Porter Nips Our Friend's Pants so We Bring in a Trainer
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Our first rescue dog, Porter, was ALL the reactives... dog reactive... people reactive...vacuum reactive... life reactive...
Once we nailed down an exercise routine that worked for him and some basic obedience, we could get down to the last and biggest issues: nipping people's pants and fingers of people and his dog reactivity. (His dog reactivity training is detailed in this post: "Desensitizing My Feisty Rescue Mutt..." This post will focus on the nipping.)
SO--The pants nipping. I can't remember when we noticed it, but when it dawned on me that Porter was also reactive to humans on top of being reactive to dogs, there was lots of crying. My last five dogs were labs or golden retrievers, so it was a a bit of a shock to me that my 1-year-old brindle rescue was NOT a lab and would NOT behave like one. In fact, he came with myriad issues I had never seen before and did not even know existed. On top of going bananas when another dog tried to walk by minding their own business, Porter liked to air snap at people he didn't want petting him, air snap at dogs who got too close to him, nip the fingers of visitors who dared to walk faster than a zombie, AND take a tiny bite out of the pants of any visitor who walked past him while he was lying down.
After Porter nipped the pants of yet another one of our family friends, we had no idea what to do. We didn't know if this was the tip of the iceberg and there was a lot more aggression behind that nip....or if the nip was just a nip. More crying on my part, but once I got all that out of my system, there was a lot of getting down to business.
I had read many books about dog training, but sometimes reading ain't shit (and I don't say this lightly because I am an English teacher.) I knew I was going to need professional help. Any trainer was going to have their work cut out for them, but first I needed to find one. This ended up being harder than I thought it would be.
Finding the Trainer
I got to work scouring the local dog trainers and their websites and filling out the lengthy intake information forms. A few trainers wouldn't work with me since Porter was human aggressive. I understood but I remember get really frustrated that I couldn't find someone to help me deal with him before his issues got bigger.
I talked to a board-and-train trainer that I liked, but, ultimately, I couldn't imagine Porter being very productive in a board and train situation. He's an anxious guy, and I felt like all that anxiety would have overpowered any training that the trainer was trying to do.
Lots more forms, ghosting, etc.,
By the time the trainer whom we hired called me back and said he work with us, I was like "you're immediately hired." Looking back, I should have spent more time asking him about his training techniques and his training plans, but at the time he was the only person willing to work in the home with Porter. Even though I didn't love his entire training method, we still did learn a lot from him and he was one of the few trainers willing to help us in the beginning.
Trainer Doug (as we will call him for this post-not his real name) came over the first night, asked questions, gave advice, and took a lot of notes for TWO HOURS. By the time he left we were wrung out.
We started the conversation as you would expect: He wanted to get to understand what Porter's issues were, and I later realized, what exactly his triggers were. Basically, we would tell Trainer Doug something Porter had done that was bad, and then Trainer Doug would follow up with a lot of questions about who, what, where, and when.
Porter's Triggers
We narrowed Porter's triggers down to these specific scenarios:
People stepping over him
People stepping over him while he was sleeping (like, for example, hypothetically, asking for a friend--when we took Porter to a brewery after a long hike in New Mexico and Porter then decided to take a nap in the middle of an aisle, which made it so a waiter had to step over him, which made it so Porter lunged and tried to eat his pants...which made some bros in the corner go "brrooooo000000-Did you see that? That dog is meannnn" (while chuckling). We paid and ran out of there with our tail between our legs. Hypothetically.)
Strange men who moved quickly and used their hands a lot ( ie: My entire New York family)
Strangers (male or female) who got too close to me or tried to give me a hug.
Kids hugging him
Any stranger or dog trying to say "hi" to him after his parents have dragged him through a long day of hiking (which he likes) and breweries (which he hates).
Once the trainer had a good sense of his triggers, we got into strategy.
Below were the problems paired with the solutions that we agreed to try:
Problem 1: People stepping over him.
Solution: Start a PSA campaign to warn friends and family.
Problem 2: People stepping over him while sleeping
Solution: Don't let him fall asleep in a place where people will step over him. Especially don't let his dum dum parents let him fall asleep in the middle of a public place after a long day of hiking in an unfamiliar state.
Problem 3: Strange men moving their hands quickly
Solution: Porter either needed to be on his leash with a handler who was far away from the person or in his crate. Ideally, in his crate, because this would allow him to get used to the Strange Men Moving Their Hands, but would not give him a chance to nip at said hands. (Porter has gotten a lot better with this over time and can handle a lot men Men Moving Hands, but now we know his body language and can tell a mile away if someone walks in for a bbq and Porter decides That Man Is Moving Too Fast and Must Be Nipped. Porter will start sending off all of his signals (crazy eyes, tailing the person) so we just grab him, put him on his leash, and give him to someone not greeting the guest. We move him to the bedroom depending on how many more people are coming over.)
Problem 4: Strangers getting near me
Solution: Same as a above. Put Porter in a crate or leashed for away where he could monitor the situation but not take action.
Problem 5: Kids hugging him. Porter does not nip children but he will snap at the annoying ones. This is scary for any parent, so we try to avoid getting Porter and the children into situations where Porter has to give his warning snap.
Solution: Launch 2nd PSA campaign to parents of children. Tell child to leave dog alone. If child is teeny or in their terrible twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, tens, elevens, twelves, etc., and won't give Porter space, Porter goes in the spare bedroom until that child goes home. (We found that if we put Porter in his crate THE CHILDREN always find him and continue to harass-I mean, play-with him, so Porter has to be out of sight to get peace.)
This leash sign is also helpful.
Problem 6 : Any stranger or dog trying to say "hi" to him after his parents have dragged him through a long day of hiking (which he likes) and breweries (which he hates).
Solution: Get new dog parents who won't do this to Porter.
A lot of this work was on us to complete and we met with the trainer every few weeks for a session. After the intial problem solving and strategy session (which I felt was this trainer's strength), everything else went down hill. Twice the trainer mixed up the dates and locations where we were supposed to meet, and the lessons themselves didn't feel designed well or specifically tailored to Porter's needs.
The sessions definitely did not really work on the second half of my training request, which was that we start desensitizing Porter to his triggers. When I brought it up the trainer said "We don't do that." (Grrrrrrrr because that was one of two things I brought up in the initial phone call and that I really wanted to figure out.) We had paid up front so I just resigned myself to finishing up the contracted lessons and finding another trainer to help with the desensitizing (which I did. Read here.)
We did three lessons after the initial consultation, where we completed the following activities:
Lesson 1: I met the trainer at his training location and we ran through some agility. He also brought out his dog for a bit to test Porter's body language (it was not positive), and showed me how to handle Porter.
Lesson 2: We met in Old Town Alexandria. The waterfront down there is beautiful and very busy and I felt a little worried about someone wanting to pet Porter. As part of my PSA campaign to let the whole world know that Porter is a rescue and needs space, I bought him this bandana to wear in public. He clearly loved it and did not hate me for dressing him up this way:
Honestly, though, I really loved the bandana and wished I had one for myself at work some days.
Our field trip to Old Town was a success. We walked around and practiced commands in the park with lots of distractions around.
In the end, Porter and I survived our lessons and when they were done, I remember feeling underwhelmed. I remember distinctly thinking that "I just paid a lot of money for someone to tell me to respect Porter's boundaries."
Once I got some distance from the initial disappointment, though, I realized I that I did get a bit from the training:
Foremost, I did not want to have to call in another trainer for Porter's behavior. We really cracked down on making sure he was not too overwhelmed and we would put in in his crate or another safe space if we knew that a particular situation would set him off.
The trainer helped Chris and I agree on strategies, so it saved us a lot of bickering.
I learned that I'm my dog's best advocate. I need to stick up for Porter if someone is making him uncomfortable.
It's okay to have clear behavior boundaries for your dog.
Porter's behaviors are not the worst thing the trainer has come across. Honestly, this in itself was worth a lot. Here I was being like "That's it. Everything is over. He's the worst dog in the whole world. He will never be able to leave the house. I will never be able to socialize ever again ever."
The trainer was like: "I've seen it before. It will be fine. Keep working at it." That the trainer wasn't immediately matching my "THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ENERGY" was very helpful. He knew it was going to be fine, and therefore, I could start believing it was going to be fine.
Thankfully, Porter hit 3-years-old and started calming down, in general. There were fewer outbursts and there were long periods of time where he would relax on the couch and snooze. (Thank God).
The most important lesson, though, was that I had to accept Porter for who he was. He does not like strangers. He does not like kids. He does not like crowds. He does not like new situations. He does not like camping. He does not like to run. He does not like warm weather. He does not like road trips. He does not like breweries. Basically, Porter hates everything I was hoping he would like and I just had to get over that. It was okay if I needed him to learn to accept some of these things temporarily as we go through life, but it was not okay for me to expect him to be something that he was not. That's been really hard for me to accept. I seriously thought I could train him to be a therapy dog and make people happy with the mere presence of my dog, but I can't. He's not interested and therefore, I need to get over it. He is who he is and everything got a lot better when I started to wrap my head around that.
Over time we learned his triggers and they became non-issues. If my future self had traveled back to this point in Porter's life and told me that everything was eventually going to be fine, I never would have believed them. But eventually...in time...it did all work out.
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