I wrote this blog as an update for my felt animals and Bens agility training. It was written by a dog lover for dog lovers. When Mia came along I though it would be a good place to update her progress aswell - and lots of people were very supportive and asked for updates for her.
It has been brought to my attention however that there are posts on this blog that might be seen by non dog lovers as me condoning agression in dogs.
Which as all of you that know me will know that is not the case.
To that end I am slowly looking through the blog and removing any references or fotos that can be missread.
That includes fotos of playing where teeth are showing - of course all dog lovers would recognise these as dogs playing but it seems that can be missread
I would like to point out that Mia is not an agressive dog
Mia is a fearful dog, her fear manifests itself like Scrappy Doo with lots of shouting but on a walk she has NEVER attacked another dog - she shouts from a distance. On occasion other dogs take a dislike to her and have charged her and pinned her down, although there is a lot of noise in these situations NO BLOOD HAS EVER BEEN DRAWN - it is all show.
Mia is also not in any way agressive to people, on the couple of times when another dog has her pinned on the ground when myself or the other owner have gone in to break it up she has turned round as if to snap then seen that it is not another dog and inhibited her bite
Her and Ben had a few spats in the early days - this was due to her resorce guarding and me missreading situations. With training and them building trust with each other that is now not and issue - and again with these spats no blood was drawn. To demonstrate the extent of the 'problem' they have had one 'spat' this year that was broken up v easily and they were lying paw in paw washing each others faces in no time.
I thought that posting of Mias progress would be a good reference to me to see how far she has come - and it has been, I also hoped it might be helpful to people who might be going through the same issues.
It never occured to me that non dog lovers would have any interest in reading the blog, or that if they did my words could be missunderstood to such an extent.
So I am sorry for any missunderstandings. It will take a while but I will check every post and edit it if needed.
How odd that anything you've blogged has been taken in a negative way? I think you've just given an honest account of what it's like patiently working with dogs who have their issues, through no fault of their own. My three also have spats, just like the ones you've described - sometimes very noisy but certainly not life-threatening or ever amounting to injury. Like Mia, Billy used to do a bit of 'running and shouting' at other dogs who made him feel worried. We've worked through that and he's now one of the most laid-back dogs you could meet. It can be nothing but positive to chat about how we deal with the little difficulties we work through with our lovely doggies, you keep it up.
ReplyDeleteI've always admired your honesty. So it's a pity you now feel you have to edit. At the same time I also understand you removing things that might be construed as aggressive. Jake's blog is consciously light and steers clear of too much behavioural detail. I would hate it to be ever used against us. For the same reason I'm a bit careful not to make it very clear exactly where we are.
ReplyDeleteI'm really sorry you felt you had to do that Hun. It's sad that people seem to enjoy making other's lives difficult :-(
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