A Dog's Life

So if you've actually read very much of this blog, you might or might not recall that we have a dog. In the context of the blog, I refer to him as the Hunter, because he is a black lab/German shepherd mix, ad in my mind, that would make a hunter of a dog. Anyway, we got him in 2009, figuring his birthday to be around Valentine's Day, and after some training, he finally stays in the backyard (thank you, invisible fence). At night, he prefers to stay inside, but when morning comes, he knows well enough to leave the house and stay outside all day. Or he used to.

You see, there has been a very disturbing change with him recently in that he refused to leave his crate (a large dog carrier where we make him sleep at night; don't trust him free-roaming) in the mornings to go back outside. I'll open the door, and he'll just stare at me rather sheepishly. That sort of dog look where their ears are down and their eyes droop very sadly. A couple of times, I've just left the crate open and eventually he came out and I've been able to coax him outside ... when I've had the time.

Then he refused to even come out. He would stubbornly stay inside the crate, and when he did come out, he would run back in when I approached the back door. He would end up curling himself up as far back as he could go. This came to a head one morning when I could not get him to come out but left the door open. He never left, so the Queen tried to coax him outside. She pulled him out of his crate, and he straight up growled at her and bit her arm.

This was a shock. The Hunter had never bit anyone. He had been tortured by small children, and exhibited some displeasure before, but he had never attacked any member of the family. I spoke with The Mixer at work, as he is a bit of a dog whisperer, to try and sort out what in the world is going on with my dog, and he had some thoughts about it. Mainly, he suspected there was something about the backyard that made it an unsafe place to him.

So the next morning, I had the day off, so having let him stay inside (only I deal with him at this point to try to sort him out), when I opened the crate, he stayed in it. I offered him treats, cheese, ham, and shot water at him to try and get him to come out, but he preferred to stay in that crate rather than respond to any of it. Yeah, I offered a dog straight up meat, and he refused. He was tempted, but he would not come out. I closed the door at various points during the morning, and reopened it to try and coax him, but nothing. Around noon (he had been inside since about 10 the previous night), he finally came out, but seeing me go for the back door, he ran back into his crate. I coaxed him back out with the ham again, and had one of the children close the door behind him. He tried to return once he got the ham, but he found he was trapped. He finally went outside.

Now, before this, he has pretty much lived only on the concrete porch area of the yard, never straying far from the back door. He is constantly watching us and waiting for his chance to come in, and he always starts pounding the door between 7 and 9 wanting in. I decided to work with some basic training on him, offering treats and such. Did a little come and sit and stay, and not much else to see if he would get those, and he understood just fine. I did all this in the backyard to try and foster a level of comfort with the environment. That's when I noticed something about his behavior.

The closer I got to my northern fenceline, the more nervous he acted. He would come and get the treat and might sit for me a few feet north of the porch. I worked my way all the way to the north fence, and told him to come. He came to me, snagged his treat, and immediately ran back to the porch. I finally gave him is treat and scratched his head so he would stay. I told him to sit, and he did, but stared at the fence and whined. A little further back, he would not sit at all, but only looked at the fence and whined.

We had recently gotten a notice from the city to cut our yard, and we were somewhat thrown by this, since our yard was already cut. I had actually mowed not long before receiving this, but upon walking my property, I found there was quite a bit of brush and such along the north fence, so I went ahead and cut it all down in case that was the complaint. It was not long after that that the Hunter started his extra weird behavior.

Our present suspicion? Well, we have always gotten along great with our north neighbors. Never any problems at all with them, and even occasionally talk to them. But their yard is the one he is afraid of. Did they do something to my dog to make him so afraid of his own yard that he would go so far as to attack a member of the family to avoid it? That's what freaks him out. We can't imagine what happened out there, but at this point, that's what we know. And it is disturbing.