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| When Dogs Don't Get Along
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I always thought it was funny when people would say that a dog would often look like its owner. Sometimes it holds true and sometimes not. But I find that my dog and I are even more in tune with each other than that. He is like an extension of me, and when a situation is stressful for him, I find it affects me greatly. We have now come in contact with two different aggressive dogs, with whom we had to spend at least a day, and the experiences were exhausting to say the least.
My dog is chocolate lab, and so he is extremely strong. It's difficult for me to hold him back. When these dogs growl at him, and attempt to attack him, I have to try to hold him back, and it's nearly impossible. In both situations, these dogs were smaller than him (but not tiny). In the first situation, we were at a party at my sister's house, where we were staying overnight. Halfway through the night, I had to lock my dog up in a bedroom because holding him back when tmy sister's dog was growling at him was becoming too much to handle. Hours later, I went up to check on him, and found myself overwhelmed with guilt and wanting to leave the party with him because he shouldn't have to be locked up and because the whole situation was too stressful. In the end, I stayed, but not after getting upset and venting to my sister.
In the second instance, we were camping. I have brought my dog camping before, and other then being difficult to be in a canoe with, he's fine overall. But there was another dog there who was not pleased with Wes' arrival. She appeared to grow jealous and snapped, growled, and barked when any other dog got within a few feet of her. This in turn upsets my dog an dhe begins to bark back. They fought a few times before we could separate them. The constant stress of keeping each dog on a leash, several feet apart, and breaking up violent fights was enough to ruin my camping trip. Well, that, and being hung over. We left a day early because once again, the experience was so unnerving that it physically upset me to the point of grief.
I truly feel bad for him because he's a good dog that gets a bad rap because of these other dogs. I've never had a dog before, and I now realize how much they become a member of the family. I worry and have guilt as if he was my child. I wonder if this is good practice for having children or if it's a fault of mine to get so upset by my dog being under attack by other dogs?
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Posted by allwrite on 2008-05-28 11:14:52 | Rating: | Views: 42
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