Coco's Dilemma

Just a few months ago a referring veterinarian called me on an aggression case that involved an elderly couple - the wife was 78 and the husband was 82 years old - and a young, very energetic two year old Springer spaniel neutered dog that their daughter had given them to keep them company in their country home.

My friend, a veterinarian who is well versed on behavioral issues, explained on the phone that this was a high-risk dominance aggression problem, the dog was not really that aggressive, she explained but the husband was on blood thinning medication and could not afford to continue being wounded from a bite or a scratch. On the other hand, the wife was arthritic and fragile, her ankles and knees were very weak and the dog could knock her down plus the fact that they lived relatively far from the nearest hospital made this a very serious situation indeed.

 Regardless of how bad the dog was, the mold had been cast and according to their physician, he had to go. The veterinarian painfully wanted my involvement just to exhaust all possibilities before euthanizing the animal. I understood and of course, said that I would see them and called them. After a lengthy and emotionally charged conversation with both owners on the phone, it became very clear to me that in spite of the problem, they loved their dog very much and that the welfare of the animal was their foremost concern, they would consider giving him up but not euthanize him. After all, they raised him from a tiny pup and were not blind to their health issues and their doctor’s concerns. Their physician even went as far as contacting the veterinarian, urging her to convince them to relinquish the animal and she in turn called me to help accomplish this task. Yikes! Who is going to take an aggressive dog? How am I going to convince them to let go of this dog that has tremendous significance in their lives? It was a tough situation all around. But nevertheless, we set up an appointment and see what happens.

When I arrived at the client’s home with my normal already conditioned “jitters” that I get when visiting cases involving aggression, I was pleasantly surprised to be exuberantly greeted at the door by a very pretty Springer spaniel. The dog looked like a large pup of about 35 pounds; I could not help but want to touch him, he was definitely a cuddling object. The dog’s name was Coco and he wiggled his way into my arms. He had huge expressive eyes and his head and ears were disproportionately larger than his body, a stimulus configuration that made him look like a baby animal. Ethological research indicates that baby or infant features in young animals act as releasing stimuli or triggers that elicit parental or caring behavior and that is what happened to me. Coco’s behavior also matched his looks: he whined and wiggled, smiling all the time in his exuberance while I petted him, he could not get enough of me and would run back and forth between his owners and myself in pure delight. 

While this was going on, I was observing the owners as well and their kind old faces radiated with love and pride in this most beautiful animal and his antics. Remember that I was there to get the dog out of the house for good, so I put on my professional hat and went to work. The initial interview and observations revealed that Coco was not only a very excitable dog but he also had very little education: he would not listen to basic commands unless they had a treat in hand that he had to see before responding; he would also steal stuff from the counters and table tops and the owners had great difficulty chasing him down. If they managed to corner and catch him, he would show his teeth and if they reached for the item, he would snap at them which made them let go and Coco would run off happily with the item and therefore his threats were reinforced: learned dominance/possessive aggression.

Furthermore, if they wanted to, say, groom him and tried to control him and he did not want to be restricted, he would also snap at their hands and arms in protest, not hard, but hard enough to risk a cut or bruise - the risk that we could not take! These, in a nutshell were the unacceptable things about Coco. Lucky for us, his aggressive behavior was not a well-established pattern where a dominant-aggressive dog bites down hard on the owner and truly attempts to do serious damage. Coco’s aggression was relatively mild but bad enough in this case where it was not affordable. He was also very attached, playful and loving: he kept them active and engaged in care-giving behavior. So what could we do?

Under normal circumstances and by following prescribed procedures, these cases are fixable but it takes energy, some minor risks and agility on the part of the owners- abilities that my clients did not have and therefore, not applicable. Simple adoption was also questionable since behavioral intervention and therapy require a great deal of dedication, attachment and love for the animal and new owners, no matter how caring, are not likely to be sufficiently motivated to save the animal who also does not have enough attachment to them to compensate against the often stressful and unpleasant temporary procedures required by the therapy.

So I presented the couple with this dilemma and as could be predicted, they adamantly rejected euthanasia just like they did with the veterinarian and their physician. They also understood that adoption was only going to prolong the suffering. I could not blame them, as they did not have to explain to me, their nonverbal message was loud and clear: Coco was integral to their lives, he kept them going from day to day, they both said to me that they could not imagine not having Coco around, let alone put him to sleep because of their own disabilities. I understood their conundrum perfectly well and did not like it. So what to do? I could not take the dog, fix it and then hand it back: therapy just does not work that way, I could teach the dog not to bite me since dominance aggression is relative to the nature of a relationship but I could not transfer my relationship with the dog to the owners, their relationship has to shift in vivo.

So, toward the end of my visit I was feeling pretty helpless but also realized that I had to make things work for them and Coco, which meant to go somewhere, think deeply of what I know (and don’t know), contemplate my navel, talk to colleagues, friends, gurunoids, angels, other psychologists, old professors and on and on… I had to come up with answers that would fit the situation. I had to engineer a very passive approach with zero-risk procedures, quite a set of requirements to be sure.

After a few days of dissecting things out in my head, the answers began to trickle in slowly but surely: first of all, since the dog was very energetic and we needed him to slow down a bit in the house and be somewhat tired, we hired a neighbor kid to take Coco out after school for long walks in the woods on a 30 ft. check-cord. We also fed him immediately after coming back tired and hungry, and here, since he was most motivated to get fed, we taught Coco to respond to various commands using both verbal and visual signals, in particular “lay down” and “roll over” - the most submissive positions I can think of for a dog to do. I also taught the owners to pay attention to his facial expressions and reward (reinforce) him with their own smiles, baby talk and petting for those expressions associated with submission like ears down and relaxed, tail relaxed, slack jaw, soft eyes and so on. By combining Ethology, which uses muscle contractions as the basic data to indicate internal emotional states and modern behavioristic psychology, which reinforces goal oriented behaviors, we were teaching the dog to give us submissive signals and therefore change his perspective. Also, in order to maintain control of Coco’s resources and be responsive to us, we only gave him 15 minutes to eat. These passive procedures are very helpful in producing dependency and prosocial submission, the logic being that if the animal is aware of its dependency and has to work for his resources and pay attention, it develops a submissive attitude, which counters the possessive tendencies of dominant animals.

Following the feeding, Coco was again taken out by both owners on a long leash to eliminate and was brought back to be placed in the laundry room with a comfortable bed for at least an hour, just to let him relax and be confined rather than running around the house terrorizing them. As in humans, these relaxation periods induce calmness in the animal as long as they are not too long and we took advantage of it by training and socializing quietly right after the animal was let out. Here, I had the owners wear leather gloves and long sleeve shirts, and they were to play-train him with balls, toys and petting - good exercise for them. If Coco jumped on their arms and hands, the gloves and long sleeves would protect them from injury. We also added a short check-cord at this time so that they could handle him without struggling to reach for the collar while the dog was moving around. This not only gave them control over the dog during times of excitement and emotional arousal but it diminished the chances of them getting hurt; this also taught Coco that they had the power to restrict him as well. Most importantly, aggressive bites in dominance issues as well as in cases of panic-triggered aggression are most often elicited when we reach for the collar and the hand is very close to the head. If the hand stays at a safe distance, which is attainable with the short check-cord, the bite is avoided altogether and one gains control.

If they saw that the dog was getting uptight, they were instructed to put Coco back in the laundry room for a time-out using the check-cord to guide him without need for touching or reaching for him and therefore avoiding aggression. So this procedure circumvented the bite and yet gave us control over the animal.

Eventually, the biting disappeared since the intention to bite was not reinforced by the person fearing and moving away or letting go of the animal or by going in the opposite direction with threats or striking the dog.

Another situation that reinforced the possessive and dominance behavior was when the owners unsuccessfully tried to take small items that he stole from counters and tabletops. So we set Coco up on a self-inflicting punishment program where we put specific items that he liked to steal in the past on tabletops with a small mousetrap underneath. When Coco reached, the trap went off and scared the hell out of him. This was very effective because Coco tried it only twice in different places and both times the trap went off (a stroke of luck). He has not tried to reach for things on tables since the second incident: talking about one-trial learning!

I now check with them every few weeks and I am happy to report that there have been no instances of aggression since we started. Coco quit jumping on them, has not stolen things and only play-bites, which is allowed during play when initiated by the owners wearing gloves and long sleeves. The gloves, in fact, have become cues for this kind of play and roughhousing - all necessary behaviors for the dog’s mental stability - and there has been no defense of food.   

So what was wrong with this dog? Nothing really. Simply, he never learned to be anything other than an unruly pup with no contingencies and by biting at them and taking things from the counters he got their attention and was in fact, in control.  Now Coco is still getting the attention he wants and more since the conflict and fear that was generated by anti-social encounters has been eliminated, our approach has infused a good sense of harmony into their relationship serving as fertile ground for developing an even stronger bond.

Cases like this bring home the fact that the real issue and the focus of therapy is always about the interaction between the players, human and animal. The behaviors of all animals have a range with some being typically more fearful, more aggressive, more reclusive, or more intense than the norm and so it takes unusual ameliorative behaviors on the part of the human to get them within the normal range. In Coco’s case, the dog was within this normal range, it was the people whose behavior was dysfunctional, so just by undoing the “harm” their dysfunction produced and getting them to be functional solved the problem.

Like any human being engaged in work that involves problem solving, I have days when nothing goes right. I feel deflated and question my ability, my knowledge, even my worth and usefulness. Then I reflect on events like Coco’s case: we started with an unhappy dog whose days were numbered, an unhappy veterinarian feeling helpless to aid her clients and a very sad older couple facing the reality of having to give up a pet that they truly loved because of problems no one could solve. In the end, my efforts brought harmony to everyone; I not only used my knowledge, my “science” as it were, but I connected with others in a very deep emotional sense as well. Thinking about this, my perception and feelings shift, the emotional gloom lifts and I get a deep sense of understanding that none of us is infallible and this brings me closer not only to my fellow humans, but to all beings. So I am grateful to Coco and his people for giving me this opportunity to grow.

Dancing with Bob

Several years into my practice, I saw a case of a lady who lived alone with her 14 month old male Great Dane named Bob. Bob had bitten her seriously enough on the face to require emergency treatment and plastic surgery. This was a bad bite and she was lucky enough not to have lost an eye. The bite occurred in a situation where she had struggled with the dog over his grabbing her shoe in his mouth and not relinquishing it. The authorities deemed the animal dangerous and wanted to have him euthanized, her ex-husband agreed as well. This would seem a reasonable conclusion to draw but she said no, she loved that dog; did not know what she was going to do, but euthanasia was out of the question as far as she was concerned. She would not allow anyone to touch Bob and called her veterinarian for advice.

The veterinarian then called me and expressed how surprised he was by the incident. He had been taking care of Bob since he was a small pup and had always been a pleasant animal to treat. However, given the extent of the injury, he thought that for some unknown reason Bob had become dangerous and he had, obviously. I told him that I would talk to the owner but based on his description of the situation, I too had my doubts about the animal. When I first spoke to her on the phone, I expressed my fears on how dangerous her situation was simply because of Bob's size and strength but she still insisted that Bob not be put down. I listened and decided to suspend my judgment at that time. Perhaps there was more here than meets the eye, I thought. Why would an animal described by the vet as pleasant and obviously in a very strong bonding situation with its owner turn violent and attack like that? I was still skeptical if truth be told, but agreed to come see them if only to try to help her see the problem as the rest of us saw it. This conversation also told me a lot about her love for her animal. Her attachment was great, the bond she had with Bob was deeply felt and I was more than curious to learn about it.

So I visited the home early one afternoon and met her outside the house. She still had stitches on one side of her face: there were two long jagged cuts running from just below the eye down to the corner of her mouth where the upper canine teeth had ripped as she pulled away from the bite. I was already apprehensive and the sight of the injury kicked up my "freak-out" gauge a couple of notches (big aggressive dogs give me the willies, but again, no one promised me a rose garden in this business).

To my surprise, when Bob was brought out, he greeted me wagging and wiggling, smiling from ear to ear and whining like a puppy. He was exuberant! Simply put, the dog was delighted to see me. No fear here, biting me was definitely the last thing on his mind; I began to breath again. I expected to see at least an apprehensive animal if not downright an Attila the Hun. We released Bob from his leash and he came bounding up to me in the most playful demeanor; a big baby and I laughed but he was big and rough. He kept jumping up on me for attention, grabbing my hands and arms since I used them to protect my face from his paws. He was just a silly and unruly pup,  but too big! I gently pushed him away but still welcome him into me, my face all smiles and goofy talk, always signaling friendliness and excitement. We were communicating our good intentions and states of mind (at least my mind as I know it), but his expressions and mine danced in unison and there was trust and friendship, therefore there was common mindfulness.

So I just followed suit and plunged into the spirit of his game.  This play allowed me to be very conscious of his demeanor for any changes in emotion and I also kept my balance at all times, dancing with Bob. There was no need for tests of emotionality as the Open Field Test (see previous post)  or test for fear of strangers and all that. I felt safe but watchful, because as long as there is play, the probability of aggression is extremely low but that does not mean that it can not change and a good observer can generally predict when that is going to happen. (However, and to my misfortune, on a few occasions I have accidentally pushed the envelope a bit too far when playing with aggressive dogs and have been bitten as I will describe in future posts; at other times I have done this purposefully while ready for the attack to find out the point at which the dog's demeanor changes. Finding this threshold is very useful information because it gives us a starting point  for behavioral intervention where the trigger stimulus is to be manipulated.)

Since Bob  was very strong and unruly, there was no way that I could control him physically without exerting lots of muscle which I did not want to do anyway, I just wanted to observe the natural behavioral patterns as they occurred. I also did not want to get into a match of wills with him as long as we were making body contact. So I played, giving him some leeway in his unruliness; but in reality I was having a good time anyway and did not want to stop either, especially since my trepidation was not met. Then I changed the game to tug-of-war with a short piece of heavy rope and he was fine with that also. He grabbed that rope with his teeth and we tugged and growled playfully which gave me a break from wrestling.

Many trainers believe that we should not play tug-of war or wrestle with our dogs because it is competitive and that, it is. However, competitive behavior is not only a very important variable to investigate as a way of assessing and understanding a dog, but competitive play is also a form of therapy to socially channel potentially dangerous behavioral patterns, provided that we keep it in check. Competitive play is very useful in that playfulness in the animal is a very powerful and utilitarian reinforcer; in my professional experience, I have found tug-of-war to be a very convenient and powerful reinforcer when training energetic dogs.

I definitely got my exercise playing tug-of-war with Bob and finally tired, so I changed the game to throwing a ball for him and that made it easier for me. Bob stayed just as enthusiastic with that. We must have played hard for about 15 minutes and his energy remained high. So what did I learn from this? I learned at least that the aggression could not have been triggered by some well organized set of learned dominance driven responses or by a well established fear motivated reaction and that it must have been triggered by something that the human did that freaked out the dog. In other words, I suspected a novel external stimulus configuration which produced intense alarm in the animal: alarm-triggered aggression.

Bob's mom said to me: "See how sweet he is, how can I put this dog down? He is my daily companion, sleeps with me, follows me around and I talk to him all the time. I love this dog, he is my family! Is he sick, mentally imbalanced, is he a lost case?" These questions kept coming at me like machine gun fire, all charged with anxiety and fear for the animal; she was not concerned about her own safety so much as she was about the life of her pet. This was a happy dog, no question in my mind. He too loved his owner, he ran to her to be petted, jumped on her smiling his happiness for having me around to play with and so on: not your typical nasty animal that bites. It was obvious that these two had a very deep and loving relationship, they were strongly attached to each other. She was right, no way I could recommend to put this dog down without at least gaining some insight into the problem and try to solve it.

So what happened? Why did Bob bite her? The answer was not difficult to arrive at once we went deep into the incident and gathered some history: Bob came to her as an eight week old pup weighing only a few pounds, he was always playful  and very energetic but grew in size and strength very quickly, he had a free run of the house and very little obedience training. He would sit for treats and that is all and came when he felt like it. His owner managed him gently, manipulating him softly to bring him back into the house from the yard. He was difficult to walk on a leash, dragged her around and got worse as he grew. If she tried to restrain him, he just muscled his way out (I suspected this by the way he played with me), pant-smile and go on with what he was doing. Bob had also learned about his own strength during a very critical period when many domestic pet dogs seek independence which is around six to eight months of age, coinciding with the onset of sexual maturity.

           

Occasionally, Bob would pick up something like a shoe and not give it up. If his owner insisted, he would turn his head away from her and growl a low guttural growl of warning while still smiling and holding his body in a playful pose but eventually give up the item and forget the whole episode - the beginnings of possessive aggression. She realized that she had very little control over this very large animal and that the situation could get out of hand, so she called a trainer for help.

The trainer correctly diagnosed the situation as a a case of hierarchical/dominance issues and unruliness. He called Bob an "alpha dog". So he went to work: after playing a bit with Bob, the trainer let him have a shoe that in the past lead to the possessiveness and eventual warning growl. When Bob took it and happily ran off with it, the trainer  approached him and tried to take the object from him which, as expected, lead Bob to resist and growl. The trainer then took the dog by the collar and wrestled him to the ground, pinned him there and took the shoe away from him. The dog, as the owner told me,  put his tail between his legs and slunk away in alarm when he was released and went to her for comfort which she gave. So there, his recommendation was that she had to dominate and show the dog who is boss, or alpha, as he referred to it. The trainer tried to coax Bob into taking the item again, but the dog refused to participate, he simply laid down by his owner's side while  apprehensively looking at the trainer. He was very subdued after that. The lady was impressed, she had never seen Bob in such a docile state before.

The bite took place a few days later on the first occasion that she tried to wrestle and pin Bob to the ground as she was instructed to do. As she was telling me the story, I cringed since I would have put my bottom dollar on the bite. The bite took place because Bob's owner acted in a very atypical and unpredictable way, she violated the established order between them. In the dog's mind, if you will, his past experience and learning told him that he could take anything he wanted and his owner was to coax him into letting it go. They had an understanding of the nature of their relationship and how they did things and her unexpected violence alarmed Bob which then triggered the bite. The trainer got away with alarming the animal by pinning him aggressively because they had no history. The dog had no expectations of the trainer and immediately saw him as someone "you don't mess around with". Plus the trainer was relatively large and strong, certainly more formidable visually and physically than the owner. Bob was bullied by a stranger who inspired fear and a defensive retreat.

Therefore, what the trainer dangerously did not take into account was the nature of the relationship between the dog and its owner and the differences between her and him. It is within this relationship, this matrix of social patterns that the dog learned who it was in relation to its owner who very wisely paid attention to Bob's warning growls. They understood and predicted each other's behavior; not necessarily satisfying to the human but it had flow and predictable continuity and everyone was civil. The bite took place because something was done to alarmingly rupture this continuity with all its emotional components. The dog was certainly alarmed by his owner's aggression but not afraid of her as was the case with the trainer as a stranger - they were qualitatively different. Bob knew his owner and had a sense of being confident in relation to her, so the lack of fear toward her and the emotional alarm triggered the bite. Simple.

I thought about the details of the case and decided that in order to solve the problem it was necessary to understand and manipulate this relationship where hierarchical issues were not well established by the players and define it where the person is positively accepted as dominant and discard all violent attempts at control. I needed to produce a dependent dog and did this by setting up contingencies for him in which he had to respond to a set of commands from the owner (work for reinforcers) in order to have his daily needs met: food, let outside, play, petting, attention and so on. The more commands, the better.

The logic behind this program is based on the fact that social and select physiological dependency like food and shelter leads to submission where authority is not challenged. Although dominance is sometimes acquired through being the toughest individual in the group, most often dominance is maintained through social consent and tradition where violence and threats do not play a defining role. When dominance is acquired through violence, it is generally short lived: by definition, violence produces fear, inhibition and resentment; these factors are effective for short term control of another but in the long run it fails since it produces a very weak, unstable and non-harmonious social matrix which can be disrupted and even dismantled easily since the members of the group are not strongly bonded to each other. There are many examples of this problem, both on the popular and scientific literature, where trainers and keepers of large animals have been injured and killed by their charges. These incidents always take place either immediately following a bout of aggression on the part of the human or when the trainer puts himself in a vulnerable position and the animal charges, fueled by pent up resentment and fear.

Following a systematic protocol, Bob's behavior changed dramatically: the unruliness fell off in time and he became more manageable. He smiled as much as he did before. The growling became a game and he was more attentive to his owner - from a behavioral point of view, the owner became a very powerful higher order reinforcer and from an ethological perspective, Bob accepted his owner as dominant. So in reality, this was a case of misunderstanding, not one where the dog is inherently aggressive and nasty or a maverick with evil intentions toward its owner. We rearranged the social canvas with the materials we had: the social need of the animal and the human to be connected to each other, to have a relationship. It is this need for sociability that is at the heart of the matter, what its final nature will be is totally dependent on experience, the physical and psychological limitations of both, their developmental histories and emotional constrains.  To be clear, not all dogs are the same, there are breed and individual differences for sure and I suppose the same can be said for humans. In Bob's case, I am very happy to say that all we had to do was establish a social matrix where everyone got what they wanted in a harmonious and civilized fashion. I was very happy with the results and kept my friendship with these two for a long time until Bob died when he was 8 years old. Unfortunately, these giant breeds rarely live past this age. I miss Bob.

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