Thoughts of a Canine Therapist – The Problem With Odin

Therapy 4 Dogs

May 28

We've been having major issues with our foster dog Odin since he's been with us.

1⃣ He seemed to have severe separation anxiety and screams and howls the place down all through the night. Sleep has been a sacred thing these last 4 weeks and I've spent half the time wondering how I'm going to make it through the day

2⃣ Boundaries with us. He can't just sit and cuddle he has to be in your face and jumping all over you. If he's settled and calm and you even reach to touch him he's like a tightly coiled spring that just bounces into action around you. This has made working with him with my usual therapy techniques a little bit challenging and frustrating and has also aggravated the other dogs because he'll trample them without a second thought.

3⃣ Boundaries again, but this time with the other dogs. He is constantly being told off by them for not respecting their personal space and being a bit of a sex pest they can't even rest and and relax because he's constantly sticking his nose in their groins and trying to hump them.

4⃣ He doesn't take no for an answer!! If we try to push him off of us he forces himself against us with all his strength and resists. If we take him away from the other dogs when he's being a nuisance he just goes straight back and carries on when we let him loose again. If the dogs tell him he screams like they're killing him and runs, but as soon as they stop and leave him he goes straight back and does it again.

5⃣ vets are a massive no!! We tried to take him into one a couple of weeks ago and he went absolutely crazy!! He bit his own tongue and went for me, other dogs, people…. Just anyone. As soon as we got him home again he was back to his normal, loving, overpowering self.

Now even with all of my experience and my knowledge, I don't mind admitting that I've been struggling.
I was getting so frustrated with him that I didn't even want to go near him. I couldn't bond with him and build a trusting relationship because I was constantly so wound up. This of course was triggering my other dogs and causing old behaviours to return in them.

You see this is what I mean when I say that I teach a way of life. Anything can come along and unsettle it and it's up to us to still manage triggers and support ourselves and our dogs when this happens

It all came to a head the other day when he'd been pestering the dogs all day and they'd been telling him off and then Dave suddenly went crazy and him and Odin had a bit of a row.
Odin ended up with a cut on his ear, Dave had one on his nose and I just sat on the floor in the kitchen sobbing and doubting that I could do any of this…..

how can I foster and support this dog?
how can I put my dogs through this?
how can I put me through this?
how can I help other people with their dogs if I can't even manage one in my own house?

Thankfully I know that dogs come to us to teach us something.

It could be something we need to learn to help them - I've only got where I am through finding ways to help my dogs. I even told one of my dog trainer clients the other day that if we had perfect dogs we wouldn't be professionals because we wouldn't learn and study so hard if we didn't have to find a way to help our own dogs.
It could be something about ourselves that needs to change to help us grow - was he escalating everything because I needed the push to stop fostering?
It could be something in our subconscious that is holding us back. Something we need to acknowledge and heal - maybe my fear of failure? Maybe countless other things that I bury deep and try not to face because I don't want to deal with them.

I decided that I needed to ask him, and so I did what I should have done weeks ago, I communicated with him properly. I sat away from him, connected through a photo and asked him what he wanted to share.

I was shocked!!! The feeling of frustration was so strong, it wasn't my frustration I'd been feeling at all….. it was his!!
He was confused, wound up, over aroused and just a complete bonkers mess. What was causing it????

HIS HORMONES

Being a Randy teenage dog in this house with all of these other dogs was driving him mad, even though they're all rescues and neutered.
He doesn't have separation anxiety, he is just so aroused all of the time that he can't bear to be away from them, it's like locking up…..well….. a dog on heat!!

Now I'm not going to let a debate on neutering start here, that's not what this is for but right now, rescue dog or not, this little guy needs to be neutered in order to help him. He needs all of those hormones to disappear so that he can live a life that isn't full of sexual tension and stress, a life where he can actually know what it means to rest and relax around other dogs.

The only problem is that he can't go to the vet so how do we help him while we work on that?

I've looked into homeopathy but was told by 3 different professionals that there's nothing guaranteed to work, we've looked at chemical castration but can't find a vet that will come out and do it.

But what I have done is used my healy. I ran a couple of scans and it told me which frequencies he needed. I then ran the programs that would send these frequencies to him and while they were running he started to frantically lick all around his testicles then he just laid down and rested

I've repeated this process every day alongside a couple of my other techniques and so far we've actually had 2 full nights of sleep.
He's still being a pest around the other dogs but I have to say I'm finding that a lot easier to manage now that I'm not running on empty