Don't Dump The Dog (11 page)

That’s what I did with Splinter. After he relaxed with Jerry standing inside the door, I told the mooch to move to the center of the room and then walked the pooch on his leash in increasingly smaller circles around him. Whenever Splinter went extraterrestrial and Jerry asked if “that thing” was going to bite him, I asked Splinter to sit and relax, and then I asked Jerry for my $100.

You want to take this part very slowly for two reasons:

1. If you push a fearful dog into increasingly fearful situations without relaxing first, he’ll never truly associate pleasure with being around people.
   
2. You want your volunteer to become more and more uncomfortable as the dog circles closer and closer, because, as was the case with Jerry, he’ll suddenly remember he has a dentist appointment he has to get to, and, oh yeah, that he owes you money, which he’ll pay immediately
   with interest
   as long as you never ask a favor of him again. (This desired behavior is accomplished much sooner if your fearful dog is, say, a pit bull.)
   

So you’ll have to find new volunteers, which is good, because you want your dog to associate relaxation and pleasure with as many strangers as possible. As the dog progresses, repeat the exercise with the volunteer sitting on the couch, moving through the living room, and then moving from the living room to the kitchen. Eventually, ask your volunteer to start tossing your dog his reward treat, and when you feel the time is right, have the volunteer offer the treat directly from his or her own hand. It may take days, or weeks, but sooner or later, he
will
accept the treat from the stranger’s hand and you can declare a small victory.

You’ll have to tailor the exercises to your dog’s comfort level. Some get it right away and by the end of the first day of the game, sit on the volunteer’s lap and beg for attention. Others take longer, sometimes much longer, and may in fact never really enjoy being in a stranger’s presence. However, as long as they can relax in a stranger’s shadow (and thus not attack), consider your efforts a success. So many fearful dogs at the shelter come around quickly once they are used to multiple loving people with food. They start to get it: People are not all bad.

Unfortunately, some dogs are so mentally screwed up from abuse and/or isolation, no amount of game-playing works on its own. In these cases, talk to your veterinarian about using antianxiety medication, such as clomipramine or fluoxetine,
in conjunction
with playing the game. These types of drugs calm the dog’s nerves so well (without making them dopey), you could invite a 350-pound man dressed like Darth Vader into the house, and your dog may very well greet him warmly at the door. Gradually, as your dog learns to relax in the presence of even your weirdest friends, you can start reducing the amount of medication he takes, as well as your own pills.

H
ere are some tips for other things you can do to make your home a more allergy-friendly one:

• Take your medicine. If you don’t like to take pills, put it in a hot dog like you would for your dog.
  
• Be OCD and wash your hands after playing with the pooch.
  
• Once your shirt is covered in dog hair and looks more like an angora sweater than a T-shirt, change it.
  
• Go hardwood or tile; it’s hip to have in your home, and won’t collect allergens like carpet does.
  
• If you have carpet, make sure you clean it often. If you have children, put them to work and add vacuuming to their chore list.
  
• Use a hepa air cleaner; I have one in my bedroom for the dog smells alone, so it serves a double purpose.
  
• Change the air/heating filters often; 3M makes a great allergen-reducer filter.
  
• Take your dog to the groomer regularly, and that alone will cut down on allergens big-time.
  

(
Note to Self
: Talk to pharmaceutical companies about donating samples to all the shelters so we can include them in our adoption kits. That, or send us the money to hire a doctor to prescribe the allergy medicine and an FBI agent to administer the lie detector test.)

Quick Fix-5

W
e named him Dodger for a reason: He dodges humans because they scare him, and when cornered, he sees a man about a horse on the floor, on your shoes, on himself, or worst of all, a foul back-end explosion in surrender. I identify with him completely (not the back-end explosion part) and would have fostered him myself except that my house is currently inundated with socially challenged dogs, including Dodger’s brother, Bud, and if I take in any more, it will give the neighbors the ammunition they need to have my house raided by authorities and condemned, and trust me, I do not look good in stripes.

Because Dodger and Bud were feral dogs, we couldn’t just keep them at the shelter and hope for the best. Truly wild dogs like them are the ultimate shy, overly submissive cases—their fear of humans is what kept them alive—so socializing them, or any shy dog, into the human pack requires pathological patience, because no matter how kind you are to them, no matter how many treats, hugs, or whispers of assurance you give them, they still act as if you’re about to kill them. After a few days, you start to feel insulted—it’s the ultimate rejection—and man’s best friend thinks you are the bogeyman.

When Bud first came to my house, he’d never been on a leash, so I carried him in my arms from the Jeep to the door, because I didn’t want to put any more stress on him than necessary.
I
thought I was being nice.
He
thought he was being carried away by the bogeyman to be eaten, and thus saw men about horses and covered me with back-end explosions the whole way.

When we got inside, my dogs swarmed around him for inspection.
They
thought that they’d found a new friend to play with.
He
thought he was about to be attacked en masse, so he tried to make himself invisible by flattening his ears, tucking his tail, crouching down as low as possible to the ground, and then slinking through their legs to escape.

The gang followed him to the kitchen where he crawled under the table.
They
thought he was leading them on a game of chase and pursued accordingly.
He
thought he was being cornered by predators and rolled on his back and stared at the wall—his way of begging them not to attack.

They
thought, “Wimp,” got bored, and eventually walked away.
He
thought, “I’m still alive,” and stayed flattened to the floor under the table before scurrying to make his nest under my bed for the next three days. For those three days it was like having a prisoner sentenced to solitary confinement lurking under the mattress. At night I would slide his meals under the bed, and by morning the bowl would be pushed back out, empty. This also meant having to withstand putrid smells seeping out from beneath my prison cot of a bed. I moved to the guest bedroom with a bottle of Febreze.

It’s all a matter of misinterpretation.

In the wolf world, where everyone understands each other, all of Bud’s reactions make sense. From a very young age, wolf pups elicit regurgitated food from the adults by crouching down, tucking their tails, and licking the sides of the adult’s mouth. As they grow and their status in the pack’s hierarchy becomes clearer, the subordinate wolves continue the puplike behavior around the more-dominant pack members as a way of keeping everyone happy.

Likewise, when a new adult wolf from the outside seeks permission to join the pack, he assumes submissive postures—crouching, avoiding eye contact, rolling on his back—to let the others know that he’s no threat. If he acts submissive in a convincing-enough way, he might be granted membership, and at the very least won’t be attacked.

The ultimate submissive gesture among wolves and dogs is seeing a man about a horse. In the wild, if a subordinate wolf sees a man about a horse in the presence of a dominant wolf, it’s his way of saying, “Go ahead and kill me. I’m so low compared to you, I won’t even fight back,” and usually it’s enough to avoid any conflict.

But while it’s important to understand what a submissive dog says with his actions, it’s even more important to know what a dominant pack member says with his. Those in the upper echelons of a pack stare directly at those lower in rank and emit low growls, stand over them, and place paws across their backs.

So guess how your shy dog interprets your attempts to be friendly:

He’s so scared by this point that he’ll see a man about a horse on the floor as a final plea for his life. Imagine a giant predatory spider towering twelve feet above you, making weird hissing noises, and extending a hairy arm in your direction; would you lose it or what? That’s the level of fear an overly submissive dog experiences every time a human being coos sweet nothings and tries to pet him. When I rescue these types of dogs, I wear sunglasses, squat sideways, and speak in a monotone voice, reciting the ABCs.

Usually, however, we make things even worse for the poor guy, because while we try harder and harder to get him to like us, he becomes more and more afraid. Then, when we scold him for seeing a man about a horse on the floor, he has no other way to tell us how sorry he is for not communicating his intentions more clearly, and so he you-know-whats some more.

In a dog’s world, people are his pack members, and if he’s yelled at or punished when he’s young, or if he doesn’t socialize with humans during the first eight weeks of life when he’s developing his sense of self, then he will be prone to an inferiority complex that will haunt him throughout his life. Whether you’ve rescued a shy dog from a pound, a puppy mill, a pet store, or the streets, the answer is not to overwhelm him with love and affection, but rather, to do just the opposite and leave him alone for a while. Ignoring is your best training tool in the beginning; simply be a vending machine.

When Bud rooted himself under the bed, for example, I completely ignored him for three whole days. It was important to let him gain confidence at his own pace, because if I’d spent time trying to coax him out, he would have focused so much on his fear of me that he wouldn’t have been able to see the following:

• Me feeding the other dogs.
  
• Me playing with the other dogs.
  
• The other dogs playing with each other in my presence.
  
• A pack ruled by a calm, dignified, exceedingly handsome provider (me), whose stellar leadership abilities create an atmosphere of peace and tranquility among the otherwise unruly rabble (them).
  

In fact, one of the best ways to lure a shy dog away from his fear is to let him watch more-socialized dogs interact with you. At Stray Rescue, we try to place a feral or overly submissive dog in a foster home where there are other dogs to set an example, because it is
the
best way to show them how the other half lives. Nobody likes to miss out on the fun, so ham it up with your other dogs as if you’re throwing a party just to make your neighbors jealous. Jealousy can be a great tool with the shy dog.

During those first three days of Bud’s introduction to our pack, I never once bent down and looked at him under the bed. Direct eye contact for any extended period of time is one dog’s way of saying to another, “I’m about to kick your ass,” so when I changed his water or slid him food, I didn’t look sideways at him for a second.

The first big break came when I brought out the hot dogs. As I’ve explained in other chapters, no dog can resist offal-stuffed intestines, so I sat on the floor near the bed, doled out wiener bits to the other dogs, and, using a magazine as a fan, I waited for the smell to reach Bud. In less than two seconds, his nose went into high gear, his ears picked up, and his eyes darted from one dog to the other as they downed the goods. He knew the party had started without him.

Without making a big scene, I casually tossed a hot-dog slice his way, which he inhaled, and then I continued feeding the others. I didn’t immediately toss him a second piece but let him watch the others swarm around me for theirs, and when I heard him whine, I glanced his way for the first time. Then I tossed him his second piece. As anyone addicted to junk food knows, one or two bites just ain’t enough, and within seconds, Bud had slunk out from under the bed with just his head peering out, like a Pez candy dispenser waiting for more.

That night when I came home from the shelter, Bud moved his headquarters from under the bed to under my kitchen table, closer to the fridge—the ultimate vending machine—so I locked the other dogs out of the kitchen, sat on top of the table, and tossed hot-dog pieces down onto the floor. With each piece, Bud’s nose appeared first, followed by his head, followed by his tongue, which darted out with the agility of an octopus tentacle, grabbed the hot dog piece, and retracted. Then his head disappeared back under the table.

Over the next hour, I tossed the hot dogs farther and farther out, until Bud’s entire body emerged from under the table, and by midnight, he stood at the other end of the room catching the treats in his mouth mid-flight as I flung them. Then he threw up because he’d eaten so many hot dogs, and when I inadvertently wailed “NOOOOO,” and gagged in too dramatic a fashion, he slunk back under the table, peeing the whole way.

(
Note to Reader
: Because I have avoidance issues, it often takes me days to deal with a pile of dog throw-up. For those of you with similar issues, drop an old towel over the throw-up so you don’t have to look at it, and let it sit there for three days, spraying Febreze on it. By that time, it will have hardened up just enough for you to grab it under the towel in one piece, and you can toss both into the outside garbage can in one fell swoop without retching.)

(Note #2 to Reader: If you want to be smart about it, drop your significant other’s favorite shirt over the pile. When they ask why it’s on the floor, shrug and leave the room. From that point on, it’s
their
responsibility.)

Back to Bud. Up until the point when he threw up, I was desensitizing him to his new environment, which meant every time I threw a hot dog farther out and he crawled farther out into the room to get it, he received a reward for braving the unknown. Unfortunately, when I wailed and gagged, it scared him back under the table, so for the next several nights we went through the same exercise, but this time, I wailed “NOOOOO” and gagged each time I threw the hot dog out, so he came to associate me wailing and gagging with receiving a groovy treat.

Likewise, all shy dogs must learn to associate pleasure with what scares them (this is why I smoke, for I use the same technique). Many, for example, see a man about a horse when a person walks in the front door. They do this because when the person walks in, they usually act “aggressively” by bending down (standing over), making weird kissing noises (low growls), and petting them on the head (paw over back).

Again, it’s a matter of misinterpretation, so instead of “aggressively” greeting your shy dog at the door, try ignoring him instead. When you first walk in, don’t look at him and don’t direct any words his way. Then wait for
him
to approach
you
, and when he does, bend down to his level, avoid prolonged eye contact, speak softly without making coochy-coochy-bla-bla-coo baby noises, and pet him under the chin or on the chest between his front legs.

If after a few days of this your shy dog still sees a man about a horse when you arrive, add a little treat every time you walk in the door, but don’t just hand it to him—toss it across the room so he has to go and find it. This diverts his focus from fear to food, and if you’re consistent, he’ll soon associate your arrival with hunting for treats and forget he was ever afraid.

Whatever you do, don’t yell or scold him if he sees a man about a horse in front of you. It’s tempting, I know, and this is where it gets tough, because no matter what you do to assure him of your affection, he still acts like you’re going to kill him. It’s easy to lose your temper, but if you do, it will only make him more scared and confused, and he’ll see more men about more horses even more often.

(
Cleanup Tip
: Buy the cheapest diapers available rather than paper towels; they absorb the pee quicker and better, and if you are single like me, the grocery-store clerk thinks you’re just an economical dad who buys way too many douches (see chapter 1) and diapers.)