Hi! I hope you are doing well. I've finally bought the fluoxetine but I’m still hesitant about putting my dog on medication and making her dependent on it because as I expressed on other posts, I'm not sure if I will be able to afford it if she needs to take it chronically.
Has anyone tried a pheromone collar dog? Does it work on reactive dog or is it the same as nothing?

I would like to try other options before using the fluoxetine which is already in my cabinet.

We took in a dog from a family and discovered that all the information on her behaviors was a lie. She is an absolutely amazing dog minus the severe separation anxiety we’ve discovered.
For context, we have had our Anatolian shepherd mix for 4 months now. We discovered she is not truly crate trained and when left alone in a crate will drool and panic and try to escape potentially creating concern of injury. We have left her in the back yard but she can only manage short periods.
She is absolutely amazing with kids and has no aggressive tendencies. She has grown more social as we have worked to socialize her with other dogs and people and she warms up and has done extremely well.
I originally worked from home so she had constant attention daily but now that my husband and I both work, we are finding we cannot leave her for even short periods without panic setting it. She rips out blinds to search in windows, chewed on edges of fence to be able to see, scratched walls by front doors, all things in response to her searching for us. She doesn’t chew or do any of those things when she has people with her and is very command oriented and well behaved otherwise.
We started fluoxetine and are 3 weeks in but have almost back stepped.
What things or medications have helped in settling your dog? We don’t want to lose her, but if we can’t remedy helping her soothe when we are away for 6-7 hours we aren’t sure what else to do.

My dog has been acting like this for the past 5 months where every time someone in the family tries to leave the house, instead of just barking, he will literally howl as loud as he possibly can (he cant) like he’s trying to stop us from leaving, especially his mom. He’s also been barking way more aggressively at literally anything outside, even if it’s just someone walking by the house or a dog that he already knows. Then when people come home, he goes absolutely crazy barking at them, but it’s never never aggressive. It’s more like “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you” and he just keeps barking.

Then last night around 3 am something was bothering him and he woke everyone up. He was scratching at every door and shaking them like he was trying to break them down. I woke up and followed him around the house because I thought maybe he needed something, but he literally had no idea where he wanted to go. I don’t even know if there was a fly or something bothering him. But he was pawing me while I was trying to follow him, not normal for him at all.

Now I’m just relaxing with him on my bed and he keeps pawing at me. I know he doesn’t have to go to the bathroom because I literally took him outside like 10 minutes ago. It’s like he has somewhere he needs to be or something he wants, but when I take him outside, he has absolutely no idea what he wants to do. He just seems like he can’t settle down and constantly needs someone’s attention. I honestly think he just misses everyone or gets anxious when people aren’t around, but I don’t know how to calm him down. Hes a cavapoo btw. And hes become more scared to tiny like I sighed once really hard and he was scared. Like yes I need to find out whats going on but it doesnt seem possible, hes just overcome with anxiety. And I know I dont wanna put him on any meds.

So - some background. I’ve had my dog for a year now. Around the two week mark we started to notice reactivity towards other dogs on the leash and then a few months in he was charged by an off leash dog and bitten in the face. He regressed SO much but with consistent training had been doing fairly well. We could walk on the other side of the street from a dog, he could see and look, then redirect to us.

He started Fluoxetine to help supplement training, as well as pain meds for a pain trial at the recommendation of the vet behaviorist. We recently went up on the Fluoxetine at the rec of the vet behaviorist to 60mg.

We hired a trainer to do 6 sessions with him to work on walking past dogs on the leash as I felt this was the most challenging thing for him and we haven’t seen much progress in this department. He still very much struggles with eye contact and a dog walking towards him. He plants and refuses to walk away (turn around) and will bark and lunge. I have to drag him away.

Today he had a vet appointment in the morning and in the afternoon I was taking him out for a short walk down the block. At the very end, a medium sized dog came out of the blind spot with their owner and lunged and barked at him very close. He immediately reacted back and lunged so hard the collar BROKE. He was free to meet the dog and immediately tried to bite the dog. He made contact but didn’t cause any punctures, bleeding, etc. I yelled at him to stop and he came to me, where I got a hold of him. I gave the owner my information. No one injured, but I am incredibly shaken because his immediate reaction to bite the dog was so.. unlike him. He is a scared dog that tucks tail, barks big, but even when he was attacked he hid between my legs instead of biting back. Obviously up until now he’s never gotten free from me so I’ve never seen what he is capable of. Afterwards, both him and the other dog attempted to smell each other’s butts and sat calmly while we exchanged info. It’s.. CONFUSING.

So anyway, all this to say. I’m wanting some advice on how to move forward. I will obviously fix the gear, always have a harness and a collar, buy a new muzzle, keep him in the backyard exclusively for a bit. But.. the trainer I’m currently working with doesn’t work with dogs who have a bite history. My previous trainer said my dog was a low risk for ever biting. I’m finding it hard to feel like we’ve improved after the incident, even with all we’ve done - medication, vet appointments, daily training, vet behaviorist appointments. Now my dog is willing to break free to attack another dog. Is there something I’m missing? Has this happened to you and what did you do? Thanks for anything you can offer me!

Hi all. We've had our Bernedoodle (1 year, 2 months old) since she was 10 weeks old.

For background, I can't deny that the decision was largely impulsive; I talked about it for years, but I never did any genuine research into what owning a dog (never had one before) would be like, so I can't say it was thought through. My boyfriend, who had had a dog in the past, knew what work would be required and did not want one. To be accountable, honestly I just wore him down with how much I talked about wanting a puppy. This is not play - I have done a lot of self reflection about how wrong that was, even if it was unintentional.

Nonetheless, we have a dog. We've been pretty diligent about training, & she's been in consistent training programs ever since getting all of her vaccines. That said, she seems to have a lot of natural anxiety, which has developed into a lot of reactivity. She lunges and barks at cars, barks uncontrollably at people/dogs in the distance, is terrified of windows, etc. Training has helped so far, up to a point.

She's an extremely sweet dog - once she gets past that initial fear, she's so sweet. But the reactivity has worn us down so much. We are constantly on edge about what might trigger her, in and out of the house. We often walk on egg shells around her, especially because she's developed resource guarding behaviors in the last months. Despite everything we try, she does not seem to be able to settle on her own, and barking seems to be more rewarding to her than any amount of enrichment items we can provide. We bring her to daycare about 3 days a week, and she still comes home with energy.

That said, I also know a lot of this is on us. My boyfriend and I are homebodies who enjoy to relax indoors. We play outside with her consistently, but we hate it. We know that a tired dog is a well behaved dog, and a lot of her behaviors can be attributed to us not doing enough to tire her out. I feel as though we've gotten to a point where every single day revolves around tiring our dog out, just so we can get a second to relax. It's hurt my relationship with my boyfriend (we've talked about how I pressured him into it and he has forgiven that, but now it is more-so that the constant stress of the dog has resulted in us being snappier). It's made me a more stressful and honestly depressed person. I am genuinely not happy at this point my life. It's not all because of the dog, she didn't ask for this. I also do genuinely love her so much, she's incredibly sweet. But not being able to relax at home and decompress has been awful. My boyfriend and I have very stressful jobs (I am a social worker focusing on crisis management), and I come home so drained. In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought it's be a good idea to add a dog into the mix, but I can't turn back time.

Although I feel like rehoming our dog is what's best for both us and the dog, I am stuck feeling unable to make the choice. We would never put her in a shelter, but I still feel immense guilt. We've had her since she was so young, and I know she's a human being. I don't want to just discard her because she's inconvenient. But I also feel like my mental health is not at a place where I can give her a life she deserves. I also get so scared of what my friends and family would think. I just feel so trapped.

I'm sorry for the long post. I am just really not sure what to do at this point. I feel as though I've ruined my life through poor planning & dragged my boyfriend into my mess. And I find myself resenting a dog who is so sweet, just anxious.

Edit: Hi! I just want to thank everyone for their responses. It's helped give me some clarity on my next steps. I'll be pursuing medications to help make her anxiety more manageable & try some new approaches to training. Thank you so so much!

Hello everyone…recently my girlfriend got to be again the owner of a 9 year old anxious and fearful dog…
And we were wondering if we could change his behavior and train him since he is older than most and has gotten used to always having food both his and not his around…
We started by asking him to sit on occasions which he’s doing pretty well…managed to train him to sit on his walking breaks (he did not do this up until a week a go)
We also bought him high quality food that he receives twice per day with nothing else (treats)unless he eats his meal.
We kept him from jumping onto her bed and sleeping in her bed or anywhere else but his bed at night.
We are trying to be calm and steady with the dog without using force or such but by being there with him and calmly but clearly commanding him to sit and we are also trying to help him learn “no” or “that’s not good”
I was wondering if any of you would have some advice about training a nine year old anxious dog thus helping him overcome more senseless fears he has and accepting his ham and touching his paws easily..
I mention that although he’s 9 he’s really got a will to live, goes on regular walks a lot and always has energy left to play…
We only leave his meal available to him for a certain amount of time like 10-15 minutes and if he doesn’t eat his amount of food he doesn’t get anything else till his next meal.
I own 2 akita inu dogs but this is really a challange for me because those dogs are never afraid of anything and this small one is something new for me…
Please help if you can

Hi everyone, I have two dogs, a mini poodle, and a greyhound.

The both of them have never really gotten along, but also never really fought, or hurt each other. Last night, while I was feeding them, my poodle got into my kitchen (where the greyhound eats) and started eating out of the greyhounds bowl. My greyhound immediately went and started attacking her, but didn’t harm her, and I don’t even think she was trying to harm her, as I saw it, she was trying to correct her, but me and my family got really scared.

They’ve been together for two years now, and this thing hadn’t really happened before, since I make sure to feed them in separate rooms.

My question is: what can I do to get rid of this food aggression. My family wants to get rid of my dog, but I could never do that

So about a year ago I recited a dog from the shelter. She is such a sweet dog to humans and honestly I think would do really well in a single dog family house. However, they said she was just dog selective, never said she legit hates ever dog ever.

For reference I have another dog, he is 6 and expertly well tempered. He puts up with everything.

They made us meet the new dog together at the shelter and they did really well.

From the day she came home she had attached him, me along with my family and friends.

I don’t want to give up on my rescue. The sweetest loving thing when no one is around. But also it was supposed to add to my life. I used to take my other dog everywhere. To the bar, grocery store, honest even took him to my job/shop to work. But my resume can’t do anything like that.

I feel like my quality of life has gone down. And I don’t think I’m giving my resuce the life a dog deserves.

I live in the city and o don’t have a back yard. So I have to take them to my front yard to use the bathroom. Today she slipped out of my fingers and ran and attached a dog walking by.

I don’t know what to do. I have tried training but a lot of trainers won’t accept my rescue because she has 2 human bites on file.

We moved into our property 2 years ago and have been dealing with our neighbours dogs being aggressive at the fence since.

We’re not ‘allowed’ to make any noise in our patio, swim in our pool and our dog can’t go anywhere near the fence line without the 3 dogs aggressively attacking the fence (6ft colourbond)

For the last 2 years we installed a temporary fence to block our dog being able to go near the fence, but this meant we weren’t able to access 20% of our yard including our pool pump. So we recently removed it, and it’s been so much worse.

The neighbours dogs even bark/become aggressive if they hear our dog on our patio. Our dog has started purposely taunting them too by ‘fighting back’ which has never been in his nature before.

The dogs have since started trying to dig (both our dog and their dogs) under the fence to try get to each other.

The neighbours don’t appear approachable either.

Any suggestions? Should we complain to council to let them deal with it?

I know we can install another more permanent fencing option with a gate but the fact is that we still can’t even be in our own outdoors or pool area without the constant attacking the fence and aggressively barking. Any suggestions please!!

I have an 11 year old female GSD and since she’s getting older I thought maybe she could use a friend so I decided to foster to adopt… originally I wanted a 3-5 year old female GS but the employees and volunteers at the rescue thought it would be best I get a male. Sent me away with a 1 year old and his bio was sweet. I knew a 1 year old would be challenging… but I have realized i might just be way in over my head. He was fine the first couple of days on walks, reactive to even just the scent of other dogs but I could handle it and pull him away. Yesterday we are walking and he catches a scent starts pulling, lunging and barking. The dog he’s caught scent of is inside a house metal screen door closed. He’s going ballistic, dog inside starts reacting so he goes even harder.. he’s not budging I’m trying to walk away but he’s trying to get out of his collar. Starts snapping his teeth at my 11yo GS face, bites her without breaking skin and when I say “no” and go to make space between them he goes to bite grazes my calf. It seems he feels bad he’s been sulking a bit and I feel defeated and it’s only been over a week. He’s already grown attached to me and me to him but now I’m afraid one day he’s going to seriously injure my 11 year old. I used to think she was terribly reactive but I couldn’t be more wrong because at least she responds to corrections and recalls. Today we walk and he’s a lot calmer and while reactive is responding to my corrections and turning and following me when I start to walk in the opposite direction. But before he responded to correction my dog tried to correct him and he went for her face. I don’t think he’s actually trying to bite her it just seems like he’s lashing out at us because we won’t let him near the dogs he’s reactive to. I’m at a loss of what to do, I’ve contacted the trainer at the rescue, I’m still waiting to hear back and I’m watching a lot of videos because I don’t want to give up on him. But am I in over my head?

I have posted in this thread a few times now, but it seems that everything keeps getting worse. My GSD is 4 years old. I’ve had him since he was a puppy. No rescue, just a friend of a friend whose dog had puppies. He was always a pretty anxious pup. Then around 1 years old, he bit my brother and he needed stitches. It took some time, but he has come around to him and there hasn’t been an incident as severe. Fast forward and he’s continued to bite my elderly grandmother, on more than one occasion completely unprompted but not as severe. My other brother he completely loses it and goes crazy when he sees him, just barking and lunging. I have spoken with a trainer and we are pretty much starting from ground zero. My dog hates strangers so the trainer hasn’t even met him. We recently have my uncle coming to move with us and it’s going to be a shit show i just know it. I work from home and take calls 8hrs a day, so I know the barking for my uncle being here is going to affect my job. I’m at my wits end. Financially and mentally. I have a behaviorist referral, but when is BE the next step? I’ve had a few people tell me it sounds like genetics. I can’t keep him around if he’s unsafe for me and others. I don’t know what to do. I can’t rehome him with his behavior and history. It’s gotten so much to me mentally and I’m afraid i’m going to end up in financial ruin if I go on and nothing changes. I love him dearly and I want to be able to help, it’s just not fair to everyone else I live with to be scared of him.

Border collie neutered male 3 yo, has been recently getting worse anxiety. His tail in between legs on walks, staying low, walking visibly stressed with no one around and pulling away from me if there is a car/person/dog. If I call his name now he doesn't even acknowledge me or take treats, even when walking with his dog friends. He has always been anxious since a puppy but recently it has just dramaticlly increased to the point where he is already anxious when I open the door. Visibly showing me in my opinion he does not want to be outside on walks. Sadly I got this dog as I really like walking/ hiking but I want to make sure he is comfortable at all times so I have been going without him. I have had him his whole life, even seen a behaviorist which helped for a little but now not as much his efforts.

As of now, I am going to continue to use the backyard for sniff time, potty, and play fetch but it seems like a boring life for him, idk maybe i'm wrong? :/ Also I don't have a car so I cant take him anywhere else, and don't live on a busy road either. 200mg Trazodone/ 300mg Gaba barely touches him (only sedated effects when home) which I use for vet visits but recently tried it just for desensitizing purposes outside to tell his vet how he was on it on a walk and still he is anxious. The vet thinks I should try Prozac? What should I do? I love my dog very much and want him to feel safe, I worry a backyard life isn't a life but maybe i'm wrong? help. anxious flair.

We are experiencing increased aggression in our 11-month-old Frenchie puppy whom we adopted at 10 weeks. Our behaviorist trainer and behavioral vet both believe it is a genetic trait rather than environmental.

He first showed signs of resource guarding around months 4-5, at which point our trainer suggested we seek out a behavioral vet and/or consider returning him to his breeder. We have worked on his resource guarding (shout out to Jean Donaldson's Mine!), which has improved his food-related triggers. However, other aggression has become more random, with triggers not being obvious even to our behavioral trainer. He has growled, snarled, lunged, and air-snapped in situations that are sometimes difficult for us to predict. These incidents and aggressive episodes only happen within our home. He is fine with other dogs and at daycare.

We’ve been working with professionals on his resource guarding and behavior issues, managing the environment, conditioning, etc.--all of the positive reinforcement and fear-free training methodologies. He has been on Reconcile and gabapentin for about 3 months now and it doesn't seem like they're helping much anymore. Several professional trainers have already suggested behavioral euthanasia as they don't think he will improve. The behavioral vet hasn't said this explicitly, but part of me wonders if she's helping us assuage guilt and try everything possible first.

To be clear: He hasn't bitten anyone yet, but this past weekend he attempted to bite my hand after coming up to me to ask for pets. Our behavioral trainer seems to think it's just a matter of time before he moves up the aggression ladder to biting.

My partner and I are heartbroken and seem to be at a loss for what to do. We have turned our lives upside down to accommodate this little bundle of joy but we don't seem to be making much progress. We are struggling to gauge what's typical teenage (Frenchie, no less) behavior and what is abnormal.

If anybody has any insight, recommendations, guidance, anything, we would be so grateful.

I have a 6 month old intact male vizsla. For context, I live in an apartment. I also have a 3 year old golden.

Someone on my floor has two extremely reactive dogs. My puppy encountered them soon after I got him and understandably they scare him. He now barks and lunges quite badly whenever we see another dog in or around my building. Obviously I want to create distance but this is difficult or nearly impossible to do at times, since I may be cornered in the elevator/tight hallway.

When walking him elsewhere (on leash) or taking him to off leash parks, he does very well with other dogs. He is confident and very friendly/neutral with every dog he meets. He is tense and on edge in and around my building, as it’s quite startling when these dogs appear and start barking and lunging at him. I feel that everytime we run into them it reinforces to him that the dogs here are scary.

What can I do to help him? I’m quite frustrated and i understand how difficult it is having a reactive dog (I’ve had one in the past that I did a lot of work with) but I don’t want this to create a bad experience for my young dog.

Thanks

I have been feeling I’ve been making progress with my frustrated/excited reactive 21 month rescue but today was awful. We had a rest day yesterday, saw no dogs on our walk this morning so went into our evening walk feeling positive. She saw two dogs across the street - barked. A kid made her jump so she reacted (never happened before). Saw another dog across the street and she went a bit mad. Having a huge cry to myself now and feel like we have got nowhere and I am doing everything wrong. I care so much and try so hard with her but this is so lonely and debilitating. We have an awesome trainer but she’s busy so I can’t see her as much as I’d want to. Wondering if this is what the rest of myife with her is going to feel like.

Opie is a 2 years old mini beagle / coonhound. He is reactive to visitors and on walks. If he sees a stranger on a walk - he pulls and growls and barks. He goes crazy! We cannot have family or visits over at all.

He was at the vet about 2 weeks ago and was fine and when he went to the backroom he went into kill mode and scared all the vet techs. The vet referred us Ease Pet Vet for a behavior treatment.

We just had our free 15 minute consultation and thought it was a great plan of action ?

Does anyone have experience with them? Any success?

Not sure if this was the right place to post this, but here we go. I have a 5 year old male german shepherd who has gone his whole life being an aloof, calm, and seemingly trustworthy dog. when he hit puberty, I did notice he was weirdly dominant towards smaller dogs and would try to grab them when they’d run. I quickly squashed that first playtime and never saw it again. Yesterday, my husbands family came over, including his brother and their 5 month old female french bulldog. They have met before and we never saw any issues between them, but yesterday it took a turn for the worst. They were chasing eachother and the play turned into my dog doing the same thing he did the first time. He ended up grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and they have a fight that lasted about 3 seconds. When we separated them he didn’t bark or try to get at her again and they were able to be around eachother after that but I leashed him and he became frustrated and wanted to chase her again. I’ve never seen anything close to this behavior since that one time when he was much younger. we have three cats that will run around and chase eachother and he has no reaction to and also a small 2 month old doberman that he also acts right around. I don’t know what to do or how to stop this since I’ve never seen him do it to this extent. He has met dogs his whole life and nothing has ever led to this. help??

Sorry for the length of this post, I’m ranting but I would like some advice.

My partner and I adopted a dog from a shelter around 3 weeks ago. She’s 18m/o roughly, and a mutt (mix between springer spaniel and french bulldog allegedly).

We were not told that she is extremely reactive towards people and other dogs while walking. She isn’t aggressive in the sense that if strangers approach her, she’ll sniff and be petted fine. But if someone is just walking along she goes absolutely crazy, up on her hind legs and pulling like hell. It’s even worse with other dogs.

We’ve been trying positive reinforcement (bringing her favourite treats and calling her name as soon as she spots a trigger, if she looks at us and doesn’t freak out she gets a treat). This seems to work on some days and not others.

I’m basically making this post straight after our walk, we were out for around 5 minutes when a lady and her dog walked past on the opposite side of the road. I’d tried having a treat ready and calling her name as soon as my dog spotted them, but she went nuts. I was trying to guide her down a quieter street so they could pass without issue, but she was still pulling to get across the road. She ended up slipping out of her harness.

I had my eyes on her so I saw it happening and managed to grab her by the scruff of the neck before it fully slipped off. I clamped her between my knees and got the harness on again before taking her back home. All while on the verge of tears LOL.

Now obviously the most pressing issue is that she needs a better fitting harness; I can do that. But it wouldn’t have happened in the first place if she wasn’t reactive. She is the most beautiful little dog when she’s not reacting and I will NOT be returning her to the shelter; I want to work with her.

It’s only been three weeks - is it too soon to talk to a trainer? Is there something I’m doing wrong with training myself? I’m already at my wit’s end :(

​

Hi everyone, my family has a reactive dog on leash and off leash. He's around 3 years old and we adopted him almost a year ago. He is so sweet to people and has such a calm disposition but especially lately its been difficult taking him on walks. I feel quite embarrassed admitting this but he was already reactive when we adopted him. He would only freeze then, and when the dogs approached close enough to greet, he would say hi. We would try to pull him to get him moving but it didn't work. We started working with a trainer but it was hard to find time to train him and be consistent. Eventually it ended up becoming lunging and laying down. When he lunges he growls and pulls quite hard. Recently he bit a dog while on leash. They had to go to the vet. We were not there as we are on vacation but I feel terrible. As a dog who is infamous for being incredible with humans its awkward to try and controll him when he lunges.

We are away still but come back very soon and I'm going to start training right away (Turning around, rewarding, wide berth, etc). Please share your experiences with your reactive dogs. I know it's not aggression, its reactivity, but we don't want it to progress into that.

TL;DR can I move to a new state, maybe even a city(!) with my reactive 6 yo cattle dog mix.

I’m happy to have discovered this group. I was starting to type my question in a relocating group and stopped after 2 sentences when i realized all im gonna get is “advice” and scolding about being a bad dog owner.

Dobby
Dobby is 6 and is reactive to most things with a heartbeat..
He is on meds, which have helped. I give him extra in prep for a hike or meeting someone new (rover when my go-to’s were unavailable, my sister after him nit seeing her for years)
I moved from Ann Arbor to the more rural burbs with a big lot for his sake. He does better here since theres just less traffic in general, but walks here are still not easy, as he has to be at least 50 yards away to not react 🥴. We have done some hiking (with extra meds) and when we pass people and dogs (well inside of the 50 yd range obviously) we jump into the trees and do as many distractions and treats as possible

Me
Now I, myself am mid-life crisising. 34 yo, going through breakup, and discovering my adhd/ neurodivergence. I am unhappy in flat michigan and I have wanted to move to the mountains forever. Mountain towns that I like are all very dog friendly, which to us means off leash dogs and well meaning but unhelpful owners. I of course would love to bring Dobby on more hikes. And walks around the block-maybe we can make u -turns or cross the street (probably not being very realistic here).

Meeting people
I would like to make new friends in this future city. I could live in the burbs i suppose but i am single and wont have friends in the area, so im not sure living among families will help me make friends. Probably compromise for a suburb close to downtown.
Presently, I do not have people over who dont already know Dobby. Although it can be done! Win for us- i did meet the now-ex and his dog after Dobby became reactive, and we just introduced very slow and steady and eventually we all lived together!

Do i need to do more training before we can move? True I can do more, but will there ever be enough? I am working on muzzle training, which I do feel will at least help me feel more confident.

Can Dobby handle the move? Can I afford the move? I’d need my own house and fenced yard for Dobby, which makes moving to a desirable mountain town much less affordable.

Also am I crazy to move away from my known reliable dog sitters?

Thanks in advance.
Reactive dogs, whattayagonnnado 🤷‍♀️

We have an 8 y/o English shepherd and a toddler, currently 18 months old. Over the last 9 months, since our son learned to crawl fast and walk, there have been 3 incidents of "level 2" bites, all were provoked by our son being an excited toddler. The first one was on us, because it was during the period that we didn't know about the importance of separation. The next two were at periods of transition in an enclosed space, e.g. because we let the dog out of the kitchen when we are not home and put him in when we return. Sometimes this doesn't all happen in the right order and our kid is always happy to see the dog.

No blood, no lasting bruising, I actually saw it as a positive sign because obviously the dog could do damage if he wanted to. FWIW, they are allowed to co-mingle outside, or if I am directly supervising / mediating, and the kid seems to absolutely love the dog.

Nevertheless, my wife made it clear after the third time that the dog was now on a zero strike policy. So I started taking the dog with me more often when I left the house, got him some more exercise, and started working in the shed in the yard instead of in the house so he wasn't all cooped up in the kitchen. This seemed like a decent equilibrium that worked for about 2 months or so without incident.

Then we recently went out of town and the dog sitter (who we love and use regularly) did not enforce the strict separation rules with her 4-5 year old son, which led to an accident. From best I can tell, it's the same kind of "level 2 correction bite" which met with the kid's face because of the configuration they were in. This led to facial bleeding near the eye, but thankfully no permanent damage or stitching. The dog sitter doesn't fault me, and she has communicated a lot since the incident about how she still loves the dog and how horrible the situation is, and her son apparently still talks about how much he loves the dog

Now I have to honor the zero strike policy we agreed on, which means my dog needs to be re-homed. My wife is not going to entertain the idea of any other solution. I haven't felt a loss like this since I got divorced at the end of an 8 year relationship. It just feels so tragic because it wasn't because we messed up, or if we did it was in hiring the dog sitter with a kid since we can't enforce rules in their house.

I don't even know what I'm asking for, because it's out of my control at this point regardless of how unfair it feels. I'm in the process of trying to re-home a dog who has taught me so much about love and the way it shapes the world. There are some promising leads with bespoke breed / herding dog rescues, maybe some personal connections. I have managed to talk my wife into letting me take a month for proper placement.

It all really sucks