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HUGE mistake (looong)



 
 
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Old January 12th 04, 08:09 PM
Suja
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Default 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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