Milo's rehab journey

First of all I'd just like to say this is a great idea! On other forums i have made a thread to keep up to date with Milo's progress but this will be so much easier!

So I shall start with the background on Milo's ongoing journey with dog aggression.

I got Milo as a 4 week old pup, as he got older he was great with other dogs until I got him neutered (not saying this is the cause of his aggression but perhaps a contributing factor) this was around 2 years of age. After the rest time (approx a week) I took him to the field for his usual run and a Labrador pup (which he'd played with plenty of times before) came over and stuck his nose right where Milo had his op, Milo turned around and bit the other dog (popping the other dogs testicle ) and that was the start of his dog aggression.

After that incident I didn't feel like it was safe to have Milo around other dogs and completely avoided them (probably making the whole thing worse) and when we did come in contact with other dogs I panicked and once again probably made things worse. I read up on how to deal with dog aggression and ended up learning about counter conditioning, to my amazement it worked really fast and although I knew it would take years for Milo to be okay with dogs we had a good starting point. After months of work I was on a field with Milo (he was off lead) and I spotted a boxer on the field with no owner, I called Milo over and he came but the boxer had spotted us and made a beeline straight to us, to my surprise Milo actually displayed positive body language towards the other dog and wanted to play, since he had been doing so well and I knew he would come back; I let him off to see what would happen (risky I know but I was quite young and didnt think it would turn bad) to my relief Milo was great, he played with the dog happily and they ran around the field together, I called Milo back as I didn't want to push my look and we left.



Milo was doing great, then one day on a walk this woman with 3 uncontrollable dogs walked passed us, one of her dogs got loose and went for Milo, this went on for at least 5 mins before a bystander who was walking passed helped us out and grabbed the dog going for Milo. I was so angry. Especially when the woman shouted to me 'its okay he's friendly' as I'm body-blocking her dog from biting mine!!! This literally set us back to square one, in fact it was even worse as now Milo lunged/barked at every dog in eye sight, walking him was horrible.

We powered through and now he doesn't bark/lunge at other dogs, he sometimes lets out a little whimper if they get to close but thats about it, for the moment we stay away from dog filled places like the park or local field and Milo can no longer be allowed off lead. He has a 100ft long line and we're currently working on recall (his recall used to be great but now i honestly think if a dog got to close he'd go after it rather than coming back). At the moment I'm working on muzzle training so I can walk Milo in the park and counter condition him when we see other dogs, we've had a few chance encounters with random dogs (usually idiots walking their dogs off lead on the pathway) and he hasn't snapped at any, he's sniffed and thats about it but his whole posture is very stiff so i know he isn't comfortable around other dogs.

We're still working hard and hope that one day Milo can run off lead again without worrying about other dogs, this summer I actually have a play date planned with a friend and her puppy, the dog is smaller than Milo and female so he should be okay with her, of course we will be taking baby steps and lots of training will be getting done in the mean time so he's ready. Sorry for the essay!!!

It's great that you're using this part of the forum, i'm looking forward to ready about your experiences and Milos progress.

Can I ask how you ended up getting him at 4 weeks old? Poor mite!

Thankyou

Of course, my friends parents didn't get their dogs neutered and ended up with a litter of puppies, I think they got sick of looking after so many dogs so just gave them away at 4 weeks saying 'they're eating solids so it's okay'. My family were looking for a dog at the time and we were going to get one once the pups had finished weaning but at 4 weeks the girl knocks round and is like 'your puppy is ready to go home' so we took him and called the vet around straight away to get advice as he was so young, she advised not to bring him back (we were gonna bring him back and ask the owners to hold onto him until fully weaned) because the fact the owners had let him go that early in the first place.

Sadly a few of the puppies had problems (one actually bit someone and got put down ) and one had a hole in his heart (thats most likely genetic i guess and not linked to leaving his mum to early) but it's a shame as a few more weeks and they would have had more of a chance! My pup turned out great apart from his dog aggression but that could be from a number of things rather than being to young, although that is probably a major chunk of the reason as it was probably hard for him to learn how act around dogs as he didn't grow up with his siblings!

Hahaha sorry for giving you his life story and family history

hello guys i am new here in this topic ,,

Come and say hi here caroline https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f7-new-member-introductions