[marya]

Dear Lillbug,
Thank you for your interest and the thoughts. The more I compare Roxie with our new dog, the more I am convinced that something was very very wrong with her, and more than just behavioral. She was very antisocial the last year or so, and this started when she was around a year and half. During this period she preferred to be under the bed instead of being near to me or my husband. She only came out from under the bed for ball and frisbee in the backyard or to go potty. I still think that life was too stressful for her. It had to be something chemical because she was so socialized as a pup and different in her personality. However, she did have food bowl aggression and aggression while eating rawhide (we never gave her any after our bad experience).

I brought her with me for canine education in the schools through our local humane society, and she was not reactive then, although she always backed away somewhat. As I am recalling back, she was fine around the school children, although I noticed that she backed away from being petted. She did not really like body handling. I did massage her almost every day and she liked that until last year when she seemed to not like it that much as she started lifting her head up and looking at me.

She had to be sedated (put out) to have her nails cut. She did have one real bad experience when she was about 8 months old where a (bad) trainer cut her nails, and they all bled. The trainer picked her up by the collar and slammed her down, and I was absolutely shocked by the trainer's method. Roxie was the first dog getting her nails clipped, and the trainer was making an example out of her, almost like breaking a horse. However, the vet and I felt that this made Roxie really fear nail clipping even more. Hence when the vet tried to cut her nails, she was so extreme about not having her nails cut, she let her anal glands go. She did not try to bite any of the three (the vet, me and 2 techs) of us trying to get her in position for the vet to try, but you couldn't even cut a nail because she screamed before the clippers did anything.

We even pondered getting her a dog friend, but she was terrible with the new dog. We put them together on neutral territory, and it was sort of okay. As soon as Rita, the new dog, came in our house, Rita could not go anywhere without Roxie lunging and snapping at her. Finally, Roxie went under the bed, and Rita stayed by our side. However, we had brought this dog home to be company to Roxie, not to us, so we brought her back the next day to the humane society. Rita had a tremendous temperment and was adopted out almost immediately. My husband had said jokenly that we should have kept Rita and gave them Roxie back.

When I think about my 3 and one half years with Roxie I get so sad and well up with tears. We did the right thing to PTS but it was definitely the harder route to take -- it would have been so much easier to have brought her to the humane society, BUT, with what I knew about her in my heart of hearts, she would eventually react unpredictibly, and I could not live with that either. She was only a dog, but she was so much more to me -- my first dog, my first puppy, and the achievement I felt over her positive obedience -- coming when called, etc., but I just could not extinguish her need to bite
instead of choosing flight or not biting.

Thanks lilybug for your input and so sorry you had to go through it also. I am in this forum because I can't talk with my husband as his point of view is so different since he was the one on the receiving end due to his not leaving her alone when she had that look.