 Barked: Wed Oct 31, '12 4:33pm PST |
 | |  | | Guess I just need to rant and also to get suggestions. So for those who don't know, Bella is my ESA, and is almost never apart from me. She has grounding commands for my panic attacks, and also helps me from having them because I know If I start panicking I can focus on petting her to clam me down. So it's quite important that I have her with me all the time. Panic attacks aren't fun, not to mention they are extremely embarrassing, when you start hyperventilating and such.
Anyway, we recently moved into a house with a few other relatives. Problem is, one of them has a dog. In the first place I never planned on introducing them until Bella's reactivity gets better. Her problem is that when she sees another dog, see gets so extremely excited that she shows none of the normal "Hi, who are you, want to play maybe?" body language, she just literally runs full speed up to them and jumps all over them trying to play. Therefore she doesn't get along with dogs about twice her size or smaller because she just overpowers them, and this girls dog is a Chihuahua. Plus the way she just goes at meeting other dogs make me think that some dogs could interpret her violate type of approach as an attack and bite her. So I concluded that I shouldn't introduce them until I work with Bella more on her issues.
So I meet the dog, and ask the owner a few questions Me: "Does she have her CGC or anything along those lines?" Her: "What's a CGC?" Me: "Is she up to date on her vaccinations?" Her: "Well she has had them but I think the tag thingy might be out of date" Me: "Does she do well with other animals?" Her: "Well she lovesss cats once when I introduced her to our cat though, she froze and then bite his nose, she also lovesss dogs but my moms one dog she tries to kill" 
So after that I was 110% sure that even if Bella's issues were worked on that they wouldn't be introduced, and I told her that. Now here's where the story starts:
So when I came down the stairs the one day, she had the dog in the kitchen gated in. I sort of freaked out, knowing Bella would start going crazy as she does with all dogs, even if they are miles away from her, however this dog was only a few inches. However she just looked at the dog a bit, it barked, and she went to sleep. Now this was EXTREMELY weird for her. She's the type to pull on her leash until she's choking herself, and screaming to get to the other dog, laying calm was just not her at all. I sorta took that as a "If she isn't all over this dog wanting to play than what's wrong with it" Though I was most likely overlooking it.
So after that, we had a real incident. Apparently they had their dog off leash running around the living room. I came in with Bella, and of course the dog was at my feet like a flash. Bella saw the dog and didn't do anything at all. The dog was frozen, and at that moment I knew something was wrong, Bella was in my arms thank goodness and I lifted her up higher, and waited because I knew the dog would attack. It turned it's eyes toward Bella's neck and lunged up. I was prepared and pushed it back with my knee (Not at all enough to harm it just to get it away from Bella) The dog started snapping and barking toward Bella's neck, until someone got the dog away.
Any opinions on what I should do about this? They keep letting their dog out without a leash where Bella could get out, and it seems as if they don't understand. |  |  | |  |
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I think there was something I was going to add...but it's slipped my mind....
