We have a beautiful girl who will be 5 this year, she’s an Australian cattle dog/pitty mix. My husband adopted her before we met and I want to stress that we are not giving her up ever.
She gets two walks a day on a good day, one on a bad day. She’s out in the yard all the time, mostly likes to sunbathe. We have soothing toys for her. But we cannot get her to relax while our baby, who is one year old, is out and about. We keep them separated, I do not believe in dogs getting facetime with babies unless the dog is magically calm and our girl is not calm. She sits at the baby gate constantly watching him and if he goes to the gate and touches her, she jumps away.
If we have guests over, we cannot stop her from barreling into people and jumping. We reward all four paws on the ground, have guests ignore her completely if she jumps, we tried leashing her (it distresses her too much), and tried crating her when people come over. We cannot figure it out. We have had our trainer come over and observe her and when he ignored her, she did eventually calm down, but then when he sat down she was all over him again.
He recommended we tire her out regularly and stay consistent with rewarding paws on the ground and having guests ignore her. But she’s 50 pounds of pure muscle.
We don’t have guests often enough for it training to stick. Holidays are coming up and I’m so stressed.
When our baby was 4 months old we tried to move in with his family. They have a dog who has been our dog’s best friend since they got her 2 years ago. Within 2 weeks we did see signs of both dogs getting annoyed with the other, suddenly our dog who never cared for toys would not share, and one day she barked/corrected their dog when she was jumping. But they went back to normal for a few days.
One night I was on the couch with their dog, watching tv with my husband (who was on another couch with our dog). My husband went upstairs to get me a blanket and our dog attacked theirs 🙁 we were just sitting on the couch. It was awful. We kept them separate for 2 days, letting them out in the house on shifts. but then their dog managed to escape when our was out and it was horrifying.
Obviously, we have moved out. It’s been almost 9 months. We have a great behavioral trainer and we have trained the dogs together in a controlled environment. Their dog has forgiven ours and wants to play, ours is mostly neutral but not interested.
But now our dog has random reactivity towards dogs that don’t like her. It makes it so hard for us walk her because we have a baby, i can’t risk something happening with a baby on my chest. We do manage to divide and conquer, but this isn’t always possible.
We usually have in home care for our baby and previously had a dog walker who would come a few times a week. But my husband is a federal employee so we are going to have to make some hard choices soon (he’s essential so still working just not getting paid), our sitter just found her dream job (yay for her!), and I can’t find a sitter who is comfortable with our dog. We also can’t find a dog walker who is comfortable with her. She’s great on a leash until a dog doesn’t like her and then she pulls and is aggressive.
She’s getting less activity and I’ve noticed her barking aggressively at passerbys in the yard.
All tips welcome. Our situation is hopefully temporary but holidays are coming up and I could really use some advice. Thank you!
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