Hi there! This is my first time here, so please pardon the newbie for any netiquette breaches.
We have a 5 year old Lab. He's awesome. He's friendly, energetic, and generally very well-behaved. We have very recently been hit with 2 major issues:
1-we are moving out of the country for 2 years for work and intended on taking him. Unfortunately, the city restrictions to where we are moving have changed, and we can no longer take him.
:( BIG SAD FACE. We have tried every avenue imaginable to get around this, and it is a no go. Unfortunately, we are still required to go. So, we sent out our plight to our family and friends. We had numerous offers to take the pup while we are gone. Seriously, we had 12 offers in under 2 hours. All were from very good friends, most of whom have puppy sat for us before and LOVE our pup. So we narrowed it down to one particular family that we thought would be the best fit. They have 3 boys 11-16 years, and they have had foster dogs for years. They are looking forward to having one awesome dog who doesn't have a lot of issues for 2 years. We've been working the last month with lots of in-house visits with my pup and have scheduled a few sleepovers and weekends at their house before we depart the country. Again, we are NOT happy having to leave him behind, but that is the nature of the beast at the moment.
2-Today I picked up lovable pup from doggie day care. (He goes 2x a week to help get the energy out, otherwise he gets destructive). I got a sad face from the manager and was asked to step into the office. That's never a good sign.
:( More BIG SAD FACE. We've been asked not to return to daycare because our pup bit one of the handlers. The story, as best as I understood it from the manager, was that our dog ended up in the middle of a pretty intense dog fight. The handler separated the dogs and was bit, with a puncture wound, by our pup. It seemed to me that the bite happened in the process of the separating and not after the separating. Obviously, I'm upset about this issue.
:( After reading through a few threads here, I understand that it is not uncommon for that to happen when humans are separating fighting dogs. But, I'm still sad for my guy because he LOVES "puppy camp". He knows his days and wakes us up by running to the front door. The manager was super apologetic and said how much they loved our pup and this was pretty out of character, but it was policy. I totally understand the policy and don't have an issue with them sticking to it. I feel badly for the handler.
One of my chief concerns is our dog's history. We got him overseas (we move every year to 3 years, although it used to be less. blergh.) Anyway. We got him overseas at around 8 weeks. He has always played with other dogs. We started training immediately, and while he's not impressively trained, he still obeys (he's got an issue with stay… that one never worked… oh well). At any rate, he listens and obeys to us. We've also played with his ears, mouth, paws, tail, etc. since he was a puppy…took his toys, worked with his food… basically all the stuff you're supposed to do to lessen issues down the road.
Well, when we moved back to the States, he was fine, but then he wasn't. He started growling at people on the sidewalk, and even snapped at someone. WHAT?!? This was not our dog. (he was 2.5 years at the time.) We talked to various trainers and found one who came and watched him in his environment. She figured out pretty quickly what was wrong and gave us some great tools to alleviate those issues. She basically said (as best as I recall), that he was stressed and thought he had to control the situation. So, we started clicker training, and giving his food to him in treat balls instead of just in the bowl, etc. It worked beautifully. No joke, in about 48 hours, our pup was back. We continued most of the suggestions, and haven't had a problem since. Seriously, not a single growl that I can remember.
At his daycare, he was frequently SUPER energetic. Occasionally, he'd start humping or being weirdly dominant, but they handled it well. He hasn't had any issues in the past 2 months at all.
So, now I'm worried. With this incident today, the incidents when we moved several years ago, and the random dominant behavior, is this something I should be very worried about as he goes to live with a new family? The family is good with dogs and has had problem dogs as fosters in the past. I hate to think of my dog as a dog with issues, but maybe he does and I've just been blinded by the sweet side he shows me.
Thoughts? Am I just being overly analytical because I'm 3 weeks from moving and super stressed. We move a lot, so we handle it well… got it down to a science really, so it's not like anyone is cowering in the corner in tears. But nonetheless, we're busy bees at the moment, and this new thing has thrown a wrench.
Ugh.
Thoughts/??
Thank you!!