Hi everyone,
I’m 28, and having a dog has been my dream since I was a child. Right now, that dream feels more like a nightmare. I honestly feel like I might end up on some psychiatric medication soon because of my dog.
My White Swiss Shepherd comes from a reputable, legal breeder. I’ve had him since he was a puppy and he’s now 8 months old. He learns quickly, knows many commands, and understands how to relax. From the very beginning, I’ve been taking him to training, dog socialization sessions, we’ve watched children play from a safe distance, visited cities and the countryside. He’s had over 30 hours with a behaviorist and about 10 with a K9 trainer, plus social walks and playdates with nice dogs.
But regardless of everything, for the past 3–4 months, our walks have become hell. He’s scared (?) of dogs and people. He freezes, lies down, then tries to create distance by barking and lunging. Some people he ignores, but he goes crazy at every child, dog, cyclist, and runner.If he sees a dog, I usually need to hold him with all my strength because he lunges (only from around 30m i am able to redirect his attention to me), then he redirects his frustration onto random people passing by… Off‑leash, once he gets to know a dog, he plays completely fine with them. Or just comes up to them and back to me when recalled.
We don’t walk near busy streets anymore, as a few times he almost dragged us both under speeding cars after spotting a dog on the other side of the road.
For months I’ve been calculating walk times to avoid people, sometimes going out in the middle of the night just to stay sane. Between 5 and 7 pm, I drive him to a meadow because there’s nowhere to hide with him in our neighborhood at that time.
Yesterday he was secured with a seatbelt harness in the car. He saw a dog outside, lunged so hard he broke the belt and jumped into the front seat, thrashing around the car.
He also has a separation anxiety, so I haven’t left home for more than 20 minutes since half a year, but this is honestly a smaller problem for me, and one I can work on peacefully…
But because of the walks, sometimes I just don’t have any strength left. I can’t sleep at night because I dread our morning walks – he always puts on a show, and people keep asking why I don’t “just go to training,” even though I’ve been doing that for half a year and we work every single day.
Half of our walks end with me crying. I HOPE I will never rehome him, because I know that would traumatize him… but I’ve never felt this awful in my life 🥲