The subject is a greyhound, five years old. Me and my wife rescued him at age 2, when he'd been imported from Australia. As best we can tell, he didn't have any racing record, so he was probably just in kennels most of the time. He bonded to us swiftly, and he's a real sweetheart, except for the problem I'm about to describe.
He will, very sporadically, deliver a warning snap if he is approached while lying down. Sometimes, it's preluded by a second or two of growling first; often, it just seems to be sudden motion and a snarl, with or without a light bite. While it's usually just a graze, a few weeks ago he landed one on my wife's face. There was a panicked ER trip, with too much blood initially to assess the damage. Fortunately, it proved to be mostly skin deep, but merited 15 stitches across several wounds.
We've had operating theories about the behavior to the effect of him just being startled awake, and perhaps he has some PTSD from his past that makes him particularly responsive to such rude awakenings. However, my wife just had it happen again, where he was clearly awake and tracking her, she sat down on the couch to pet him, but he started growling as her hand approached, then snarled (no bite) as she started to withdraw.
I have to emphasize how intermittent this behavior is. Weeks, or more often months, will go by between incidents. Otherwise, he's exactly as chill as you'd expect a greyhound to be. In fact, he generally seems fine immediately after the "attack".
Some other factors include that he's done it to both of us, as well as our other greyhound. We have a lot of soft spaces for our dogs, and over time we have seen the behavior across many of them. Resource guarding is one possibility we have considered, but that the bed in question doesn't seem to make a difference confuses things. There just hasn't been any factors we can think of that seem consistent, and no way to tell if getting near him will suddenly go very poorly.
My wife was clearly traumatized by the facial injury, but nevertheless has made the attempt to still treat him lovingly, but with this most recent incident she just flat out no longer feels safe in our home, and I don't blame her. I'm anxious because obviously she needs to be able to be comfortable, but none of my research on dog behaviors have turned up anything quite like this. I'm at a loss.
Any thoughts? Much appreciated.
submitted by /u/jmobius
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