I was recently asked what to say to dog owners who have adopted dogs which have experienced severe emotional shocks in an animal shelter. Here is my first response: emotional shocks, which may have been physical or psychological, cause lasting disturbances in behavior which can only now be fixed by your dedicated effort.
There is a wide chasm between what animal welfare people preach and what is happening. Go to any major animal welfare website, listen to their donors, and talk with their vocal supporters: they preach positive, fear free, 5-Freedoms care and training. Yet, the animal shelters they support deploy a wide range of accidental, purposeful and sometimes methodical aversive, shocks and insults directed at the dogs in their care. You don’t have to hit a dog to abuse it. Shame on the big donors who don’t see, or decide to look the other way, when their dollars are being used to damage thousands of dogs every year. I don’t care about your sponsored adoption events, spay/ neuter clinics, microchip and vaccination drives, self-congratulating postings on various social media, or sad TV public service announcements. Those in the trenches see it every day, but their requests for help from you are like shooting arrows at a brass sky. They don’t reach those who have the influence and resources to demand fundamental changes.
On the flip side, there is so much ignorance regarding what to do with traumatized dogs at home, in foster care, or in a boarding kennel. Let’s get this one out of the way up front: the troublesome behaviors you see and don’t like aren’t the dog getting back at you, being dominant, being stubborn. The dog has been traumatized. What that dog needs, right away, is 1.) a safe home… which also means to get them out of that kennel; 2.) a warm attachment to a person they live with; 4.) concerted wise efforts to deal with any fears and abnormal behaviors; 5.) sufficient medical care; and 6.) proper nutrition to get back to a normal weight.
A lot of people misread rescued dogs. The dog doesn’t eat, must not be food motivated. Wrong. The dog doesn’t obey, the dog must be dominant and stubborn. Wrong. The dog growls at this or that I do with the dog, must be punished somehow. Wrong. The dog lunges at strangers or strange dogs, I’m so mad I’m going to ignore the dog all night. Wrong. I saw this to do with dogs on TV, it’s going to work. Wrong.
Traumatized dogs will appear to refuse to perform anything correctly. They will resist a lot of things, or violently try to escape, such as being put into a crate or being left alone. They will emit a range of distress vocalizations, from whining to barking. Some will sleep too much; others will be hyperactive. Some also show physical signs, such as the house training isn’t working, the dog pants a lot, elevated heart rate, temperature runs hot, digestive upset, runny stools. Other signs can be outright refusals to accept a collar or leash; humping someone or the other dog; jumping up on people; hiding under the bed; guarding a food bowl, bone, toy, or location; air biting; excessive licking; difficulty accepting other pets or other people in the home; jumpy and barking at the smallest noises or movements; inability to get to know friends, guests or new animals; and difficulty with bathing and grooming. This is just a partial list, but you get the idea. This isn’t a dog that needs to be dominated, bullied, emotionally punished, and subjected to all manner of aversive methods. Instead, this is a dog that is in trouble and needs your help to get out that mess.
Dogs like this don’t fix themselves. Harshly stressed dogs have an uncertain future unless you figure out what is going on and get the diagnosis and treatment right early on. Stressed dogs die young, either from early “natural” death, a disease, or because the dog eventually hurts another animal or person, and the vet is instructed to put a needle in their forearms and end it all. Lazy, or neurotic, owners need not apply.
I realize none of this is fun to talk about, but this all must stop. We must do a better job of socializing, training, medically treating, feeding, containing, and managing all dogs so they either don’t end up in shelters or are better adapted to a short term stay in a shelter and have a better ability to integrate into a new family. Normal people take good care of dogs all the time, so that isn’t an impossible expectation. We also need to start holding animal shelters to higher standards, at least best practices standards, or refuse to support them and send our efforts, votes, and money elsewhere. Municipal shelters don’t fix themselves very often, and even the ones that do tend to fall back into bureaucratic systems of harsh animal adversity. You can’t count on the politicians, media, or big donors to help. New laws won’t help, be enacted, or enforced. The public, concerned employees, and volunteers need to walk away if the situations aren’t humane. Choose the red pill to opt out of the Matrix, start your own rescue and run it right. Hang with the good people, those who do it right, educate the public and be a good example, and let the rest die on the vine. Implement the above solutions and do real animal welfare work. Please save these dogs from the system.
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