I have written before about Quinnie and her fear-based aggression towards other dogs and sometimes people. I have written about our journey with training and working with her to help her see that she is safe in this world of things that frighten her. But, today, I am going to write about our biggest fear and how we survived it.
Our biggest fear is another dog who is off lead or breaks free from their lead and comes at us; either friendly or aggressively. In Quinnie's world other dogs are scary, so imagine one coming straight at her snarling and snapping....now imagine two dogs breaking free from their owner and coming straight at her and me, snarling and snapping.....now, one more time, imagine three dogs breaking free from their owner and coming straight at her and me.....and that is what we experienced this morning.
Let me back up and say, that I am writing this from the comfort of my home office and Quinnie and I are fine. I have a few tiny nicks and bruises, but Quinnie without any marks on her. Deep sigh out....we are thankful for this....now we want to tell you our story.
Let me back up to Monday, when Quinnie and I were on a walk and I wanted to start working again on FOCUS, so we introduced treats back on our walks. As we walked I would say her name or click my tongue and she would look up at me and she would get a treat. I felt our connection on walks was not as good as it had been and I just wanted to start building that connection again; this was working. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and today, we walked, we played our training game of FOCUS and we were building a strong connection. This morning we noticed another dog up ahead and it was barking at us, so I had Quinnie sit so we could give a little distance between us and them and we played FOCUS. She was nailing it; she stopped paying attention to the barking dog and focussed entirely on me. GOOD GIRL QUINNIE. Once the other dog was a safe distance away, we started in with HEAL and continued FOCUS. Before we could know what was going on, we came up on a house with a man holding three leashes attached to three dogs. In the blink of an eye, the three dogs had slipped their collars and were running straight at us; barking, snarling, snapping; our worst nightmare.
Thank goodness we had been working on our connection, because we only had seconds to respond. I put Quinnie onto my left side, flanking my leg. I immediately made myself as big as I could, I used my voice as a weapon and yelled NO! while backing away, always keeping Quinnie close and at my left leg. The dogs circled to the front and we moved with them, always keeping Quinnie to my left. She barked, but she did not lunge at them, she stayed by my side. It took minutes for the man to get his dogs back in control and he would get one in control and the other two would break away again and come at us, but Quinnie and I developed a dance together, moving, me staying big and using my voice, always backing away and keeping her safe; she trusted me, she worked with me instead of against me, we were a team! When we finally made our way passed the chaos, she shook off the incident with a full body shake and I sat on the ground and smothered her in love and kisses and told her she was a GOOD GIRL!
To finish this post, I would like to step up on my soapbox for a moment and please ask people to be responsible pet owners. Please make sure that your dogs have collars and harnesses that they cannot slip out of. Please make sure that if you cannot handle all of your dogs at once, take them out individually. And, finally, please work with your dogs on recall so that if they do break away, you can get them to come back to you under any circumstance. This could have gone so many, many ways wrong. A car could have come down the road and hit one of the dogs; Quinnie could have been so scared that she reacted and attacked one of their dogs; Quinnie or I could have been bitten severely and needed medical attention; thankfully we are able to tell the tale safely from our cosy office, while Quinnie takes a much deserved snooze.
