"Outspoken" dogs

When Kord was about 9 months old he took extreme measures to tell the vet that he did not like him anywhere near his mouth. There were so many things going on, I was angry with the vet because he was blowing off my concerns by using his dogs as an example, the vet himself seemed "rushed" and I felt I was infringing on him time and Kord was there because he was itchy....the vet without any warning walked straight up to him without saying anything and tried to look at his gums and teeth.

He did not get far. And the tech helping him could not write caution when handling on his card fast enough. To this day, even with work, he takes any direct reaching for his mouth as a challenge. So we avoid it to keep his anticipation of it out of the equation.

He is muzzled when we go, because try as I do, work with him as much as I can, I just cannot get him to accept a stranger head on reaching for his mouth. He will accept them playing with his ears, eyes and body, but the mouth is off limits. I work with 2 vets, both women, they love my boy and take none of his nonsense. We have worked with commands that he can and does obey for them. We do "settle, ears and eyes". For settle he lays there and will let them touch him head to tail, belly, the whole works from the ears down. For ears they are allowed to get close and examine his ears, for eyes they can get close and check those. They avoid any contact with his mouth. He does better at these if they take him out of the room away from me. For any mouth work I remove the muzzle and do the work for them.

I am not happy with this, but I can respect that this is something my dog does not like. He has told us and shown us several times his teeth and mouth are off limits. So why make it harder for everyone by forcing the issue? Is the situation ideal, of course not, but it it can be managed and we have made great strides since that first encounter.

On our last visit while walking to the scale the tech leading us was doing fine, Kord was doing great, all the way up to the time the tech stepped to close talking nice and cooing and before I could stop her reaching in trying to cup his mouth??? Hello? he is muzzled? What on earth was she thinking?? I kept calm though and told her to back off behind me. I finished the weigh in and then took him to the room, but the damage was done, he was now so hyper that I felt we had taken a step backwards.We actually probably took 2 back, he was not anywhere near as calm as he had been on our previous visit, which went off with only one " I don't want to be here" grumble from him.

When Dr. Mary Jane came in he was good and let her do her thing, but he was very agitated and took exception to people wandering to close near the door and she also noticed the difference and asked about it. I told her what had happened and she shook her head. We talked about it and she mentioned something along the same lines. Some people just do not get it, they think all animals love them, that all are accepting and friendly. It will probably be a good thing for that tech, because she will now think twice in her approach. And she did promise to talk to the girl. I did not want her to get in trouble and I stressed that, I was concerned not only for the work we had been doing with Kord, but the safety of the girl.

So, l agree with you, they should have a say, within reason and others should respect it.

ETA: He has never bitten, just warned, strongly.

 I have to say, first, that I think it's AWESOME that your vet keeps chicken in the fridge for impromptu training sessions!! That is FANTASTIC!!!

We do expect a ridiculous amount from our dogs, and it's totally unnatural to them. A natural pack would interact freely, but not well with strangers, and we expect them to embrace every single human and dog (cat, rabbit, fish, and bird!) they come across?!?!?!? And then, we make a smart remark when Ron leaves the room??? Whaaaat? I always thought it was pretty crazy. Of course, Bean was raised as a conformation dog, and is totally fine with all kinds of handling from all humans. Emma is the exact opposite, and I show the vet her teeth, unless she is sedated It's something that we never got past, in all of her childhood illnesses. 

Nikon is "outspoken" in the sense that barking is his initial reaction to everything.  Sometimes at the dog shows we attend, the dogs have a bit of SA when they are handed off to their handler and see their owners ready to double handle on the sidelines, calling to them and waving their toys.  Most dogs whine, pant, spin in circles, etc and Nikon simply barks.  He barks when he's frustrated, he barks when he is experiencing SA, he barks to say hello, he barks to initiate a game or something involving prey drive, he barks if he is showing aggression toward another dog....there's all these different volumes, frequencies, and tones of his barks but it's.all.just.barking.  He doesn't really whine, growl, howl, or show other signs of anxiety.

corvus

it kind of irked me that my dog was sort of branded as potential trouble just because he is pretty outspoken about things he doesn't like.

A past vet once made a duragatory statement about Hedi when she was 6 months old.  I found another vet....because it irked me to no end.  We were made to wait in the lobby for over an hour for our appointment....ridiculous in itself.  Heidi was a bored stiff puppy...after an hour, so she was being outspoken.  She was barking at one of the other young dogs in the waiting room.  So, when finally get in the room....and when finally the vet comes in...she tells me that I will need to get that barking under control if I want to continue seeing her.  I was shocked at that.  Then, she went on to talk about Heidi's hips; and how they are "lower" than she'd like to see; and I could expect problems.  I couldn't believe my ears...but, she didn't have to tell me twice.  She knows nothing about GSDs; and she gets upset about a vocal pup in the waiting room.

corvus

I like confident dogs that tell you to get stuffed if they don't like something.

 Me too!  Give me an independent dog anyday.  When Heidi was somewhere between 8 and 9 months old...she curled up her lip at me to show her dislike with something I was doing; she wasn't being bitey (that time)...it was an obvious statement....she did it once...never again.  Do you remember the movie Steel Magnolias?  The scene where the daughter was having a diabetic seizure and she threatened the mama that she was just going to leave....and the mama said "Oh, I'd just like to see you try."  That's basically what it took with Heidi that day.   She understood.

I guess I'm weird, but I like cooperative animals. 

My 23 year old mare used to have to be sedated for anyone other than her "inner circle" to treat wounds on her hind legs.  She was also VERY picky about farriers.  It took a while to find a farrier that gelled with her and even longer for her to come to an uneasy peace with him. 

If Jack was more "outspoken" about the things we have *had* to do with him medically, his life would be much more stressful.  You can train a dog to accept having their legs touched and to lay down, but how do you prepare 10 month old lab pup, on crate rest, to lay very still and allow you to do physical therapy on his legs for 10 minutes twice a day?  You can train them to accept ear cleanings and exams, but that does not prepare them for having to be still for twice daily cleanings on VERY sore ears (ears producing blood, dog whimpering, etc) for 10 weeks.  There have been so many times that I was in awe of how cooperative he was--especially during his monster ear infection, there were times when I was like, "Yeah--I would have totally bitten me by now if I were him."

The only thing that we have never been able to get him to accept is taking peroxide for vomiting, which we have had to do twice.  He did have to go to the emergency vet to get a shot to make him vomit (we thought he had eaten a sock-it turned out to be paper towel).  However, he loves pretty much any vet so that really wasn't a stresser for him.  Sally, on the other hand, will actually lap the peroxide off the ground as we are spilling it trying to get it into Jack.  

I don't think that Jack is any worse off because he does not "make it known" that he dislikes the treatment.  I'm sure he has not enjoyed the medical things that we and the vet have done, but he is going to have to get it either way and it's much less stressful if they are done as quickly as possible with as little fuss as possible.  Somehow, though all of that, he ADORES the vet and gets REALLY excited when we go there.  Even when they took him in the back to draw blood for his allergy test recently he just happily walked off with the tech without a care in the world.

sillysally

The only thing that we have never been able to get him to accept is taking peroxide for vomiting

I had to administer peroxide once to the Houligans...after somebuddy ate a whole bottle of Buddy's thyroid supplement.   I don't think they would have accepted it either....I had a syringe that I measured and shot it in their mouths...worked like a charm.

 I've gotten to the point where I refuse to take Rascal to a vet that doesn't have at least some basic understanding of dog behavior.

Rascal is a fearful little bugger and will bite when he feels threatened, but if you avoid his "ouchy spots" (like his neck, where he has arthritis) and treat him with a reasonable amount of gentleness and respect, then he does quite well. When he gets really peeved (like for the, um "digital exams" of the behind), he will often growl and snarl like a devil, but if he's reasonably restrained he won't fight. He will just be very loud, as if saying, "Let the record show that THIS SUCKS!" And for most things, he is willing to let people do things to him if they take just a few minutes to earn his trust.

I've been to some vets where the vet steps in brusquely, talks to me, and then unceremoniously starts grabing and groping the dog. Even after I explain his fearfulness. Understandably, Rascal freaks pretty badly, and the whole exam experience is just awful.

Other vets (the ones I stick with) listen to what I say about Rascal's behavior, take a moment to talk to him softly and throw in some appeasing gestures (like letting him come to them to sniff, instead of reaching out to him right away), and Rascal is just a whole different dog. He's still uncomfortable, but he doesn't try to fight. All it takes is just a moment or two of building a rapport with the dog.

I totally agree with you - I don't understand why we just expect dogs to be inherently accepting of things like sticking our hands in their mouths, getting all up in their faces, or even letting little kids pull on their ears or poke them in the side. If they growl or bite, we act as if they are "bad dogs," like they're inherently evil. But if another animal acts up - like, say, a cat scratches us - it's just accepted as part of the animal acting like an animal. We expect cats to scratch us if we make them mad but expect dogs to be "friendly" no matter what. It's a terrible double standard that, IMO, is used primarily as an excuse for not taking the time to train the animals or an excuse for not treating the animals with respect. Oh, the dog doesn't like it when some random person forces its mouth open? Surely that's not due to lack of practice with the situation, or due to the person failing to warn and reassure the dog before sticking things into its mouth. It's just because it's a "bad dog" (therefore the humans did nothing wrong). Argh!

I do often wonder if humans are the "superior" species why almost all dogs seem to easily understand basic human language and behavior, but humans have a terrible time understanding their dogs.  (Obviously it's due in large part to motivation - the dogs need to understand the humans in order to get food, for example, but the humans don't often need anything from the dogs, so they don't bother to take the time to understand...)

 Thank you, Cita. That pretty much straightened out what I was trying to work out in my head.

Christina, it's not that I don't adore the fact that Kivi, for example, will let you do pretty much anything to him and the most he'll do is whine at you, or maybe mouth your hand juuuuust hard enough to tell you that he doesn't like it but not hard enough to leave a mark, and he only does that to me, not strangers. That's Kivi, and it makes people think he's an awesome dog. We did next to no work with him to get him that way. What I don't like is the notion that Kivi is a "better" dog than Erik just because it's Erik's nature to be outspoken and make a lot of growly noise if he doesn't like something where Kivi will just quietly endure.

I am reasonably confident that the five minutes the vet spent with him on the weekend did more than several weeks of socialising could have for Erik. I have already done the work with Erik to get him confident to run up to strangers for a cuddle, but that's a whole different kettle of fish for him to letting a stranger put their fingers in his mouth. The lesson I learnt on the weekend was that just because I can do it doesn't mean any old person can do it. I should have seen that coming, but I didn't. I'm just fortunate that I have a vet who is prepared to spend 5 minutes feeding a pup chicken and giving him an improptu lesson in allowing examinations to pave the way for a pleasant future relationship. She went on to recommend we get him microchipped when he gets neutered so we didn't undo the work she had just done.

Anyway, life will indeed be vastly less stressful for him and the vets if he learns to trust them and accept being examined, and I have every intention of giving that my very best shot. But a part of me will always think of cats and hares and other animals that are not expected to meekly accept rude proddings. It doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to make life easier for them with training, but maybe we should be a little more understanding of our dogs when they don't like something.

Good thing the vet didn't just force him. He's 17 weeks old. It would have cemented an aggressive fear of vets in his little mind for the rest of his life.