DogTown (12 page)

HOUSEBREAKING MEI MEI

Mei Mei’s sparkling personality made her a strong candidate for adoption, but there was just one problem—and it was a big one. Mei Mei was not housebroken.

Like many dogs raised in puppy mills, Mei Mei had been kept in a small cage where she ate, slept, and eliminated all in the same place. Besides being unnatural and filthy, such a situation did not require that she learn to control her bodily functions. To improve her chances of adoption, Mei Mei had to learn to go to the bathroom outside. That was the primary task before the two of them when Michelle took Mei Mei home.

At first Mei Mei would go outside, busily sniff all the bushes, and then go back inside to do her business on Michelle’s bathroom floor. So Michelle started working out a routine, taking Mei Mei outside when she first got up in the morning, after she ate, and then again just before bedtime. Many dogs have a preferred bathroom pattern, and by watching her closely, Michelle realized that Mei Mei preferred to relieve herself after meals. So she began taking her outside into the yard right after she ate. When Mei Mei cooperated, Michelle praised her lavishly: “Good girl, Mei Mei! Nice job!” If Mei Mei had an accident, Michelle ignored it. The best strategy, Michelle felt, was to reward Mei Mei for doing what she wanted to see happen and not to punish her when she had an accident.

The routine and the praise seemed to be working for the confident little dog. Michelle kept up a consistent routine for Mei Mei, taking her outside after mealtime and encouraging her when she took her bathroom breaks in the yard. Smart little Mei Mei was catching on to housebreaking and had made enough progress to be put up for adoption. As much as she enjoyed having Mei Mei living with her, Michelle thought the little dog was ready for a new forever home. “She may need a little work on house-training when she first arrives, and she may be nervous with new people, but I think she’ll adjust pretty quickly.”

THE MOST POPULAR POOCH

Michelle learned that after a lifetime of little human attention, Mei Mei quickly figured out that she wanted it all the time. Mei Mei started to come to work each day with Michelle and soon had many more fans at Dogtown because she was so charming. The dog wanted to be held constantly, and everyone was powerless to resist. Mei Mei got quite spoiled by all the attention, but Michelle remained her favorite person. If Michelle needed to go to a meeting, Mei Mei would curl up on Michelle’s chair or sometimes right on her desk, looking like a little paperweight while she waited for Michelle to return.

All of this socialization plus the housebreaking efforts had greatly improved Mei Mei’s chances at finding a home. Michelle was confident that Mei Mei would catch someone’s eye at an upcoming adoption event held about 80 miles away at a pet-supply store. Mei Mei and a small group of other dogs were crated up and then loaded into an air-conditioned van before making the trip.

Once they arrived, Mei Mei’s exuberant personality came shining through, and she became as popular with the crowd as she had been with the Dogtown staff. First, children mobbed her. Then a burly man with a barbed-wire tattoo gently picked up the Chihuahua and petted her. Last of all was a sweet-looking woman named Beverly, who calmly stroked Mei Mei as she held her. Mei Mei sat contentedly in Beverly’s arms, as if she knew this was a good match for her. Beverly had a 12-year-old shih tzu named Lacey at home and was looking for a perfect younger companion to complete her household. Mei Mei, it turned out, was it. “She just caught my eye,” Beverly said. “She’s so cute!”

When Beverly got Mei Mei back to her house and introduced her to Lacey, the two dogs hit it off right away. About the same size as Mei Mei, long-haired Lacey enthusiastically accepted the younger dog and scampered after her as Mei Mei explored her new home; it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. “When I heard Mei Mei had been in a puppy mill, it just made me furious to think that people could treat animals that way,” Beverly said. “I just wanted to rescue her.”

It’s sobering to think of what might have happened to Mei Mei and Parker if they had not been rescued. Mei Mei, with her expressive, almost human eyes and her insatiable hunger for human attention, would probably have been confined in a tiny cell for her whole life. Parker would probably have continued to live in his ramshackle rabbit hutch with the three other dogs, though he probably would not have lived very long because the raging infection in his mouth would most likely have gone untreated.

Fortunately, that did not happen. Instead, a new ending has been written for them. Parker and Mei Mei are bound for a better life than most puppies in the windows. Thanks to Dogtown, they are happy, healthy, and in good, loving homes.

I
n human society, first-degree murder is the unforgivable sin—the sin above all others. A person convicted of that unspeakable transgression is often sentenced to life behind bars, or even death.

But for dogs, the bar is set much lower. If a dog bites a human, it is often considered unforgivable and punishable by death. Even worse, if a dog attacks and bites a child, retribution from human society is usually swift and terrible.

That’s what happened to Annie.

Her life changed one summer afternoon when someone left the gate to her yard open and she slipped out of her suburban backyard into the yard next door. Annie was a petite Australian shepherd–retriever–cattle dog mix, mostly black and gray, with white feet, a white-tipped tail, a white brushstroke up her nose, and a white belly. Like most “Aussies,” she was high-spirited, energetic, playful, and eager to please. But when Annie found herself in unfamiliar situations, she got scared, which led her to make bad decisions.

When she entered the neighbor’s yard that afternoon, she was startled to see a two-year-old toddler at play. Annie wasn’t used to small children, and the toddler frightened her. Anxious and confused, she started barking at the child. When the toddler’s father heard all the commotion, he burst out of the house with an infant in his arms. He bounded down the stairs, yelling and gesturing at Annie, convinced she was about to attack the child. But the man’s behavior scared Annie even more. That’s when she made a bad decision—one that put her life in danger.

She jumped up like a circus dog and bit the infant in the father’s arms. At that instant, Annie’s world changed forever. Annie’s owners, informed about what had happened, took her back to the shelter from which she’d been adopted, to have her euthanized. This incident was the first time Annie had ever bitten anyone, but it didn’t matter. A first-time offense could certainly be her last.

Thousands of dogs are “put to sleep” every year for biting children and for any of a dozen other reasons. In fact, according to the American Humane Society, about five million animals are euthanized each year. Overall, about 56 percent of the dogs that enter shelters are euthanized, usually by lethal injection. But a dog entering a shelter with a bite history like Annie’s had only the slimmest chance of ever getting out alive.

At the shelter, Annie was essentially put on death row for dogs, waiting for an injection of pentobarbital or some other sleep-inducing barbiturate, which would cause unconsciousness and respiratory and then cardiac arrest within about 30 seconds. Annie needed a lucky break.

Rather than giving the go-ahead for lethal injection, someone at the shelter called Sherry Woodard, a Behavioral Consultant at Dogtown, wanting to know if Sherry would be willing to take Annie and try to rehabilitate her, so that she might be adopted. The shelter staff knew that Annie wasn’t a vicious dog; she had been put in an unfamiliar situation and had reacted badly to it. They knew that Annie would need someone like Sherry with time and resources to help her work through her fears and make better decisions in the future.

A HIGH-ENERGY DOG

Annie certainly didn’t look like a vicious dog. She was less than knee-high, with warm, amber-brown eyes filled with a look of expectancy, as if she were just waiting for the next game. (Aussies are sometimes called ghost-eye dogs because a number have an eerie, gray-blue eye color—but they can also have an amazing variety of other eye colors, like a kid’s sack of marbles, including green, hazel, glassy blue, or, like Annie, amber-brown.)

Aussies are herding dogs developed on the ranches of the American West (not, as their name implies, Australia). Sheepherders from the Basque region of Spain brought an ancestral breed to Australia and then to America, where they developed into the modern breed. They’re famous for their intelligence, trainability, energy, and eagerness to please. They are “perpetual puppies” who love to play. They excel at dog agility games, flyball (a dog sport that began in the late 1960s), and Frisbee, leaping through the air as if they were about to grow wings and fly. And normally, they’re great with children—loyal, playful, and gentle.

Like all herding breeds, Aussies are highly energetic and need a job to do, or they quickly go a little crazy. It’s as if the great open spaces of the West are built into the breed; some simulation of all that room to roam is required for them to be happy. In fact, according to the American Kennel Club, one of the most common reasons Aussies wind up in shelters is that “their owners didn’t realize how much energy the breed has, and weren’t willing to channel that energy through training.”

But this collection of virtues, together with a fateful circumstance, may have at least partly accounted for Annie’s biting incident. Because of her strong herding instincts, she tended to exhibit guarding behavior and also displayed a tendency to chase or nip at strangers. And she was flying through the air when she nipped the child, which made the bite even worse—tearing the skin in addition to puncturing it.

Sherry was informed that the infant was taken to the hospital and apparently fully recovered, though she lacked any further details. But she assumed that because Annie was so “light on her feet,” the bite would probably be classified as a puncture with tearing, which would be a very serious development.

(A widely used dog bite assessment tool developed by Dr. Ian Dunbar, a veterinarian and author, ranks the relative severity of dog bites on a scale of one to six. In level one, the dog lunges and snarls, but there is no contact with the person. In a level two bite, the dog’s teeth touch the skin, but there is no puncture. At level three, the dog’s teeth puncture the skin, but there is no tearing or slashing. Level four is characterized by one to four punctures, with tearing, and level five by a “concerted, repeated attack.” In level six, an attack results in fatal injuries.)

By Dr. Dunbar’s scale, Annie’s bite would rank as a three or a four.

“A serious bite to me is a puncture with tearing,” Sherry said, and though such bites can be accidental, they do require medical attention and sometimes leave scarring. Sherry did not try to minimize the seriousness of the bite. Still, when she heard about the circumstances of the incident, she felt that Annie had not intended to harm the infant—she had been scared, she had felt threatened, and she had lashed out. Annie’s main problem was that she lacked social skills. She was not a mean, bad dog intent on attacking and hurting people. It’s possible that her owners never socialized her around small children, which led to her fear during the confrontation with the toddler and the parent. “I think she was just having a moment of panic and making bad decisions,” Sherry said.

DEATH ROW TO DOGTOWN

Frankly, Sherry said, when the shelter first contacted her about taking Annie, she was terribly busy and really didn’t want to get involved. “They told me the entire situation and they said, ‘Can you take this dog?’ And I said, ‘Let me think about it.’” Sherry was hesitant—she knew it would be a big job—but after she hung up the phone, she couldn’t stop thinking about Annie.

When the shelter called a second time, they turned up the heat a little bit. Sherry’s friend at the shelter began hinting broadly at the difficult decision that would face them if Sherry couldn’t accept Annie. It was the position most shelters found themselves in—overwhelmed, understaffed, and underfunded, they had no way of taking the time to retrain a dog, especially one with a bite history, to make her safe around people. Euthanasia (from the Greek for “good death”) was the quickest, simplest, and often the most humane alternative for most animal shelters. “It wasn’t like I was jumping at the chance to have Annie in my life,” Sherry explained, but she couldn’t help wanting to help the dog. Despite her intense work schedule and her misgivings, Sherry was won over and decided to work with Annie. After all, she said, “I’m living what I’m passionate about, and it’s very important to me to feel that I’m making a difference.”

That was the luckiest day of Annie’s life—the day she went from death row to Dogtown.

Before Annie arrived at Dogtown, Sherry began developing a plan for retraining her. The ultimate goal was to help Annie become comfortable in a wide range of situations involving different settings and people of all ages to help her work through her fear and aggression. She wanted Annie to be as comfortable as possible so she could go out and experience life and do the things that dogs generally do. Sherry did not feel that Annie was a vicious, biting dog. She was just frightened and socially inept.

“I think that’s something that people don’t think about,” said Sherry. “They really expect dogs to be comfortable even if they haven’t been exposed to things. And out of that, dogs like Annie can get into serious trouble because of her fear, just a lack of social skills.” Annie was, in some ways, like a nerd who hits people.

If Sherry failed at this task, there was a likelihood Annie would never get a chance at a happy home. To intensify her efforts to help the little brown-eyed Aussie, Sherry not only began teaching her at Dogtown, but also decided to take her home as a foster dog.

AN AMAZING GIRL

When Annie first came to Dogtown to be fostered by Sherry, it was clear from her body language that she was a very anxious dog. She kept her shaggy body low and tense, ready to react to the first hint of a threat. Annie’s gaze was nervous, constantly scanning and searching her surroundings. But what was clear to Sherry was that Annie could be a very gentle dog and a great playmate if she could overcome her fear of new situations. If her energy and enthusiasm could be brought out, Annie would be a wonderful companion. Sherry saw the potential in Annie and was determined to help her shine.

Annie, an Australian shepherd, is a high-energy dog who thrives when she’s able to get lots of exercise and time for play.

Although Sherry feared that she couldn’t satisfy an Aussie’s constant need for exuberant play, she was pleasantly surprised to see how easygoing Annie could be. Annie settled right in to Sherry’s life. She played when Sherry played and napped when she napped. As Annie grew more comfortable with Sherry, her playful sense of humor began to emerge. Sherry was pleased to see that Annie seemed “to enjoy life as much as any dog I’ve ever met.” Annie entertained Sherry by being silly: “After she’s been swimming in the creek, she’ll drag her body across the ground and play in the sand and just turn herself into a sand bug, which I find charming.”

Annie also began to show an independent streak and was happy to entertain herself if Sherry was busy. Sometimes, Sherry would find Annie playing ball by herself or romping with the other dogs, usually engaging in a game of keep-away. Annie would pick up a toy, show it to the other dogs, and then run to get the others to chase her. She clearly enjoyed her new dog friends and life at Sherry’s house.

It was turning out to be a great match, and Sherry’s heart began to melt for Annie. “I’m very glad Annie is in my life—she’s an amazing girl,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of fun together, and we’ll undoubtedly know each other now hopefully forever, for the rest of her life.” The pair were getting along swimmingly, which was a great start to the hard work they had to do to overcome Annie’s bite history.

LEARNING NOT TO BITE

“One of the major tools of a dog’s life is their mouth—it’s kind of their opposable thumb, I guess you could say,” said John Garcia, Dogtown Manager at Best Friends. “And for a dog to use their mouth in a negative manner like that shows us she’s never learned ‘bite inhibition.’

“Or she’s never learned that she can have a different warning system. Every dog has a warning system. The first level is avoidance. The next level is growling—vocalizing her emotions. The next level after that, she could show her teeth. Or she could ‘muzzle punch,’ which means bumping something with her mouth closed. And then air snap. And then bite.”

But there’s one big reason why dogs with a bite history are so often put down at shelters, John added: Doing the work required to make a dog comfortable in all situations, to “make the right choices,” is a time-consuming task. In fact, all behavior modification takes time, sometimes enormous amounts of it. And time is in short supply at shelters, as it is everywhere else in modern life.

At Dogtown, it’s different, John said: “We do have that time here. Plus we have the resources, we have the knowledge, and we have the people. It just takes a lot of patience, and somebody who knows what they’re doing.” John was confident that Sherry could teach a dog like Annie, who had bitten once, not to bite again. Sherry herself had trained John and taught him how to succeed at getting biting dogs to stop biting, so he knew firsthand that Sherry could show Annie that she had communication options other than biting.