Sean's story
Dogs Trust's underdog Axel (aka "rude boy")
We adopted Sean (whose rescue name was Axel) in January 2024 from Dogs Trust Ireland. When we brought him home, we quickly realised that we needed to do A LOT of work to make his life and our life comfortable and stress-free. This is the story of how we have done it (so far).
The beginning
Why have we chosen this particular dog? Mind you, he was not looking half as cute in his shelter photos as he turned out to be.
The reasons were mostly pragmatic. I needed a medium-sized dog: I was the only person in the household who had any dog ownership experience (30 years ago), so it was unwise to get a big and possibly hard-to-manage dog, and all other family members firmly voted against a small dog. I needed a dog with a minimum amount of shedding, because of our history of allergies, so wire-haired terriers seemed to be the best option (also, my first dog was a schnauzer, so I was imprinted to love a square-ish dog with a beard). I needed a dog who could stay at home alone for more than a couple of hours, because we all work full time (though I work from home half of the week). This narrowed down the search to DogsTrust (who were ready to give us a week trial to see if we were allergic) and to this guy, who by that time has lived in Dogs Trust’s kennels for almost a year and officially qualified as an Underdog (6 month+ in rescue’s care) .
Sean, as many rescue dogs, had an unknown past. Dogs Trust pulled him from one of the regional pounds in spring 2023. His date of birth was listed as March 8th, 2016, but I do not know where this information came from and how precise was it. His rescue intake vet record is from 07/03/2023 at the vet clinic in Listowel, Co.Kerry. That record stated that he was 7 years, 3 months, but then the date of birth 08/03/2016 emerged in the subsequent documents. In any case, according to the records, he was around 8 years old when we met him, but we still find it hard to believe it. Now, in the ripe age of 10, he has great teeth, is active and agile, and has very few grey hair. We are regularly asked if he is a puppy:)
His breed was listed as Patterdale cross, but this was an educated guess. Later we have done a DNA test, but since Patterdales are not a recognised breed (they are only recognised by local British kennel clubs, and DNA-testing labs rely on AKC classification), we received back the mix of about 10 different terriers, which sounds about right for a Patterdale. Mixed in there were 10% of gundogs – mostly german wirehaired pointers, with some setters. This addition probably explains why Sean is almost twice bigger than a “pure” Patterdale should be. In any case, he definitely has strong Patterdale traits – independent thinking, athleticism, and high tolerance to pain. Mixing in pointers only made him bigger and stronger, (and possibly a bit more sensitive – I have heard pointers are very sensitive souls) and turbocharged his prey drive.
What the hell is "reactivity"?
The rescue warned us that this dog wasn’t doing great with other dogs (hence the nickname “Rude Boy”), but they believed that it was just frustration from not being able to play with them and general stress (all dogs are stressed in shelter environment and can have a short fuse when it comes to another dog’s awkward social manners). We, however, quickly found out that the problem was much bigger. Sean had a major fear reactivity towards other dogs – in other words, they stressed him out so much that continuous exposure to them led to a full-scale meltdown. Unfortunately, we also found out that every second house in our neighbourhood had at least one dog, so wherever and whenever you go, you were bound to meet some dogs. And when that happened, Sean would bark and lunge and thrash around – and while we were lucky that he was just 14 kg at the time, these were 14kg of pure lean muscle (and very dense bone), which, turbocharged by extreme anxiety, could bring down a fully grown person. First time we went away for 3 days and left him with the youngest member of the family (20 years old and 6 feet tall), he managed to do just that – and oh my did I get an earful about blooded knees, torn jeans, and the impossible assignment of looking after my crazy dog. One good thing – even in the middle of a complete panic attack, Sean would never redirect to humans. He could bite an approaching dog (and have done it once), but he would never bite a person, which is, on average, quite a non-typical behaviour for terriers, who tend to be quick to respond to any stress with their teeth. After the reactive episode Sean would try to get away from the scary thing as soon as possible, which meant that he would be pulling like a truck for 20-30 minutes, dragging us behind him – not a pleasant walk with a dog one might have imagined.
Other people might have decided that walking such a difficult dog is too stressful and confine him to exercising and doing his business in the backyard. Aside from the ethics of doing such a thing (which might be OK for some dogs and downright abuse for others), this was never an option for us. We have a small suburban garden and it was absolutely clear that no amount of time spent there playing fetch, training and doing sniffwork can replace for Sean the benefit of going outside where the amount of new information was many times higher. It was not as much about physical exercise, it was about a particular kind of mental stimulation. He was a working terrier bred to roam the rough terrain for hours in search of small furry prey. He needed three walks a day. It was non-negotiable. If not walked, he started bouncing off the walls, barking and generally pestering us relentlessly. So, life was very stressful three times a day, and I needed to take action urgently.
The only other dog whom I knew well – our family’s Schnauzer – has been a very sweet, highly social girl, who was good with people, other dogs and even cats (she has been raised by our very firm and non-nonsense male cat, who had been quick to lay the law with her and maintained the upper hand for his entire life). I had no idea what “reactivity” was and in general knew almost nothing about dog behaviour. But facing a dog who screamed at the sight of another dog, I went online (as you do these days) and a short search brought me to Reddit, where someone (thank you, unknown person!) pointed towards Grisha Stewart and her BAT setups. I immediately bought her book and finally things started to make sense to me. Still, it is unadvisable to deal with a serious behavioural issue on your own, so I went back to DogsTrust and they gave me some contacts of trainers. We started working with Jennifer Flynn from Pawtential, who was super helpful – but probably not in a way that many unexperienced people imagine a trainer to be helpful. I learned that trainers do not actually train your dog (surprise!) – they train you to train your dog. A good trainer with a behavioural expertise will also explain to you why the behaviour is happening and how you can change the environment to address the problem.
The first important insight that Jennifer brought was that Sean’s behaviour was not a frustration from not being able to play with other dogs – it was fear. He was barking and lunging to scare the dogs away from his personal space (which at that stage was huge). That seemingly simple idea was actually counter-intuitive: why would a dog actively pull me towards the thing that they are very scared of?? One would expect a scared dog to tuck his tail, hide behind the owner, or run in another direction. Some dogs do that, but many don’t, and terriers in general are unlikely to run away from a challenge – they have been bred to be fearless and rush at the prey (who might be biting and snarling and being as scary as possible) to sort it out before it had an opportunity to do so first. In Sean’s case, if he was allowed to approach a dog (which we still did sometimes at the start), this immediately turned into a confrontational encounter, with jumping on another dog’s head, body-slamming, nipping the legs – all along with a very tense body language, tail high, completely fixated on a dog and taking no pauses or changing roles (both of which are signs of play behaviour). In dogs’ terms, his behaviour was very rude (earning him his Dogs Trust nickname) and most dogs immediately corrected him or ran away – both outcomes would send him into a frenzy of barking. It is possible that initially for Sean there was a play intent, but due to his poor social skills (most likely resulting from a lack of proper socialisation early in his life), repeated attempts to play resulted in negative outcomes – dogs telling him off, stressed humans on both sides, being dragged away from an exciting thing – and he quickly learned that dogs=stress. From now on, the stressful thing needed to stay the hell away from him, and he was ready to run across an entire football field to explain to a passing dog that it needed to disappear from his horizon. A huge overreaction – but that is exactly what reactivity is – an inadequate reaction to normal stressors of everyday life.
first priority - management
It was clear that changing Sean’s behaviour is going to be a long process (we thought – months, but actually it is more like years). Just a caveat – not every behavioural change takes years, but in Sean’s case many variables were stacked against him. His reactivity was quite severe. He was 8 years old and has likely rehearsed the reactive behaviour for a long time, which made a strong neural pathway in his brain “see dog => freak out”. He was a Patterdale -highly driven, excitable, non-biddable breed, who was not wired to seek guidance or protection from humans, but instead used to solving problems on his own. He spent a year in kennels and had a high level of general anxiety from this experience (and who knows what experiences before that). So, while we worked on teaching Sean how to make better choices, we needed to make sure that everyone is safe.
First of all, we needed to make sure that we don’t lose him. He had zero recall – and even now, 2 years later, I would never trust him off leash in a public space, because of his nervousness and his prey drive. Very quickly we found out that when he is thrashing around madly at the sight of a dog, he can easily wriggle out of his collar and harness. Ouch. With the time, after trying different gear, we came up with the solution: martingale collar (his neck is thicker than his head, similar to that of sighthounds, so he heeded a collar that he cannot back out of), three-point harness with the belly strap (Ruffwear Flagline) and GPS tracker (Tractive) on his collar – in case the leash unclips or he manages to slip through the door. You might think this is excessive and paranoid. It is not. This dog slipped through the door twice and both times he immediatelly went on to harrass the dogs and cats in the neighbourhood. Both times we got told off by angry neighbours for not having our dangerous dog under control. These were not the kinds of experiences we are keen to repeat. Sean also once managed to wriggle out of a collar, harness and sweater when he was rushed by two off-leash dogs in the middle of a park and my partner lifted him into the airjail. Thankfully, he had not run away, but proceeded to circle the dogs and bark at them, until my partner managed to catch him – yet, it was very stressful (add winter cold and darkness to the picture). In sum, this dog tends to keep us on our toes.
Second, we were concerned that his poor social skills would end up starting a fight, and that he might bite another dog, with all the unpleasant consequences of this. This kind of happened 6 months after we got Sean. He was walked by a dogwalker, and while she turned away for a second to dispose of a poop bag, a small off-leash dog ran up to Sean (clearly ignoring all his loud “go away” signals). Sean, being on short leash and having nowhere to go to escape the threat, bit the small dog through the ear (perhaps making sure that the dog actually uses her freaking ears in the future when she is told “I do not want you in my space”). Imagine the scene: a small innocent-looking dog is screaming, because Sean has clenched his teeth on its ear and would not let go (he is not shaking the dog, he is just holding it), a panicked dog-walker is struggling to unclench Sean’s mighty jaws, and the bitten dog’s owner is looking at this impassively. Finally, the dog’s owner came over and helped free his bleeding dog, after which he just put it on leash and left silently. At least he had no complaints, but everyone was very shaken. Needless to say, that was the last time Sean was walked by a dog walker – not because I blamed her for the incident, but because I realised that Sean is not ready for walks with people who do not have a deep insight into his behaviour and the ways to manage it.
With the help of our trainer, we started muzzle training almost immediately, but it is not something that can (or should!) happen overnight. Very slowly and carefully, after several months of small progressive steps, I fully muzzle trained Sean (with a standard Baskerville basket muzzle). That does not mean that he is always wearing a muzzle now, but he wears it often, whenever needed, and has no issues with it. These days he is not wearing it to avoid altercations with dogs, but to protect free-roaming cats in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, we had two incidents when the cats decided to start a fight with Sean instead of running away from him – a very stupid decision indeed. Maybe some dogs can be scared away by hissing and by clawed paws scratching their nose, but Sean does not even notice such minor inconveniences. Despite being on leash, he has lightning-speed reaction and zero bite inhibition when it comes to real prey. Both cats have been seriously injured, because it was VERY hard to pry them out of Sean’s jaws (25% bullterrier DNA clearly all went into those jaw muscles). Luckily, both cats recovered, but we paid a hefty vet bill, had super unpleasant conversations with cats’ owners, and my partner will probably always have the scars from his valiant efforts to save the cats’ lives. Now, we do not leave the house without a muzzle and put it on in the places of known high cat activity.
Why am I going into those unpleasant details about bite incidents? Because these are the risks of having a dog with a high prey drive (I have so much anger about the practice of breeding hunting dogs who struggle to live as pets in normal homes and then disposing of them when they are no longer useful, as many hunters do – and do not even get me started on the plight of sighthounds) and this is why management strategies, such as muzzle training, escape-proof gear and keeping a dog on leash, are so important.
a stressed dog cannot learn
I cannot emphasize enough how stressful shelter environments are for dogs (#adoptdontshop). Smells, barking, confinement to a kennel for most of the day, close proximity to potentially scary dogs, lack of agency – all of this if very, very bad for a dog’s nervous system. Dogs Trust is one of the best rescues in Ireland and they take very good care of their dogs, but even they could not provide what Sean needed – 2-3 hours of nature walks per day, extensive mental enrichment and quiet place where he had a sense of security from other dogs (it does not matter that de facto he was always safe, as long as he could see, hear and smell the dogs close by, he was stressed). Sean coped with kennel stress by being hyperactive, so when we were taking him home, the rescue said that “he was always on the go” and they did not know whether he would be able to settle at home. He was a kind of “ADHD dog” (spoiler alert – he is not actually ADHD, he just needed to decompress and learn that life is stable and plentiful). After almost a year spent in kennels, Sean was a nervous wreck.
Luckily, he won a lottery with us:) We have a very calm, adult-only house with a small enclosed garden. We speak in quiet voices and do not even play music (other than TV in the evening). We have guests maybe 5-6 times a year, and none of them have small children. In the first days I would spend a lot of time just sitting with Sean on the floor or on the stairs (he would come into my lap immediately), lightly scratching his neck or just resting my hand on his back, talking in low soothing voice to him. We did not set up a crate for him (the idea of putting him in confinement again after a year in a kennel just seemed wrong), but he found a guest bathroom upstairs that nobody was using and slept there for hours on the bathroom mat. That was the darkest and quietest place in the house and we left him alone there (in fairness, we would not call and bother him at all in the early days, waiting for him to come to us – which he gladly did, following me like a shadow most of the time). That safe place earned Sean a nickname “Prince of Darkness”, because all one could see when he slept in that bathroom was the light reflected by his eyes and an occasional light tuft of fur on his chest, where he has a lightning-shaped patch of white.
There is a 3-3-3 rule of thumb in rescue, but it can take much more than 3 months for a dog to settle in. For Sean, it took about 10 months to fully decompress. How did I know it finally happened? Because he started wondering freely across the park following the scent trails, instead of keeping to the paths (first it was just one path that was considered safe, then it became possible to steer him to other paths but he still would not venture into an unchartered lawn territory). From that moment on, his progress in learning has increased rapidly. Yes, he has learned a lot of things in the first 10 months with us, but most of them were in relation to behaviours in the house. His house manners, by the way, have become excellent very quickly – he is perfectly toilet trained, has zero destructive behaviours, does not counter surf, never tried to get into the trash… the list goes on. But outside, in the presence of triggers, he was still hypervigilant and his progress in the right direction was painfully slow. He did well in carefully orchestrated BAT setups with the trainer, but I could not replicate this success in real life setting, with dogs appearing suddenly and moving too fast and unpredictable (or even worse – barking!).
Except just giving him time, two main things turned out to be key in reducing the general level of stress and getting Sean into the state of mind in which he was capable of learning how to make good choices. The fiirst was giving his nervous system a break from triggers. Jennifer immediately tried to implement a full decompression protocol with us, which normally included not exposing the reactive dog to triggers for a couple of weeks. We rebelled and reduced this to no walks during the day for about 7 days. That was hell. It was February, wet and cold, our garden turned into a mucky swamp and even Sean was not keen to spend time there. He wanted to go outside badly, but not into the garden. No amount of games inside could satisfy him, and I was supposed to work from home as well. That was the lesson that even well-intentioned, evidence-based protocols do not work for every dog. At the end we compromised on walking Sean very early in the morning (starting from 4:30am and gradually moving towards later time of 5:30-6:00am as his resilience increased), very late in the evening (around 10pm) and a having a short walk around noon in the places where few people lingered with their dogs (I would not venture into the park during daytime until the second year). The context is important here – we live in the place where lots of people start walking their dogs early (6-6:30am) and where attitude to leash laws is more then relaxed – meaning that there are always plenty of off-leash dogs in the parks and only some of them have decent recall. If this schedule sounds tough – that’s because it was, but we have done it (I got used to going back to sleep for an hour after the early walk). Now I can walk Sean at any time of the day – if my work allows, our morning walk starts at relaxed 9am. I also learned all back roads, quiet cul-de-sacs, grassy patches in industrial estates and other places where normal dog owners would not want to go with their dog. The standard advice of going into a wilder part of a park/beach has not really worked for us – yes, there are fewer dogs there, but those that are there, 100% would be running off leash, because their owners think that surely in this wild spot they would not meet anybody. And in Sean’s mental maths an off-leash dog was like +150 danger points. He would rather prefer to sniff every blade of dusty grass between two warehouses if he could do it without spaniels and labradors running up to say hi.
The second major thing was to address the physical discomfort. When we adopted Sean, the rescue said that he was healthy. I learned that, in rescue world, this pretty much means that a dog does not have any major life-threatening illnesses or medical conditions that require urgent interventions. Thankfully, Sean did not have any of those, but he was having constant stomach problems since the very first day. After many visits to the vet and endless tinkering with his diet, I finally came to the vet (about 6 months in) and asked for a radical solution. We got a prescription for hydrolised protein food and within 2 days the problem has disappeared. It was like magic – I could not believe my eyes. Turned out, Sean was allergic to chicken – yet any food for senior dogs and any food for sensitive stomachs is chicken based, so the more we tried to make him better, the worse he would get. Effectively, he was living all this time with a constant low-level stomach discomfort – no wonder he was unsettled and grumpy! As soon as we moved him to the prescription food, his mood and his ability to relax has improved substantially. Later on we consulted with wonderful Dr Claire Corridan from Great Expectations and on her advice did further medical tests which revealed some hip and knee problems. Once we added pain medication, we have seen further progress towards calmer and less reactive dog, both in the house and outside.