Loving Pippin
I have a controversial dog.
Pippin is a loving, playful seven year old pointer-retriever mix who also has a metric buttload of fear. He was returned to a shelter twice in his early years. In his second home, he was confined to a crate for eighteen to twenty four hours a day. No, no bathroom breaks. That messes with a creature. Once at a park I raised my forearm crutch to indicate something in the harbor, and he couldn’t shirk from me fast enough.
Pippin came to us from Seattle Humane, which has been embroiled in its share of scandals for their handling of animals in its care (and the humans meant to care for them). He stayed there for a year.
When we adopted him, we were informed that he had a bite record and was muzzle trained, but, the staff member stressed, he had come from an unsafe environment. In a loving, stable home, his anxiety should decrease.
This was not the case. As the post-shelter funk wore off, Pippin became more protective of his resources (including me. I am a resource) and fearful of strangers. After a rough vet visit, we concluded that his veterinary work had to be done under sedation. We recommitted to him, though.
And then, without warning, he bit a friend who was staying with us, a friend he had been introduced to and friendly with just the night before. I gently asked my sister, an animal rescuer, about rehoming prospects, and they were not good. We knew that returning him to the shelter would be the end for him — no thrice-returned dog survives. Our friend insisted that he be returned, and my husband I hesitated. It felt…not great to commit to an animal and then knowingly send him to euthanasia. I asked if he would be content with consulting with a behaviorist to see if Pippin’s behaviors could be corrected. He agreed.
That friendship ended, however. I understood. It was partly our naiveté that led to the situation. We did not yet understand the realities of fear-based aggression, and Pippin’s in particular. We were called monsters, abusers by mutual friends for not putting him down right away. On the other side, I had others emphasizing that putting him down would make us monsters.
It was considered. Carefully. In our society, that’s what you do with an animal that bites.
But it still did not seem fair to take in an animal and toss him away for something he could not help. After the fact, it’s easy to see the factors that stressed Pippin — my friend was coming down the stairs, and Pippin was sitting in front of me. Crossing a threshold. Protecting. My friend raised his hand above Pippin’s head, and that was one of Pip’s triggers. Surely, we thought, we could eliminate the possibility of it happening again.
We worked with a behaviorist until pandemic lockdown made it impossible. Pip made leaps and bounds in his confidence, in his security, and trust in us, and we learned everything we could about fear-based aggression. We learned about body language (his and ours), about the necessity of his own space, about the role of pain in fear.
We made sure that any who entered our house knew that there was a reactive dog inside, and kept him separate from any who were uncomfortable. There was one more incident. Again, so easy to pinpoint after the fact — a friend approached him in his space on a day he broke a tooth and held her hand over his head. I was distracted. All of these were things that we could have and should have avoided. Well, except the tooth.
I cannot emphasize enough how high your guard has to be around a creature with this much fear. After this, we moved to sequestering Pippin whenever anyone came over, regardless of their comfort with the risk. We reinitiated training and started behavioral meds. And he improved again.
These days, Pippin is just fine with his reality. He has his Mom and his Dad and the cats and my sister, and that is the way he likes it. But there are still unspoken problems. Any emergency veterinary care he needs will be delayed by the need for sedation. Recently, he choked on a piece of chicken, and my husband had to reconcile the likelihood of being bitten with the urgent need to clear it. (He gave the dog version of the Heimlich. He was not bitten.) We have both dropped our guard at the wrong time in the wrong way and had incidents.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why. Why we do all this, why we keep him, why we kept him in the first place.
He is not his anxiety. He loves his first toy (a stuffed alpaca), he lives for his Jolly Ball, he finds peace on walks. He loves sitting between us (no matter how uncomfortable it is), and he hugs me with his whole body and licks my tears when I cry. He loves to listen to Critical Role when we need to drown out things like fireworks (he particularly likes to listen to Grog). He senses my high pain days and deliberately mushes his body like a beanbag into my chest like a weighted blanket that snores and smells faintly of corn chips. He tries everything he can to occupy the same physical space as my husband. His favorite day every month is Bark Box day.
He points. Did you know pointers really do that? Instinctively. He loves when it snows and he can track scents under the blanket of white. He likes to wear sweaters. Tennis balls are basically god. He adores the days that I am well enough to take him to meet my husband at the bus stop. He yelps in joy and dances on his hind legs when he sees him.
My point is that Pippin is a dog. The reasons you love your dog are the same reasons I love mine. It’s just complicated by the fact that he is a bundle of nerves wrapped in a fear tortilla. It’s immensely complicated by the stigma of having a dog who has fear aggression. It’s difficult to discuss with people with well-adjusted dogs, people who think they know how rescuing is supposed to go, people who think dogs with fear aggression should be destroyed, people who think you should never put an otherwise healthy dog down. Gods forbid you bring up the muzzle.
Pip is actually more confident in public when he is muzzled. It’s almost like we’re telling him the responsibility for defending himself has been taken off him. It’s a relief. Some folks go out of their way to compliment him (he is a very obedient dog who stays in heel unless released, and he is very handsome). Others nastily comment to themselves about why a dog like that is allowed anywhere, or tell their kids he’s mean.
The truth is that Pippin is complicated. He is the good dog, who follows our commands and refuses to walk off the sidewalk if it’s available. He is also the fearful dog who feels like he has to defend himself at surprising provocations. I hesitated to even write this piece because I knew I’d be inviting judgment, but I want people to know the truth of him. That a dog so loved could still be irrevocably harmed in the past that he can’t see a way out. That a dog who has bitten and might bite out of fear is still a creature worthy of love and a good life.
We are constantly evaluating his quality of life. His good days generally outweigh his bad. But he’s getting older, and aches and pains are starting to seep in. His meds need adjusting, and right now, he’s not doing so well. It’s manifesting as shivering and refusal to eat at the moment. We’re in contact with his vet team and doing everything we can to keep our buddy as anxiety neutral as possible. If only talk therapy and EMDR could work for pets.
I wanted to write this before any decisions have to be made. I wanted people to know him as I know him, to hold both truths in equal measure, to get a sense of what it’s like to live on this edge. Five years we’ve done this, five years he wouldn’t have gotten in most homes. I hope for more, but even if we have to say goodbye earlier, we are at peace, knowing that he is facing the end with so much more love than he began.
Note: I do not recommend people sign on for more dog than they can handle. For us, Pippin’s issues came as a surprise, even though perhaps it shouldn’t have and wouldn’t have to more experienced owners, and we had to learn to adjust. Our path is not right for everyone, and as Pip has shown us, every dog is different. The last thing I want is people to use Pippin’s story as a bludgeon for pro- or anti-behavioral euthanasia arguments. If there’s one thing you take from this: the issue is more complex than can be contained in a single essay.