I apologize in advance for how long this post is. I’m hoping to get some advice or even just an outside perspective on a situation that’s becoming increasingly more stressful. I feel like the background info is important to explain how we got in this situation and why I have the boundaries I have now.
My partner and I live with our 2 dogs and 4 cats. Over the years we had 2 other dogs (Java and Minnie) and another cat (Mowgli). They all died within the last 3 years of cancer consecutively. I work at a vet hospital and managed most of the care for them over those 3 years. That left me drained financially, emotionally, and physically. Prior to this, my partner and I had many disagreements about how to properly care for our pets. He felt I did too much, I felt he did too little. The dog he brought into our relationship, Minnie, was dog-reactive and people-selective. She also had chronic GI issues, developed arthritis, and general anxiety. My partner never recognized or addressed these issues before, and when I entered her life I kinda took over care. We made a lot of progress, and I learned so much from her.
That leads us to the past year and a half. I adopted a dog that my friend at our local shelter recommended to me, Pinto. He’s a really sweet boy and, outside of mild anxiety and skin allergies, has been an easy-going guy. Before adopting Pinto I had set boundaries with my partner around pet care. Any new pets brought into our home would be the responsibility of the person who wanted the adoption. The other would still do feedings, walks, outings, and other things that a pet sitter or roommate might do, but is ultimately not expected to. This was meant to preserve our relationship as I had become quite resentful towards my partner, and also wanted to hold myself accountable to the ways I can overstep and take on more than I can realistically handle.
So then shortly after Minnie passed, we saw a dog on a shelter site who looked a lot like Pinto. We’d seen him on the site before and joked that he was his doppelgänger. My partner wanted to meet him, so we went; he fell in love and adopted him that day. They had told us he may have a bite history but it wasn’t in his record, and he had gone through a few homes before us. He’s a small chihuahua mix, about 18lbs, so we thought some of this could be due to being handled inappropriately, not having his boundaries respected, and not being properly trained when he was young as that’s common with small dogs. I had told my partner that with any rescue, but especially with one with a possible bite history, it’s possible and maybe likely that he’d need a behaviorist. He got him pet insurance that covers this and behavior modification training that is performed at that same clinic and assured me that he would be willing and able to take on that challenge. I reminded him before we even went to see Cubone (that’s what he named him) that I was already stretched thin and would not be able to help in any significant way. He said he understood and that was that.
Since adopting Cubone we’ve discovered his issues are significantly worse than what we were told. He is very protective of his body and does not allow handling. Although radiographs showed no obvious cause, his conformation and aggressive behavior led us to suspect he’s in pain. He now takes 3 different pain meds and they’ve made a big difference to his quality of life. He resource guards items, food, locations, and sometimes people. This isn’t consistent, however he does show subtler guarding signs frequently with Pinto and our cats. He’s now developing dog reactivity, something which wasn’t initially an issue. He can tolerate being home alone now but initially struggled with separation anxiety. He has confinement anxiety and also gets very stressed when my partner isn’t around. He has some compulsive behaviors, but barking is by far the worst one. He demand barks, alert barks, distress barks, and sometimes it seems like he barks just because he feels stress with no apparent trigger. He will panic if you push a chair or table and bark in a high pitched panicked tone.
The biggest issue is the biting. He has bitten me (puncturing skin more often than not) countless times, something I take very seriously and don’t feel my partner does. He’s also bitten my partner but generally causing less damage and often because he’s handling him. He will bite me over resources, whether its my spot on the couch or my dinner, out of frustration, when I’m trying to put his collar on for a walk (I still can’t put a harness on him or he will aggress), and if I hold him to prevent him from aggressing at someone else. This has lessened some with time and the intensity of his bites has lessened, but I have also learned how to behave to avoid triggering him. He will bite us when we’re sleeping if we move and touch him or wake him up. I would prefer he not sleep in bed with us, but the alternative is non-stop screaming and barking.
It has been extremely difficult to implement management as confining him to a separate room, crating, and leashing him inside will cause him to panic. He takes a long time to recover from stressors so when he has his freak outs his behavior is generally worse for days after. It took a lot of trial and error to find medications that didn’t make him more aggressive or touchy. We have a veterinary behaviorist we work with and they set us up with a trainer who showed us that he is capable of learning and even got him to step in and out of his crate. Without guidance, many of our training sessions would end with aggression and frustration, and sometimes bites. I would offer some help with things like leash walking and preventing the frustration that can lead to dog aggression but my partner would often appear annoyed by my prompts and suggestions. Despite the success of his training session, he hasn’t scheduled another. He doesn’t keep up with biweekly check-ins with the behaviorist, and isn’t able to sustain consistent training. I would remind him regularly but ended up feeling like I was just nagging him to no effect. He will work long hours leaving me with a dog who is essentially inconsolable until his favorite person comes home.
I’ve often felt trapped in my home with Cubone. I have to watch my movements, avoid triggers, keep him out of trouble and distracted, and avoid freak outs. Our neighbor has complained many times about his barking and I worry about maintaining housing. I can’t train or work with Pinto or any of my cats without risking frustrating him. I worry about how we will handle any illness as one time he had a partial foreign body and we couldn’t get medicine in him or administer any support until we sedated him at the vet. When he feels sick he’s also especially sensitive and much more likely to aggress. He’s a long-backed dog so is statistically likely to experience some orthopedic and/or neurologic health issues as he ages, and should he need exercise restriction we would be SOL. We can’t have people over comfortably, and when we do, I’m holding my breath the whole time and they’re scared of him. Even medicated, he really struggles with guests. We can’t visit my family without bringing him, but when we bring him he is on a large dose of sedatives and my partner has to hold him the entire time. He bit our friend which crossed a huge boundary of mine and she is understandably uncomfortable around him. I worry about him getting out and biting someone else, especially a child.
My partner makes more than me, and takes on a larger portion of the bills. With the current economy, he’s been really anxious about work and fearful of losing his job. He doesn’t get off at a consistent time, or work from home, and when I ask about setting clearer boundaries with work he expresses fear of losing his job and doesn’t want to ruffle feathers. He’s a trans-man which also makes finding working environments that feel safe and supportive especially difficult. He has promised countless times that he’d step up for Cubone’s and my sake, but he isn’t consistent with it. This is especially frustrating for me because it’s part of a greater pattern of issues we’ve had.
Cubone and my relationship has improved a great deal over the year; he loves to play so I used this to bond with him. His biting is less frequent and he will ask for pets and responds better to consent testing (I give a couple scratches and end it there, no need to push it!). Much of the improvement came after the addition of Amantadine for chronic pain management. Despite this, he’s still bitten me in my sleep as recently as yesterday. He bullies Pinto and has started 2 conflicts which would have turned into fights if Pinto didn’t have the temperament that he does. Although Pinto can be kenneled, it feels deeply unfair for him to spend his time at home kenneled, especially when he comes to work with me and spends the day kenneled. I worry about new behaviors developing, and whether this endless game of anxiety whack-a-mole will end. I also feel deep sadness when I think of the confusion and pain he had lived through before us, and how much he still struggles now. He has moments where he seems like a “normal” dog and will happily run around, play, and act goofy. But then there are the moments where he barks non-stop despite being taken out, fed, played with, and medicated. He’ll wake up from sleep and go straight to barking, almost like something spooked him in his sleep.
Cubone needs A LOT of structure, consistent behavior modification, patience, and understanding. He is also going to bite again- it’s not a matter of if but when. Although he’s small, his bites are no joke, and he is just as distressed when he bites as a dog 3x his size. The shelter we adopted from would not be able to take him back with the number of bites he had, and if they did, they would likely behaviorally euthanize. Rehoming him feels unlikely as it would take a very savvy pet owner, and tremendous patience to work through his very prickly exterior. Add in expensive vet care, medications, and likely costly training, plus whatever he is genetically predisposed to, we’d be looking for a unicorn. And all of this says nothing of the emotional stress he would undoubtedly experience. This leads me to feel like it’s us or BE as the most realistic options. I’m not willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of myself and all of my pets to commit myself wholly to managing Cubone because my partner wont. My partner, despite how much he says he will try, will likely not work on the skills Cubone needs to be able to cope with normal life and allow us to also live more freely and comfortably in the home.
So where do I go from here? I feel evil for considering BE, especially when I see glimpses of him feeling happy, playful, and bouncy. I feel cruel and neglectful when he’s struggling and I’m at my wits end with no energy left to help him. I feel like I’m too close to the situation to really know what the right thing to do is. Should I talk more seriously about rehoming or euthanasia with my partner? It feels like he’s in a different reality when it comes to acknowledging his struggles and will ignore and not speak about the times when Cubone bites me. Do I just continue to watch and hide myself away and wait for things to get better or worse? Keep nagging? I don’t know what to do- my moral compass feels broken and outside of just leaving, I feel like I’m powerless to change anything.
Thanks so much for reading this far, I sincerely appreciate it.
