I am hoping to get some guidance or advice on my rescue greyhound and some aggression issues we've been having...
A bit of background. We adopted our boy (Colin!) in October last year - he was 2yrs old, a bit under weight, but seemed pretty happy, inquisitive etc. Pretty early on, we noticed that there was something wrong with one leg and, long story short, he had to have TPLO surgery last December followed by months of being kept in a small room / large cage and hydrotherapy. He was pretty much fully recovered by around April / May last year but we are still taking him to some hydrotherapy sessions. I mention this just because we've always put a lot of the incidents down to this, but I'm beginning to wonder how long I can use that as a reason...
Colin has always been very reactive when out on walks, and has a very high prey drive. He will bark and lunge for most dogs he passes, and although we've taken him to different trainers, the improvements have been minimal. He will chase and go for the obvious culprits - cats, squirrels etc, but also sheep, birds if they're in his path, and sometimes cars. I've always put much of it down to anxiety and a possibly quite traumatic early life. He is mostly okay with other dogs inside the house. He goes to day care twice a week and gets on well. We don't have any other dogs in our house.
When we first got Colin, he was however excellent with people. Loved everyone, was very cuddly, wanted to lay with you and so on. We were able to dry his feet after walks and brush his teeth without issue. I used to say that the reactivity with other dogs was pain but at least he was great with people.
A few months after his surgery, he started having some 'outbursts' at my wife. He would suddenly bark and growl, snarl, teeth bared at her. There were probably about 6-8 separate occasions, one time biting and drawing blood. He also bit me once in this time, again drawing blood.
I put these incidents down to individual circumstances - when he bit me, I was trying to remove some clothes he was laying on from underneath him, when he bit my girlfriend, he had been asleep with his head on her lap and although she hadn't so much as moved, we put it down to him waking up and maybe being in a bit of pain or something. There has not always been an obvious trigger though.
My wife was really quite scared by these incidents and now strokes and pets him only when standing and will not sit on the sofa at the same time as him, which is working to some extent.
In the summer of last year, the incidents started becoming more frequent and mainly directed at me. There's been quite a number of incidents since then - around 20 - one of which drew quite a significant amount of blood on my arm to the point that I was advised to get a tetanus shot. He would snap if we tried to dry his feet so we stopped doing that. We had his leg checked and x-rayed again but no issues there. Colin often comes over to me, will flop to the ground and ask for his tummy to be rubbed (at least that's what it looks like). He would ask for me to stroke him, lay there for a while - paw at me if I stopped, but then at some point suddenly snap and lunge. I've stopped stroking him while he's laying down.
Unfortunately, nothing we've done has really stopped the incidents. They seem to come out of nowhere and the circumstances are always different. In recent months, he has started barking and lunging towards certain people on walks too. Last night, he lunged at my face (marking me but no blood) when I was kneeling relatively close by and this morning a friend came to chat to me while we were on our walk and stroked Colin. Colin's tail was wagging and he seemed happy and then suddenly jumped up at my friend's face (no injuries!) and started barking at him.
I feel like I'm at a bit of a loss to know what to do. My wife and I have young nieces and nephews and we don't feel comfortable with them being around him. I feel as if it's only a matter of time before he bites someone else. We are first time dog owners and at this point, we are giving very serious consideration to giving him back to the rescue centre. At the same time, we both love him a great deal. We put so much time, effort and money into his health and his behaviour but nothing seems to work!
Am I missing something? Has anyone else ever had similar experiences with rescue greyhounds??
