Back in September we rescued a dog named Petey from Weatherford, TX. When we first picked up Petey, we thought that he’d be a perfect fit because he was excellent with the kids, fairly calm, and took direction very well. Unfortunately, over time we started to notice a couple of problems. When I’d try to give Petey direction, or give him a treat, he would piddle. Additionally, he always freaked out whenever we left him home alone.
Petey
At first, he quickly figured out how to pop his cage open, so because we didn’t quite trust him yet we started leaving him outside. When he was outside, he slowly damaged the back door and he’d dig at every gate around the back yard. All of this seemed fairly manageable, and also seemed to improve over time until our trip to Colorado for Christmas.
A couple days after arriving, we decided to go to a C.C. Tigers Hockey game. Because we were worried about how he’d respond, and because it was a little cold outside, we left him in my parents garage. When we got home, we found the garage trashed. Initially we said that was enough, but through contacting rescuers we started to get an idea of what might be going on.
From the rescuers perspective, the piddling was due to an alpha-male submission response. Most rescuers had seen this, but it usually only occurred in situations where the dog had been abused. One described this as an alternative to exposing their tummy for scratching. Additionally they all described the issues with being alone as a form of separation anxiety disorder. One rescuer said that they saw this in rescued dogs quite regularly, but some dogs get over it better than others.
At this point, we took the suggestions from the rescuers and immediately implemented them to see what kind of effect they’d have. With the piddling, it seemed that if I rough housed with the dog then he seemed to understand that I’m not going to abuse him. This worked most of the time, with the occasional - yet manageable - accident. However, the separation anxiety never really improved.
Over the past could of weeks, we finally made the incredibly difficult decision that we just weren’t the right kind of family for Petey. With that we took Petey back to the original rescuer back in Weatherford to ensure he was in a safe place.
Returning Petey was incredibly traumatic for us. In fact it seemed as thought Lena and I had a harder time with returning him than the kids did. At that point I’d imagined that we wouldn’t last too long without a dog.
Today proved my instincts correct. We went by the Greenville Animal Shelter during my lunch and absolutely fell in love with a corgi they had. Despite being worried about the corgi only being three months old, I also thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to instill the behaviors that we’d like to see out of the dog.
So, we went ahead and adopted him. This evening we agreed on the name Spots. So with that I present to everyone Spots:
A call to action:
If you know of an animal that is being abused, please report it to your local ASPCA as soon as possible. They don’t deserve it, and it needs to be stopped!
