The wake up call

All the posts prior to this one was a recollection of the events of two years ago. You might want to ask me why am I writing about it now? Here is what happened two weeks ago that prompted me to start this blog.

As I wasn't able to solve Brandy's aggression issue, I fell into a management mode. In the morning I was taking her to the place where I knew I will not run into any dogs during our walk. At night due to my schedule I was walking her late in the dark and dogs weren't much of the problem either. Even if we run into a dog I would pull her to the side and make her sit, while the other dog walks by.

The weekend before labor day our neighborhood was organizing a clean up. As my husband was part of the group behind it he was helping to place the signs around the community and I decided to tag alone. This was probably my first walk around the community in day light in two years. As we were attaching a sign I saw two dogs running towards us. Both were off leash. Both were corgi mix - one is a puppy, one is an older bitch - very dominant, very out of control. While I was trying to keep puppy away from us, I lost the track of the second dog and she jumped on Brandy from behind. My foot slipped and I lost control of my dog and of course, Brandy was happy at the opportunity. My husband came to my rescue and we pulled the dogs apart and nobody got hurt, but all this made me realized that maintenance of this aggression will get me nowhere. I can try to be careful and smart about it, but at the first opportunity my dog will outsmart me and I wasn't about to let her to be put down.

I went back to the message board asking for an advice yet again. I got the same advice as usual - "you need more training", "Find a good dog trainer that can help you to read your dog better". I was reading this and thinking I can read my dog all-right. I know pretty well what's coming, but what I don't know is to what to do about it. Idea of finding another trainer was making me quite mad. So far I have spent a lot of money on trainers and yes, I had some progress in the obedience department, but the aggression issue was still untouched.

The only one thing that made me reconsider was a call from Steve Khun, a professional dog trainer who is the member of canine aggression yahoo group. The one benefit of being a member of this group is an opportunity I had to read advice that was given to people by different dog trainers. This is one of the best way to screen a dog trainer! Reading the advice that he or she gives to a person gives a very clear picture of what kind of dog trainer he or she is.

It happened that Steve was one of the people on that board that I was willing to listen to. He convinced me to give Margot Woods a call. I have to say that this wasn't the first time I have heard her name, other people have recommended her, but by then I just started working with Andrew and wasn't ready to switch. So after thinking it over I have decided to at least speak with her. After our conversation I was invited to a 2 hour evaluation. The fact that it was evaluation and not a demo, sounded appealing so I have decided to give this a shot. After all this is only two hours and I am not signing my life away. So this Thursday, I am going to meet her.

The court

The real trouble

I do not think I will ever forget the labor day of 2007. The day was promising to turn out great! I had a hair cut, took my kids to a butterfly show and was on my way to meet my husband and spend the rest of the day in Annapolis. 

The day turned around when on the way back from the butterfly show my car broke down, the engine over heated and I was stuck on the gas station on the hot day with two kids waiting for my husband to come and rescue us. By the time we made home, we could forget about our planned trip. I was super stressed out due to the car trouble, trying to guess how badly the engine was damaged and how much it will cost us to fix it. As I was sitting on the front steps of my house, with the dog by my side, trying to compose myself, my 7 year old daughter was nagging on me to let her to hold the dog. I said "no" over and over but I finally broke down and let her. Stupid uh? yeah. Maybe those who have 7 year old would understand why I did what I did. But, the rule was broken, "no" turned into "yes" and the punishment followed shortly. 

Please understand that after my meeting with George, I really felt that there is no danger in doing what I was about to do. George told me not to let my dog near other dogs, but the street was deserted and I was on my front yard and there was no dog in sight.

A minute after I passed the leash into my daughter's hands and turned away for a second my neighbor came out with their toy poodle. This wasn't a dog that we never met before. In an instant my dog lunched an attack on that poodle, needles to say that my daughter couldn't stop her from going where she wanted to go. 

So here comes another vet bill, plus I had to pay 3 days worth of the owners salary as she twisted her ankle when she got tangled by the leash and couldn't go to work for 3 days. On top of that two days later the animal control officer was knocking on our door. 

Just because my dog is full of love towards the people, nobody who meets her think that this dog has an aggression issue. The animal control officer wasn't an exception to it. He was very nice and explained to us that our neighbor is planning on submitting an affidavit and if they do that we will be facing an additional $1000 fine on top of what we had already paid about $1700. So he suggested that we should go talk to them and make it go away. However he still gave us a warning and labeled Brandy a potentially dangerous dog.

For those of you who wonders about the amount of fine here is a break down:

$500 for the unwanted contact. Yes, if you think that it's very cute when your dog comes to people on the street without their invitation, if the person is scared of animals he can report you to the animal control and you will be charged with unwanted contact.

$250 for the trespassing - because my dog had to get on their yard to get to them.

$250 for the off leash animal.

I called George the next day in panic. To my surprise the response was something alone those lines: "well, what did you expect, the dog is not trained well". What happened to the "great job" and "your dog is not aggressive"?! I asked if he thought that if I spay her it would resolve the aggression issue. Thank God he said that it's not guaranteed. So I have decided that I better to spend my money on training, but with someone else.

I went back to the aggression board describing the incident, but I was told that George is a very good trainer, and that even best trainers cannot with 100% certainty know whether the dog will bite or not. That might be true, but what bothers me the most and what I cannot comprehend to this day, and even more now, knowing what I know about the state laws regarding the dangerous dogs - is how the experienced dog trainer can walk away so easily knowing that the dog had already done the damage, even if he believes that it was defense driven, and if I were reported to the authorities back then, the next bite could cost the dog it's life.

The training

Uncle George came to my house for the evaluation/training session couple of days after the incident. I have told him that I was following Lou Castle's articles to train Brandy. George said that he doesn't see eye to eye with Lou, but by then it wasn't a surprise to me as I had figured out that Lou brushed many dog trainers the wrong way. I do not really know what the matter was or who was right or wrong and to be honest I don't really care. The one thing I liked about Lou's articles was the fact that they made sense to me and I like things that make sense, but I was  willing to keep an opened mind and give a shot to the new approach explained to me by George. 

The biggest difference was that we didn't use the continuous button anymore, instead, we switched to the "nick" button. For example, on recall, instead of releasing continuous button as soon as the dog would start moving towards me, we would use "nick" button all the way till the dog comes, that was suppose to encourage the dog. Somehow deep inside me I didn't quite understood, how the prickling of the collar would be motivating, but so far I was willing to go on with it.  Then George called his dog and used it as a distraction while Brandy and I were walking around them in a circle. I was told to stop using the word "here" as a  recall command as it sounds too close to "heel" and will make the dog confused so I should start using "come" instead. 

At the end of the session George said that I did a good job overall, that Brandy wasn't a tiny bit aggressive, that the aggressive incident was a defensive bite and that I should be careful and not let her near other dogs without carefully assessing the situation and that I should give him a call again if I wanted to teach Brandy some new tricks. 

Now before I move any further, I have to say that after following Lou's instructions Brandy had a very good recall, she would forget a deer or a rabbit if I call her, but to get there the "here" command had to be proofed with distractions. Well, George forgot to mention to me that if I switch the command I should start all over again. Yes, I should have probably be smart enough, done what I have done by then in the training area, to figure it out but I was so happy and  proud with myself after George told me that I have nothing to worry about and that I did a great job, that I simply didn't think about it.

Begining of the troubles

She was always a dominant one while playing with other dogs, this was obvious from a very beginning and I liked that quality in her. With all the difficulties the terrier brings into your life there is a plenty of joy to compensate with.
As she was getting older I started noticing some first signs of aggressive behavior - crazy barking while passing other dogs we'd met on walks, however when she had a chance to play with them I did not see any signs of aggression.
One morning in June of 2007 I was walking my dog when I ran into a man and a yorkie. This really wasn't an unusual situation as we would run into many people and dogs on our walks all the time. As the person and the dog approached and the dog started their ceremonial sniffing of each other I sensed the tension between them, but before I had a chance to do something about it, one of them growled and a fight started. I still cannot tell you who initiated it. Needless to say that when 30 lbs dog gets into a fight with a 5lbs one the result is pretty bad. This was such a shock that  I have decided that this is a time for an intervention by a professional. Brandy was about 18 months old then. Luckily for me and her, the yorkie recovered quickly and because the yorkie's owner and I both felt at fault, he didn't report me to the authorities, but I had an expensive vet bill to pay.
Now, how would you go about finding a professional? I went online and found a yahoo group dedicated to dog aggression. The answer to me was: " go to dogpro.org and find a trainer", and so I did. I have to say that I found that it extremely hard to evaluate a dog trainer, and I was mistaken that every person listed on that site is highly qualified to train my dog. Every dog trainer you would fine online would have a nice website with plenty of testimonials from their clients saying how he/she was able to transformed their Fido into a perfect dog. So picked one that seemed qualified and made my call.

Puppyhood

I am looking back in the past trying to figure out what I have missed that caused us to end up where we currently are. I wish I have started this blog 3 years ago when all those little details were still clear in my memory, but unfortunately they are long gone.
Brandy was a very happy puppy. We have plenty of dogs in the neighborhood and she was happy to play with any of them. Before we got her I did some reading about the breed and although I have read that the terriers are independent thinkers and tend to be dog aggressive I never fully understood what it means until she was about 18 months old. So at the beginning I was a bit cautious about letting her play with other dogs but seeing how well they get alone I stopped worrying about all that stuff. This all changed one day.
Also from my research I found out that obedience training is strongly recommended for this breed. I really did want to get this right so I started looking for a dog class. The problem is that although I did plenty of reading about the breed, I hardly did any reading about dog training and had very little idea what the well trained dog really means. That and also money consideration made me looking for dog classes at pet stores. Just before I signed up for the session the breeder suggested to me to buy an e-collar and pointed me to the set of articles that describes how to use it. And so I did. Everything was going pretty well. First we worked on the recall and she did have a great recall, she would turn in midair when I call her, even if rabbits or deer were right under her nose. We worked on sit, down and hill commands and I thought we had all we needed, as I wasn't going to do compete in obedience trials. Thinking about it now, I'd say we could have been OK if I just had another spaniel, but as I found out terriers are quite a different story.

Introduction

There is an old Russian cartoon about a "Blue Puppy". If you were to ask my parents they would tell you that when I was about one year old, the only story I would want to hear over and over is the "Blue Puppy".
My dad is a hunter. When I was about 7 years old we got our first dog - "Russian Spaniel". It's a mid size working breed. I always loved dogs, at a very early age I new names of most of dog breeds. I remember there was a book in our house about breeds of hunting dogs and among them there was a picture of a Kerry Blue Terrier. Right then I was intrigued by the word "blue" in the name of the breed. When my parents got divorced my dad took our dog with him and for a few years we didn't have a dog in the house.
When I turned 18 my mom and I started talking about getting another dog. We discussed few breeds and she wasn't very excited about Kerry blues. One day I came home and found a cutest American cocker spaniel puppy, later when we came to USA I took that dog with me. Soon after I moved to the US I got married, my husband had terrible allergies to my cocker so unfortunately she had to stay with my mom and grand parents and couldn't come to leave with us.
My husband loves dogs and other animals ( although he would deny it) very much and it was very hard for us not being able to own a dog. When we finally bought our house we tried fish and parakeets but it could not come even close to owning a dog. One day we were at a party where the host had a Shih-Tzu. Of course we started talking about dogs and allergies and the owner mentioned that she thinks that Shih-tzus are hypoallergenic. My husband was quick to add that he doesn't think he is having an allergic reaction to the dogs in their house. I wasn't about to own a Shih-tzu, I wanted a bigger dog that I can take jogging, hiking and other places and not the dog that I will have to carry around, so I started my research on "hypoallergenic" dogs and people with allergies owning some of those dogs.
On the list of "hypoallergenic" breeds was a Kerry Blue Terrier. But of course my husband was not as excited as I was about the breed. He wanted a GSD or a pit-bull or something along those lines. After a lot of work I managed to convince him to give Kerries a shot. The next thing on my list was finding a dog. I wanted to be super cautious about bringing the dog home. I wanted to make sure that my husband would be able to live with it and we will not be facing two unpleasant options
a) return the dog
b) let my husband suffer for ever.
So I contacted Kerry Blue foundation. My hope was that maybe I could foster a dog. And do something like foster to adopt. Unfortunately they did not have any foster dogs available and I was hesitant adopting a dog without a trial. The thing about me is that I can be very indecisive. I would do my research and thinking to the point that I cannot make a decision anymore, but if decision is made I am not willing to wait much longer before putting the plan in action.
This was no different, I wasn't willing to wait a year or so for a foster dog to become available, so I looked elsewhere. Luckily for me I found what I was looking for. A breeder in PA had a dog available. Originally she kept the pup for herself, but decided that she had too many dogs already and was willing to place it. When I explained my situation to her, luckily for us, she agreed to let me keep the dog for a week, before we would make a decision to buy her. And this is how PennTerra`s Sky Reflection aka Mudpie aka Brandy came to our house. And here I was an owner of 7 months old "blue puppy".