The ‘Not so’ Empty Void Dog

There is nothing as emotionally tough for me in rescue as when an empty void of a dog comes through the doors, robotic in movement, its fear ever present but its behaviour suppressed. This dog has learnt a long time ago that asking nicely doesn’t stop bad things happening to it, that it is pointless to attempt to flee as the threat always follows and intensifies, that at any moment pain may arrive, and like a volcano, wild and unforgiving, anger may erupt from the one person that they are meant to be able to depend upon.

These are the dogs that sooner rather than later will begin biting, they will at some point bite someone that is not actually meaning them any harm because up until now they have learnt the very sad truth that no one is to be trusted, and that people are a very dangerous type of animal. These dogs may seem aloof but are in truth in the throes of what I can only think to label as post-traumatic stress.

These are my favourite types of dog to work with, because the locked away personalities these dogs possess are so incredibly rewarding to bring out. And they aren’t scary dogs really, nor dangerous if handled carefully and methodically, with extreme sensitivity to their signals, these dogs are more confused than anything else. The trick is to not confuse them further.

The first one of these dogs I had the privilege of working with was Ollie, a 7 year old Rottweiler with a stump for a tail and seemingly permanent whale eye. Ollie was a big learning curve for me, he relied on no one for reassurance for a long period of time, and at first falsely appeared independent and aloof. It turned out he was actually incredibly needy, and as opposed to being even remotely confident was in a state of learned helplessness.

Ollie had been used as a guard dog, his life for 7 years was basically being left in a property for 5 days at a time with no access to food, no company, his only interaction being with his owner who dropped in from time to time to beat him up and take his frustrations in life out on Ollie who despite it all was still happy to have some company.

Our daily walks taught me not to try too hard, not to force anything on an animal whether emotionally or physically (e.g. stroking), good things come to those who wait, and eventually the dog will invite you in, but with this type of dog it has to be on their terms for it to be a genuine bond, not just pillow talk.

Ollie would avoid eye contact, and me attempting any ‘watch me’ or formal eye contact training would just put further distance between us, Ollie had spent his whole life under pressure and needed someone to just ‘be’ with him, so for it to work I had to take the pressure off and simply just hang out. Perhaps similar to the ever growing trend of 2 friends who meet up to have coffee ‘together’ and both glued to their phones spend the entire time text separate people whilst sitting at the same table.

I remember the day that Ollie finally chose to make eye contact, that’s when I learn the beauty of capturing behaviours as opposed to just the mechanics, and saw how much confidence they could put in an animal, as they had the choice to perform the behaviour, or not.

Ollie after 18 months in kennels and intensive daily training found his ideal home, when he went home I sat on the sofa in his kennel and reflected, he’d make me a better trainer, and has helped equip me with the first hand skills to help many ‘Ollie’s’ since.

The thing about using fear in training is that it’s always going to massively backfire, in my naivety I used to think this was an obvious thing for people to see, or quickly grasp and take on board when it was revealed to them, but it seems to not be something people are able to easily accept. Whether this is in actual fact cognitive dissonance where people simply don’t want to see their training methods as abuse, as surely in this realisation they would be forced by their conscience to make a change, as opposed to continuously feeding their under nourished ego by their obsession to control.

The more I work with animals the more I feel that humans are largely sadistic by nature, the circumstances and levels for this of course vary, but certainly for some people when it comes to dog training they very much verge on zero degrees of empathy.

The saddest part for me is the number of dogs losing their lives in rescue shelters due to defensive behaviours shown because the dog has had no choice throughout its life but to stand up for itself, and to assume fight mode in any potentially threatening situation, especially in a new environment, as flight has never worked.

I don’t blame the shelters, some rescues haven’t had adequate staff training to know how to work with these dogs, and even when time and effort is put in, some dogs are sadly beyond the point of being safe to rehome.

I don’t fully blame the owners, though I do feel that it is pretty obvious that causing an animal physical pain isn’t exactly ethical.

For me the blame falls on the trainers that promote aversive methods, I am bitter towards each and every one of them, and I don’t feel like looking the other way because not doing so may god forbid ‘cause a scene.’ Stiff upper lip has never been my best look.

It’s when these disillusioned trainers illogically accuse positive trainers of being evil due to the inevitable deaths of some ‘red zone’ (whatever that means!) dogs, which sadly at times despite best efforts will happen. Though this should hopefully be a very rare occurrence.  

They criticise us because we refuse to pump these dog’s bodies full of volts of electricity or jab them in the neck because we have the science that tells us this will do nothing more than make matters far far worse, and we would rather not use harsh pointless methods that will not in any way help the problem, and instead, if we have no other choice but to make the tough decision to say goodbye, we opt that the dog leave this world with some faith in humanity, than without it.