and I brought with me a halti head collar and we walked him with that. Despite me showing them how to use it, and walking him with it successfully, no one else was interested in bothering to learn to use it. They found it confusing and just today I got it back out all dusty from somewhere and it turns out they tried to use it once or twice more but put it on wrong and didn't know how to use it (they didn't get that you pull sideways when he pulls, leading him sideways like a horse, so they'd be using it like it was a normal collar). Anyway, the muzzle is here to stay so there's no point us even arguing with them on that point, plus with him now having this apparent fear of other people and dogs, it's for the best. It's so frustrating because he used to like meeting other dogs and sniffing them and especially meeting new people. Now we don't know if he'd bite a new person or lick them like he always did. As the muzzle is here to stay, we tried to get him to like it. They no longer use it as a punishment thankfully, so we tried to make him like it by letting him sniff it, then giving a treat (turkey). Then letting him eat some turkey bits off of the muzzle. Then feeding him through the muzzle so it was round his head. Then increasing time it was on before he got the treat etc. But, when it came to walk, he bowed his head and looked sad and it broke my heart having to put it on him. I know it wouldn't fix overnight, so we'll keep with the treats and muzzle association over the next few days to see if it improves at all.
So to summarise, the major problems we face are:
1) What can we possibly say to his mum? She basically controls how he is treated, his food, everything. And the problem is, she doesn't see there's a problem. With his food she thinks set meal times are like treating him as a slave or something; with his walks she thinks he's perfectly within his rights to bark at other dogs, showing the neighbourhood that he's top dog she jokes. Any problem we bring up, she sees as independence, or character, or happiness, or a one-off etc. etc. etc. I read from Victoria's dog book, saying no set meal times means possible problems with digestion because its always working, and it lets him know you're in control as you provide food. SHe said that it's just one persons opinion, and she's raised a dog for 17 years and he was happy and healthy (although in my experience, he spent most of his time in a small concrete 'yard', and any time he was in the house he was confined to a single rug - any time he got off the rug someone would angrily yell "GET ON YOUR RUG", because he malted hair around, but anyway, I digress...) And I bought a clicker today to try and help with training, and I got the same attitude. Like it was some modern voodoo and stupid to try.
2) His muzzle. How can we get him to like it and be fine putting it on. Once it's on he doesn't notice it or try and claw it off. It's just he clearly hates, HATES, having it put on him.
3) Every walk starts off with barking and pulling and tension and stress, because we're surrounded by out of control dogs. It's an area where the dogs are mostly kept outside in small yards (thankfully Omar is an inside dog so spends all his time in the house with people). It breaks my hearts seeing other dogs like this, and with Omar it's a huge problem because it feels like we can't help Omar with his walking when every walk starts and ends like this. It feels like we need to fix the other dogs before we can start with Omar.
4) Omar pulls and leaps towards other dogs on walks, and cats. We're going to try and distract him, but it's hard and we're not sure if it will work.
5) No one here seems interested in training him. So it feels pointless to even teach him something like "touch" because no one else will use it. At the very most, someone might be like "touch...hahaha clever dog" to impress a friend or wahtever, as though he just magically learnt it. They don't care about doing anything like that themselves or care how I taught him it etc. How do I deal with such apathy? Is it pointless to even try and get him to walk right, eat right, and train him, when in two weeks I'll be gone again and it will almost certainly slip back to no walks and their rules? How can I get through to them?
Sorry it's so long, but I wanted to try and get the fullest picture I could so you can try and understand what's happening. I feel like no one else cares but me and my housemate, and even he (as I mentioned in previous posts) is willing to put the effort in to read Victoria's book or watch the TV show, or train him, because he thinks it's all fake and not worth doing. But anyway, I've said enough. You deserve a medal if you read all this.
My parents would just leave it in the bowl, and eventually she eats it. I'm following that same logic with Omar. He's got great, healthy food in a nice clean bowl now, he's just thinking that if he waits he'll get junk food.
It isn't peculiar to your Mom: many are like that. If this sort of Mom feeds the birds, they get so fat they can't fly. It's digging his grave with a can opener, but she'll never see it like that. 