our new dog attacked my horse--can this be fixed?

[aliceo]

[QUOTE=Bicoastal;8449286]
I have read this whole thread with interest. I see OP has returned the dog <hugs> and will be waiting a while longer before getting another dog. How are you doing? Did the owner pick up the pup?

Because this thread has some great suggestions, I’m going to add this suggestion when one gets a new dog, especially an adult.

The two-week shutdown protocol. This sounds harsh and a little antiquated. I’m my recent experience (I loosened up some rules as I saw fit), it is a kindness, sets up the new dog for success, and avoids some of the common pitfalls. I like this compilation of little stories from a project where dog trainers pulled shelter dogs and compared notes.[/QUOTE]

bicoastal, i strongly disagree with the two week shutdown as described in that document, it would have been totally inappropriate for this dog AND for us, and i totally agree with the second article you linked to, and we actually did follow all those guidelines. i saved the second article for future reference.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=aliceo;8449774]
bicoastal, i strongly disagree with the two week shutdown as described in that document, it would have been totally inappropriate for this dog AND for us, and i totally agree with the second article you linked to, and we actually did follow all those guidelines. i saved the second article for future reference.[/QUOTE]

What did you disagree with? I thought it seemed pretty reasonable, although obviously I think there could be some adaptations with regard to crate placement, car rides (obviously it might be necessary to get to the vet), leashing in the house if it is possible to confine it with a gate, etc. But allowing the dog 2 quiet weeks to settle in to your routine…that all seems pretty normal.

When we adopted our kids (not newborns), we were given this same information. Limit trips and visitors, lots of rest/downtime, not to overstimulate, and allow time to form attachments to us. Learning to live in a new environment is exhausting. (Actually, my younger dd was 18 months old - she needed two naps a day for several weeks…because she was overwhelmed and needed to shut down.)

The only think I disagree with is the “ignore crying, just like a newborn baby.” Newborns shouldn’t be ignored, but older children might need to be - my little one cried for a long time when put in her crib but she NEEDED that down time.

[threedogpack]

[QUOTE=aliceo;8449774]
bicoastal, i strongly disagree with the two week shutdown as described in that document, it would have been totally inappropriate for this dog AND for us, and i totally agree with the second article you linked to, and we actually did follow all those guidelines. i saved the second article for future reference.[/QUOTE]

Just out of curiosity, what did you strongly disagree with? I thought it was a pretty good article

[aliceo]

[QUOTE=threedogpack;8449909]
Just out of curiosity, what did you strongly disagree with? I thought it was a pretty good article[/QUOTE]

i don’t have time now to go back and re-read it now. but i can’t remember anything in it i agree with. in two weeks i need to find out if this dog is going to be functional in my life and out in society. that can’t happen if he’s in isolation. and i contend it is stressful for the dog to coop it up. i’ve never done this with any dog i adopted and they did just fine. the dog we just let go of acted like he’d been with us all his life in just three days, and we took him out on long hikes from the get-go. i think everything about their recommendations is stupid and senseless, from both the dog and the human’s POV. if a dog is so fragile that he has to be treated like a hothouse flower for two weeks after you bring him home, he doesn’t belong in my life anyway.

[threedogpack]

[QUOTE=aliceo;8451206]
i don’t have time now to go back and re-read it now. but i can’t remember anything in it i agree with. in two weeks i need to find out if this dog is going to be functional in my life and out in society. that can’t happen if he’s in isolation. and i contend it is stressful for the dog to coop it up. i’ve never done this with any dog i adopted and they did just fine. the dog we just let go of acted like he’d been with us all his life in just three days, and we took him out on long hikes from the get-go. i think everything about their recommendations is stupid and senseless, from both the dog and the human’s POV. if a dog is so fragile that he has to be treated like a hothouse flower for two weeks after you bring him home, he doesn’t belong in my life anyway.[/QUOTE]

thanks for responding.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=aliceo;8451206]
i don’t have time now to go back and re-read it now. but i can’t remember anything in it i agree with. in two weeks i need to find out if this dog is going to be functional in my life and out in society. that can’t happen if he’s in isolation. and i contend it is stressful for the dog to coop it up. i’ve never done this with any dog i adopted and they did just fine. the dog we just let go of acted like he’d been with us all his life in just three days, and we took him out on long hikes from the get-go. i think everything about their recommendations is stupid and senseless, from both the dog and the human’s POV. if a dog is so fragile that he has to be treated like a hothouse flower for two weeks after you bring him home, he doesn’t belong in my life anyway.[/QUOTE]

Good luck then. If you’re planning on an adult rescue/adoption I would focus solely on dogs that have been in foster programs that have done some of this work for you. While it’s possible to find that perfect dog with a 2 day trial, it sounds like you might be setting up a lot of dogs for failure.

Or, get a puppy from a working dog breeder, and bring it up in the environment it will be working in.

[Bicoastal]

Merry Christmas and best wishes in the new year

[QUOTE=aliceo;8451206]
i don’t have time now to go back and re-read it now. but i can’t remember anything in it i agree with. in two weeks i need to find out if this dog is going to be functional in my life and out in society. that can’t happen if he’s in isolation. and i contend it is stressful for the dog to coop it up. i’ve never done this with any dog i adopted and they did just fine. the dog we just let go of acted like he’d been with us all his life in just three days, and we took him out on long hikes from the get-go. i think everything about their recommendations is stupid and senseless, from both the dog and the human’s POV. if a dog is so fragile that he has to be treated like a hothouse flower for two weeks after you bring him home, he doesn’t belong in my life anyway.[/QUOTE]

I’m trying to not take this personally because I didn’t write the protocol nor did I follow it to a T. This post seems hostile; I hope I’m misinterpreting that. Thanks for responding. I hope you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, regarding the protocol. The overall theme of time and going slow is the take-home message. I understand this is a very emotional time/situation because I’ve been there. I hope you’re doing ok after returning the cattle dog.

Merry Christmas and I hope the new year brings a new companion to love. It took me a few tries before I found the right one.

[aliceo]

no hostility towards you whatsoever! i apologize if i came off that way.

i fully understand going slow. I’m very good at reading the inside of a dog. this protocol might be good for an extreme case. it is hardly a good general approach. maybe if you are new to dogs and don’t know how to read them it’s a good blueprint to insure the dog feels safe, but i doubt anyone here is that clueless.

our last, perfect dog was a severely traumatized rescue. we did not follow this protocol and he did just fine, and quickly became the perfect dog. we did what HE needed.

[judmor]

People try to move too fast with new animals. In Maryland a family adopted a new dog from the animal shelter (boxer/bulldog mix) The evening they adopted it, the child was playing with the dog in the living room. The parents heard a noise and turned around. The dog was attacking the child, biting him in the face and shaking him. The child was taken to the hospital and will be ok, the dog was taken back to the shelter and immediately put down. You need to give new animals time to adjust to new surroundings and you need to constantly watch them to make sure they’re adjusting to their new home.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=aliceo;8452416]
no hostility towards you whatsoever! i apologize if i came off that way.

i fully understand going slow. I’m very good at reading the inside of a dog. this protocol might be good for an extreme case. it is hardly a good general approach. maybe if you are new to dogs and don’t know how to read them it’s a good blueprint to insure the dog feels safe, but i doubt anyone here is that clueless.

our last, perfect dog was a severely traumatized rescue. we did not follow this protocol and he did just fine, and quickly became the perfect dog. we did what HE needed.[/QUOTE]

Yeah…but the dog you just had seems like an “extreme case.” It’s not just about making them “feel safe” but giving enough time before you can correctly assess their temperament. Maybe that was his real temperament…maybe not. It’s hard to know after just a couple of days. That’s the point.

[vacation1]

Jingles to OP, you had a hard time losing one dog, getting another and then being confronted with the #1 worst issue in a dog, aggression, and making that decision to give him back - which in the current era of blame and guilt and “have you tried a holistic vet, raw diet and personal 24/7 live-in trainer?” ethic, is extremely hard on the new owner. I agree with you about the 2-week shut-down for a dog - it may be a training idea for a known hard-case dog being given a last chance, but it’s ridiculous to expect normal dog owners to follow it for a pet dog.

[vacation1]

[QUOTE=judmor;8452550]
People try to move too fast with new animals. In Maryland a family adopted a new dog from the animal shelter (boxer/bulldog mix) The evening they adopted it, the child was playing with the dog in the living room. The parents heard a noise and turned around. The dog was attacking the child, biting him in the face and shaking him. The child was taken to the hospital and will be ok, the dog was taken back to the shelter and immediately put down. You need to give new animals time to adjust to new surroundings and you need to constantly watch them to make sure they’re adjusting to their new home.[/QUOTE]

And that shelter shut down its adoption program for a brief period to examine its protocols because they recognized, to their credit, that the attack was on them and they should have NEVER let that pit bull leave their facility alive. Shelters and rescues shouldn’t be rehoming animals that are so sensitive to stimuli and so prone to aggressive behavior that a normal family household is somehow “setting them up to fail.” WTH do they think is adopting their animals? Professional dog trainers with perfect, large homes filled with perfect locks, double-gated fences and panic rooms for the family pet to recover from the stress of being exposed to human beings?

[Horsegal984]

Annnnnndddd welcome Vacation with the same old pit bull BS.

Do you miraculously have the dogs genetic history? Because it’s been labeled as a boxer or boxer/bulldog mix in the news. Where’s that rolls eyes emoji when you need it?

[S1969]

[QUOTE=vacation1;8453095]
Shelters and rescues shouldn’t be rehoming animals that are so sensitive to stimuli and so prone to aggressive behavior that a normal family household is somehow “setting them up to fail.” [/QUOTE]

So, how do shelters “test out” their dogs with kids? With horses? Cats? Other dogs? The answer - they don’t.

How could they do this? That requires a “rescue operation with a really good foster program” - not a shelter.

If someone adopts a dog from a shelter with an unknown history - it becomes their responsibility to watch and evaluate the dog for triggers. Actually, it is ALWAYS their responsibility, but even more so for a dog with no history or an incomplete history – many dogs in shelters were relinquished because of undesirable behaviors…and some were perfectly normal but unwanted. But the shelter doesn’t usually have the ability to test all the theories and figure it out.

Any dog might be afraid of children, afraid of horses, loud noises, have seizures, whatever. A responsible owner should not assume that a dog is safe just because it seemed friendly at the shelter. (Actually, it’s even hard for me to write that, it’s so ridiculous.)

[Chall]

The aspca in NYC tests their dogs, they used to be featured on a tv program.
They are tested for food aggression (pull food bowl away with a fake hand on a stick), test response to loud aggressive old ladies with canes, open umbrellas in dogs face, test dog to dog aggression with both on a leash, test cat aggression with a cat in a room (with shelves for escape) and dog on leash.
There ARE extensive testing protocols in use at some places.

[Bluey]

There is the Turken shelter dog program, that was very active in many Eastern and Southern shelters:

http://www.adogsbestfriend.com/services/specialty-training/our-staff/

I guess still is today.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Chall;8453464]
The aspca in NYC tests their dogs, they used to be featured on a tv program.
They are tested for food aggression (pull food bowl away with a fake hand on a stick), test response to loud aggressive old ladies with canes, open umbrellas in dogs face, test dog to dog aggression with both on a leash, test cat aggression with a cat in a room (with shelves for escape) and dog on leash.
There ARE extensive testing protocols in use at some places.[/QUOTE]

But, if we assume that a dog in a shelter may not be demonstrating their real temperament - because they are overwhelmed, possibly injured, unfed, sick, etc…you really don’t know if their responses to a temperament test in the first 2 days of their stay at the shelter is legitimate. I would imagine that many dogs might exhibit fear responses to things that otherwise wouldn’t bother them in a “real” home scenario.

Not saying that this shelter isn’t doing a good job of attempting to match dogs and families - but it’s certainly not foolproof, and it doesn’t absolve the responsibility of the new owners of a pet coming from a shelter situation.

[Bluey]

Well, the idea behind shelter evaluating and training programs IS to evaluate the dogs.
Along with some basic training, so they will have a better chance to fit where they go next.

When the Turken program started, they reported extremely high rates of adoption and dogs being still happily settled in their homes years later.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Bluey;8453492]
Well, the idea behind shelter evaluating and training programs IS to evaluate the dogs.
Along with some basic training, so they will have a better chance to fit where they go next.

When the Turken program started, they reported extremely high rates of adoption and dogs being still happily settled in their homes years later.[/QUOTE]

Yes, I get it. IF the shelter does it. And even still, it doesn’t mean that the owners have no responsibility to carefully introduce their new pets to new situations and closely monitor them.

I have owned my dogs since they were 8 weeks old, and I would still do this in new situations - e.g. I have horses, but I would never assume that their tolerance for horses would translate to goats or cows. If I wanted them to be safe around cows, I would introduce them carefully to see how the dog reacts and be able to provide correction or redirection if necessary.

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=S1969;8453695]
Yes, I get it. IF the shelter does it. And even still, it doesn’t mean that the owners have no responsibility to carefully introduce their new pets to new situations and closely monitor them.

I have owned my dogs since they were 8 weeks old, and I would still do this in new situations - e.g. I have horses, but I would never assume that their tolerance for horses would translate to goats or cows. If I wanted them to be safe around cows, I would introduce them carefully to see how the dog reacts and be able to provide correction or redirection if necessary.[/QUOTE]

My understanding is that the OP was doing just that.
The dog was being introduced to any and all, was on leash.
Then the dog went way out of what normal dogs would do by the way it attacked the horse.
That is why the OP was asking about this situation.