I am scared, angry, upset, and need advice

[Elizabeth]

Thank you all for the responses.
I do believe I have picked a keeper with my fiancé. 🙂

The ex is trying all she can to find something wrong. This incident leans in her favor and i am sure she is going to take full advantage. The lawyer advised us to take pictures and have Louis records on hand.
I am not going to find Louis a new home. I agree that once bitten a child remembers. I was bitten so bad when I was 6 that I had stitches in my forehead. Yes it was my fault. I was pulling the dogs ears. From than on I treated all animals with respect.
Louis has never bitten anyone before this and is now acting like his happy go lucky self. The girls a weary of him but I know when they come back after they go to their moms they will need to be reminded. I think we are going to put the girls in a class with the dogs.

I am sorry that happened to you sushi. I can’t even imagine. I am almost sure she will report it. But she is about to get a few letters from my fiancé’s lawyer that will get her mind off the dog real quickly.

[Katherine]

Haha, now I am curious as to what those letters are. 😛 i sure hope she doesn’t report Louis. But I think you chose a keeper too…he seems calm headed and fully on your side (not to talk about him like he isn’t a part of this thread) lol

[Heather]

Griffinlover, marou, I am so sorry to hear about this, and relieved that things seem to be resolving OK. An incident like this is really frightening for everyone involved. I thought it would be important, though, for you to get some input from a canine behavior POV.

Marou, what you said about needing to remind Louis that you are the alpha: that was bang on target. What Louis did, in canine terms, was to react to an invasion of his territory by a subordinate member of his pack. That doesn’t mean what he did was OK; but it’s important to know why he did what he did. To Louis, sitting on the couch with his adult humans means he has been shown favor. In his view, having a junior pack member come up and hug him is very offensive in general, and it may have been made worse by the fact that he was on the couch. Dogs will be protective of what they value: food, toys, bed, couch, and especially their human leaders. You and Griffinlover are the most important things in Louis’s world. Having another pack member approach him while he is sitting beside you is highly annoying to him, and he’s much more likely to snap.

This DOES NOT excuse what he did; please know that I am not blaming your daughter! She didn’t know Louis would react to what was, to her, a perfectly lovely gesture of affection. The thing is, there’s this really big language barrier between dogs and humans. We feel that because they’re smart enough to understand some words, that they also understand our social setup. But they don’t. With dogs, pack is everything, and every pack has a pecking order. If a low-ranking dog gets too close to a high-ranking dog, the high-ranking dog will act to put the low-ranker in his place. If the low-ranker seems like he’s going to take something the high-ranker considers his own, the high-ranker will again react. They’re just wired that way, and it can lead to serious misunderstandings.

Your best defense for your children is just what you’re doing: telling them not to give Louis snuggles. But in addition to that, your other action of reminding Louis who’s the alpha here is also super, super important. Ideally, a dog ranks below every human in the household: that way he understands that he’s not to snap at anyone. But this can be hard to achieve if a dog wasn’t raised in that household. Right now Louis thinks he ranks above the children, and it’s going to be difficult to convince him otherwise. You’ll have to take some extra steps.

First, watch Louis very closely when the children are around. If he starts staring at a child very hard, get his attention back on you: this will interrupt his train of thought, and get it back on you. If he freezes when a child approaches, that’s a danger sign. We don’t want Louis to “guard” you from the children (trying to hog you all for himself). We don’t want Louis to guard the couch from the children (blocking them from that place of favor). It may be necessary to establish a time-out for Louis if he’s guarding.

The other ways to protect the children are to reinforce your own leadership, and introduce leadership acts for the children. This is a great time for you to give Louis a brush-up on his obedience. Sit, stay, lie down are all great. So is “Wait!”: Make him sit before he goes through a door, and you always go through a door before he does. Make him sit for his food. When he’s getting good about that, have the children give him the sit command for his food, then give him his food. If he jumps up and tries to grab the food, go back to square one for a week, and try again. Likewise, once he’s good about sitting and waiting before he goes through a door, teach the kids how to do this with him. These things will help reinforce to Louis a safer pecking order.

This stuff is only a starting point, but I hope it helps. I really wanted you to know what was going on from Louis’s point of view, because it can be so hard on a family when a beloved pet starts acting out against children. A licensed dog behavioralist might be helpful to you, and certainly the Dog Whisperer does have some good ideas and some useful techniques. Best of luck!

[Elizabeth]

Barrdwing,
Thank you so very much! That info is so very very helpful! I would print it out and give it to the ex to read but I know she wouldn’t. She did call animal control. Louis lives with me so thank goodness he was not at Marou’s house when they came over. The ex has no idea where I live so I think I am safe keeping him here. Still there is a report out there on Louis. We are taking Louis and the girls to some doggy training lessons. My friend is a K9 officer and has offered to teach the girls to respect the dogs and all living creatures. The ex has been trying to find something she can use against us so this “dog incident” worked in her favor and she milking it all she can.
Louis has been a good boy since this whole thing happened and the girls are not trying to snuggle him anymore. Still though I am watching all of them like a hawk.

[Heather]

You’re very welcome! 🙂 And you’re right: it’s safer for everyone for Louis to stay with you right now. That way the ex can’t holler about “continuing child endangerment”, Louis is living where he can’t make that mistake again, and he’s also safe from animal control, who are also caught in the middle of all this.

I think a lot of people get very upset when someone is bitten in the face: our faces are very personal to us, and of course there’s a social stigma against facial scarring (in our culture anyway). Dogs don’t realize that. One of their primary methods of putting a subordinate in his place is to nip him on the lip or ear. It’s a painful nip, but not a savage tearing bite. To the receiving dog, it’s like a slap on the wrist with a ruler: OUCH, but no lasting damage. Humans, however, do not bite each other in the face. (Well, not commonly; all bets are off in a rowdy preschool.) So face-biting by an animal triggers a violent reaction of fear and offense. Another one of those really unfortunate language barrier things.

I am hoping very much that everything works out OK, and I think you and Marou are handling it well. Obedience lessons for Louis and canine education for the children: that’s a fantastic combination approach. Coming at the problem from two different sides like that is much more likely to reach a resolution. Best of luck!

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