Have to get this off my chest. No one talks about the absolutely gut-wrenching shame, the sheer embarrassment of having a dog that is reactive/aggressive. When your dog reacts in public and you have to sheepishly usher them away and go hide inside until everyone forgets about that horrible dog and it’s clueless owner. When your dog goes after another dog for no apparent reason and you have to apologize and apologize, offer to pay for vet bills, promise that you’re working on it. When your dog bites you and people ask what happened, and you have to lie and say you ran into the bedpost or poked yourself with a pencil, so that no one knows how your own dog is aggressive toward you. When your dog bites someone else and even though it didn’t break the skin, you feel so completely gutted and horrible that you lock yourself in your apartment for a week and avoid everyone in your circle of family and friends because you can’t bear to face them after what your dog did. When even though you’ve been working with a specialist, spending hours training every day, bought all the training tools you can afford and do whatever you can to avoid situations in which your dog might react, sink hundreds of dollars and months of work into a dog that, just when it seems you’re making real progress, suddenly sends you hurtling backwards a hundred steps and slamming back down to rock bottom once a week. The literally constant fear, anxiety, and panic that accompanies taking your dog outside just to use the bathroom, or making arrangements for every single minute of every day to be sure that your dog doesn’t have the opportunity to embarrass you or hurt anything or anyone. Reorganizing your entire life, sacrificing your social life and hobbies, even parts of your education or career, all for a dog that gives you absolute nothing in return except heartbreak, anxiety, and a deep sense of shame and failure. No one ever talks about that and I think that maybe we should. What do we do when things get like this? Why do we have to feel like the lowest of human beings when our dogs have behavioral issues that seem impossible to solve? How do we make the decision between living like this, or rehoming/surrendering/euthanizing our dogs? Who do we turn to when those decisions need to be made, when we reach our wits end and feel lower than rock bottom, when it’s obvious we’ve been crying for hours over an animal that’s ruining our lives? What do we do now? How do we proceed? Will anyone even listen to us?
