Bitten by my dog- advice on next steps

DamagedTrax

gizmo555 wrote: »

Newsflash - dogs are not human nor do they have the same rights as humans.

very true. but since we as a race domesticated them, we should at least afford them the right not to be discarded and destroyed everytime something goes slightly wrong.

they are afterall a life on this planet too. they are subject to pain and emotions like any of us and they have as much right to be here as any human (and more right than a lot of humans ive encountered).

OldNotWIse

DamagedTrax wrote: »

very true. but since we as a race domesticated them, we should at least afford them the right not to be discarded and destroyed everytime something goes slightly wrong.

they are afterall a life on this planet too and have as much right to be here as any human or animal.

very true. I often wonder why that first "friendship" was formed. If you look at the overall picture - dogs have really come out the worst of it. It's sad really because they give back so much more than they receive. I remember seeing a dog once in an estate where I lived, he was running around frantically as if trying to find someone and then took off like the (excuse the pun) hounds of hell were after him after a man driving a van. Turned out the guy in the van was basically straying him and even in the face of such cruelty and betrayal..the dog still wanted to be with his owner, his person. Dogs may be scarred or damaged by ill-treatment, but they always forgive, and I find this heartbreaking when you think of how many of them are abused and neglected. I dont understand how anyone can abuse such trust and willingness to accept and forgive. I read a beautiful quote once (cant remember who it was sorry) "I wish I could be the person my dog thinks I am".

"He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion"

Sorry rant over, wasn't aimed at you OP just the natural course of the thread and wanted to vent - sorry!

gizmo555

DamagedTrax wrote: »

well if your opinion is that the dog should immediatly be PTS in this case . . .

. . . suggesting that a family pet be PTS for one incident without proper investigation, shows no understanding of dog behaviour at all.

That's not my opinion and I made no such suggestion. I do suggest the nonsensical comparisons with cats, car drivers and squabbling children are not in any way helpful.

DamagedTrax

apologies, i was mixing your post up with scudzilla's.

scudzilla

DamagedTrax wrote: »

very true. but since we as a race domesticated them, we should at least afford them the right not to be discarded and destroyed everytime something goes slightly wrong.

they are afterall a life on this planet too. they are subject to pain and emotions like any of us and they have as much right to be here as any human (and more right than a lot of humans ive encountered).

Did you not see the OP's pictures? This is a bit more than going 'Slightly Wrong', if it had been a small child or a very elderly person you'd probably be looking at scarring for life...or worse

borderlinemeath

scudzilla wrote: »

Did you not see the OP's pictures? This is a bit more than going 'Slightly Wrong', if it had been a small child or a very elderly person you'd probably be looking at scarring for life...or worse

The OPs arm is bruised. But the skin was not broken which is what would have happened had the dog attacked. What the dog did was give a warning bite, unsustained and the pressure was controlled. IF the dog wanted to harm the OP it could very easily have broken the skin but it didn't.

Hopefully the vet will be able to shed some light on the dogs health. The eye problem is concerning, the dog may have a problem with his sight and when the OP touched him he reacted with fright as if he didn't realise that somebody was there. Or he has a problem with the area that the OP touched and it hurt, coupled with the eye problem he reacted in fright.

The follow up reaction is probably linked to the incident. Dogs will associate events in their heads with either good or bad outcomes. And for the dog the incident has now become associated with the OP as something bad. A good behaviourist will work out a system of gradually reintroducing the dog to the OP without stressing the dog out.

DamagedTrax

scudzilla wrote: »

Did you not see the OP's pictures? This is a bit more than going 'Slightly Wrong', if it had been a small child or a very elderly person you'd probably be looking at scarring for life...or worse

ever seen a real dog bite? it aint pretty. that pic like has been said above, was a warning. no skin punctured, controlled bite force, no shaking or tearing involved.

my own dog has bruised my hand play fighting with me. there's a world of difference between a mouthing, a controlled or defensive bite (as this case was) and an actual attack.

ill say it again for you. this was not human aggression, the fact that every other dog experienced member agrees with me and one trained behavioursist on the forum agrees should tell you that you're wrong.

DBB

borderlinemeath wrote: »

The follow up reaction is probably linked to the incident. Dogs will associate events in their heads with either good or bad outcomes. And for the dog the incident has now become associated with the OP as something bad. A good behaviourist will work out a system of gradually reintroducing the dog to the OP without stressing the dog out.

Without having seen the dog, the above quote is probably the closest explanation for your second incident OP.

At this point, I feel it is vital to say to you OP that there have been a couple of threads here of late where the OP got bitten by their dog, and came here, or to other "experts", looking for help. In two of the cases I can think of offhand, two of the dogs are dead now because the OPs did not take appropriate action when given very good advice, and in both cases, there was further damage done by the dog prior to being PTS as a result of the rather stilted and largely unqualified advice given out both here and by, as you call them, "dog experts".

Some posters here wrote disparagingly about behaviourists/trainers.. I can only conclude that the behaviourists/trainers they are basing their opinions on are quacks, because I can assure you, the level of training, experience and knowledge required to be a proper behaviourist would make them think again. Indeed, they just might learn a thing or two from seeing a qualified behaviourist in action with a behavioural rehabilitation case. To be as disparaging towards all behaviourists is disingenuous towards those who have invested a small fortune, and considerable personal effort, into getting themselves properly qualified.

Look, when it comes to aggression, don't listen to ANY "experts" unless they are accredited, qualified (to a minimum of 3rd level), and experienced in dealing with aggression cases appropriately. Blather, like your dog bit you because he's trying to dominate etc is unqualified, dangerous, misleading advice... and did not come from any proper expert. Anyone can call themselves a behaviourist or "expert", but I can't put it any more bluntly without writing yet another long post about how to choose a behaviourist: if they haven't got a 3rd level qualification, and aren't a member of an accrediting professional body, then they are not a behaviourist. A skilled trainer, perhaps, but not a behaviourist. It's pretty much that simple.

Are you really in Germany OP? I didn't see where you said that but could have missed it.

Several people here have advised that you go to the vet, and rightly so. First of all, it could be very significant that you were petting the dog around the hips/lumbar area, areas in which elderly dogs can harbour a lot of pain without the owner necessarily noticing until there is an incident. His sore eye would not help. The type of bite he gave you, and the way he went about it, is very reminiscent of a bite a dog gives when he is saying "Oooouuuuucccchhh", and the fact that he bruised you is very significant indeed. Despite what others here have misleadingly said, if he had wanted to hurt you, you simply could not have moved quickly enough away from him to stop him. There isn't a human fast enough to stop a determined dog from hurting them badly, should the dog want to.

It is a bg bruise, but it is a bruise, and this means your dog deliberately inhibited the force of his bite so that he would not hurt you too much. This is REALLY important when considering behavioural treatment: a dog that has bitten without lasting injury ten times is easier to rehabilitate than a dog who has bitten once and maimed.

Please remember, a prod and poke will not be enough by the vet to establish if there is a source of pain in your dog: he will need thorough physical manipulation and probably X-rays. He should also have bloods done to eliminate problems with organs, hormones, glands etc. This is something that every older-dog owner should do as a matter of course when their dog gets to a certain age.

Which leads me to my next point. Your dog is an elderly dog, indeed at his age is medically considered "geriatric". Older dogs can do odd things, they often suffer from increased irritability, nervousness, phobic behaviour, and aggression, due to loss of sensory ability, dementia, and pain. Your vet, and/or a properly qualified behaviourist, need to establish if there is an age-related condition going on here: Has your dog got the early signs of Canine Cognitive Dementia (CCD)? Is his thyroid working properly? Are his kidneys and liver in proper working order? Is his prostate gland normal? Is there skeletal pain? Most of these things cannot be seen from the outside unless the owner is very skilled and trained to spot the symptoms.

If you go to the vet (and I hope you do), it is really, really important that the vet directs his examination to one suitable for the geriatric dog, and sadly, a lot of vets are not particularly good at either suggesting this, or doing anything about it. Many age-related conditions are written off as "the dog just getting old", when the tragedy is that with proper medication, therapy, and dietary intervention, many age-related conditions can not only be stalled, but actually reversed.

You have a 10 year old dog there who has had his first aggresive transgression. A sudden change in behaviour is almost always caused by a medical condition. It is your duty to make sure you have a vet that's good enough to throw the medical book at this dog to make sure he has the medical all-clear.

When/if the vet has eliminated medical conditions as a possible cause, then the next step is a qualified behaviourist. Things must be done in this order as it is utterly pointless to try to address behavioural problems if they turn out to be caused by a medical condition. It would be unprofessional of a behaviourist to take on an aggression case like this one without first eliminating medical conditions.

For what it's worth, I think your dog reacted as he did on the second occasion because of what had happened on the first occasion. As Borderlinemeath suggested above, dogs can very quickly make associations with both good and bad consequences. Like us, they are also subject to "single event learning". It is not unreasonable to hypothesise that your dog developed a sudden negative association with you, in the clothes you were wearing, because a person who looked and smelled exactly the same hurt him yesterday (in what the dog might describe as an unprovoked attack?!:o). Maybe there was something about you that reminded him of the oil men. We may never know. But either way, you (inadvertently) may have hurt him, so it is in his interests to avoid a similar event happening, and to do this, he'll very sensibly run away and hide, and if he can't get away quickly enough, he'll warn with rumbles and growls.

Note that, from what you've said, your dog has always run away and avoided situations up til now which frightened him, and he is still doing that with you in *those* clothes. However, dogs of this type WILL, if cornered, use aggression to get rid of frightening things, when avoidance/running isn't an option. Perhaps the dog, at the moment you touched a sore spot yesterday, didn't see any other way out, and had to resort to the bite? You should be able to shed light on this. Indeed, looking back you may be able to say if the dog gave any warning signals: did he lick his lips, show the whites of his eyes, become stiff in his movements, turn his eyes or head away? All are signs that the dog is feeling a little bit uncomfortable with what's happening at that moment. If these signs are ignored (as they often are) the dog has to escalate the level of warning. This can happen in an instant, and so the bite can often appear "unprovoked", even though it wasn't, when you look at it from the dog's viewpoint.

Anyway, good luck OP. I wouldn't be racing to put your dog to sleep either: there are a lot of potential mitigating factors here, and the fact that he has no history of aggression, coupled with the fairly minimal harm done by the bite, suggest that this dog is not a danger to others. However, lesson learned: it would be very useful to get a qualified behaviourist to visit so that you can implement some new measures to help your ageing dog cope better with the tribulations life is throwing at him!
Good luck!:)

Ann22

Op I feel for you. My heart would be broken if one of my little ones started to fear me. I met a man out walking his dog recently. He said his dog was blinded in one eye by a cat and since then is very nervous of something approaching him from his blindside. If it's not your dog's eye that's the problem..it could be that he has arthritis. A woman living near me had her dog pts 'cos he snapped at one of her kids. Her kids were always trying to sit on the poor dogs back. He was old and had arthritis. I was really upset when I heard this as the dog was a little darling. Always good natured throughout her life. Then at a time when she was old and needed comfort and peace the kids were torturing her. There's an article here about a condition that can cause behavioural changes in older dogs. Definitely a check up with a vet is warranted op. No way would I put him down, he's a dote btw.
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/do-dogs-get-alzheimers.html

Wibbs

DamagedTrax wrote: »

ever seen a real dog bite? it aint pretty. that pic like has been said above, was a warning. no skin punctured, controlled bite force, no shaking or tearing involved.

my own dog has bruised my hand play fighting with me. there's a world of difference between a mouthing, a controlled or defensive bite (as this case was) and an actual attack.

ill say it again for you. this was not human aggression, the fact that every other dog experienced member agrees with me and one trained behavioursist on the forum agrees should tell you that you're wrong.

+1 My last dog many years ago showed this. We were walking in a local park and a well dodgy person and his mates("known to the Gardai" types it turned out) blocked our way. My dog gave all sorts of warnings as this ringleader approached, but he ignored them. This bloke became very threatening and my dog, normally of the "get the fcuk outa dodge" mentality went for him(TBH I was crapping myself). One actually aggressive bite. Just one. I found out later from the Guards(who were called by an observer and showed up PDQ), this muppet needed 30 plus stitches and two reconstructive surgeries and still had a crook hand after it. One bite. That same dog of mine went for me once in his 17 years of life. I was taking the piss at the time TBH and ignored his clear warnings. He bit me as a warning, but I ended up with similar to the OP's bruises. Big diff between offensive* and defensive in the same dog.



*though I'd argue even in the offensive bite he was buying time to run away. He could have pressed the attack but didn't.

Dodd

If the dog is not walked and social with other dogs then the smell of another dog/cat off you could cause this imo.
I would still like to know if there is a way you might have smelled of fuel as the dog does not like that and hides in his box.