[marya]

Dear Writers, especially Luvmyrottn boy and poohbearsmom. Your comments do help a lot. I can't talk with my husband about Roxie and this as he has moved on. I was the main trainer of Roxie, and sought all the help through obedience training, trainers and all the books I read (some were very good). She was such a reactive dog all along and so sensitive to any kind of stimulation that every day was a challange. I still can't believe that I could not fix the problem. I see from others comments that they too faced the same problems. I think fear aggression is a tough one to overcome. I could see in her body language that she was relaxed with what I was doing and then it would change and she would stiffen and "get that look". I would back off then and give her her space.

I don't think my husband read her right the day she bit him. He also was sitting on her dog bed, which our trainer said was her space and to leave her alone there. Its no excuse, for her biting, but it shows just how if we could not manage her no one else could have. I think that is were I gave up going on with other management ideas or new conditioning to try to extinguish the escalating reactive behavior. I feared that there was always going to be a time when I wasn't there (which was the case here) to watch her reactions and hopefully diffuse them.
We had also reached the point where walking her around other dogs had become such a chore as she would react with unpredictability towards some dogs. I did notice that she never bothered a really large dog so she was sizing up situations. She tried to jump on a real friendly golden retriever whose owner came too close as I was saying don't come, and that time I had all I could do to reverse direction and calm her down. Its alsmost as though in some way she enjoyed doing it. She had not yet bitten another dog but that was because we had kept enough distance, but pulling away a 73 pound reacting dog is very hard and scary to the other dog owner. We couldn't take the chance, and her reactive behavior was escalating. Thanks all of you for reading and replying to my sad messages. I am still so sick over this.
Less than two weeks have gone by. This is so hard to get over!! I loved this dog more than I realized, and I still feel like I failed her.