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HUGE mistake (looong)
We had something of a miserable experience this weekend, and I am still beating myself up over it. Remember the Malamute girl that I pointed out last week? Well, we went to meet her and she was just about as sweet as a dog could be, so we decided to adopt her. One big problem. From the word go, Khan was not happy with her, stiffening if she came anywhere near him, and growling at her under his breath. We thought we could work things out if we introduced them slowly, because Khan has never actually been aggressive towards another dog, and this girl seemed to be friendly enough, as she tried to paw him, and was wagging her tail the whole time. She also did the same thing to every other dog that came near her. Came home and kept the two dogs separated. Khan's attitude had not improved, but I didn't notice any provocation from the girl dog. Walked them around the yard, with the two of us walking in opposite directions so we would pass each other briefly, closing the distance, and the first chance she got, girl dog put her head on his shoulder. But, the leashes were barely within reach, the dogs were separated, and we continued on. Then, Khan noticed her peeing, and absolutely insisted on marking on top. She came back and marked on top of him, and I started getting a little knot in the stomach. We tried crating the girl dog, but she busted out of it as soon as Khan tried to walk past it. No contact made, because we were both right there. This was getting a little tiring, so I took Khan out to the dog park. Came back in a couple of hours later, but called DH and told him to make sure he had a hold of girl dog. He assured me that he had. Khan was walking past DH and girl dog when the girlie slipped DH's Khan and jumped on Khan. Then, she grabbed him by his scruff. Khan just completely stiffened and was letting out loud growls, but didn't move an inch. DH managed to pull her off his neck, but she got him on his ear. By then, he had turned around, and they went at it. It seemed to last an eternity, and although we both had both of the dogs by their rear end and pulling as hard as we could, neither dog was willing to let go. Finally managed to get them away, and girl dog made one final lunge for Khan's leg. Khan looked unscathed, except for limping on his already bum leg. She had a torn lower lip on the left side and was bleeding a bit. We took her in to the emergency vet (Saturday night), and they kept her overnight as they needed to put her under to suture her lip. As soon as we got home, we checked Khan out, and he had a bite wound on the top of his neck, a tear in his ear, a couple of scratches on his muzzle, and a small, but pretty deep wound in his leg. He went to the vet yesterday, and checked out more or less okay. I spoke with a bunch of dog people, trainers, a couple of breed rescuers, etc. and all of them agreed that the prognosis for this whole thing working out is not good. They pretty much said that given enough time and space, they may come around to the point where they can peacefully coexist under supervision, but we may never be able to leave them alone. Apparently, the fact that this was initiated by the newcomer and not by the existing dog might actually mean that the problem could worsen over time, as the new dog settles in. There really was no way to tell if it would ever get better, and considering how miserable Khan was, we decided that the best thing for both dogs was to return her before we all got overly attached to each other. The good news is that she attended an adoption day yesterday, and was adopted out to someone with a slightly smaller female Husky. The two ladies appear to have hit it off (resident dog jumped on her, and she seemed fine with it), and they were even eating from the same bowl at home. I realize that we got caught completely flat footed on this one. Khan is generally quite good at letting us know when he is okay with another dog and when he isn't, and we chose to ignore the biggest possible red flag because we were so enamored of the girl dog (she has just the loveliest personality). Quite an expensive mistake, as it turned out, but it would really be a complete waste if we learn nothing from it. What could we have done differently? How should all this have been handled? If there is ever a next time (and right now, we are strongly leaning towards never, content to have a single dog and visiting dogs), I don't want us to repeat any of the mistakes we have made. Suja |
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