Imagine your dog becomes epileptic. Your vet says that you have to record each seizure, how long it lasts and some general details. How long will you do this? If you are Sandy Duxberry, you’ll do it 24/7 for two years until Gypsy is seizing constantly. Your life is a shambles from lack of sleep, the pain of watching your dog go through writhing, mindless seizures and spending 80% of your waking time taking care of your dog. That is one end of the spectrum.
Now consider having a dog that has a cousin disease to epilepsy – obsessive compulsive behavior. Your dog licks the floor and paces 30-40 minutes of each hour. Then the behavior starts attaching itself to triggers – the sound of the garbage disposal which morphs into the sound of water running in the sink. How long do you deal with that? Your dog is living its all-too-short existence doing mindless repetitive patterns. How does a loving owner respond?
The ethical decision in both cases boils down to what you as an owner are willing to live with and how you are going to end your dog’s plight. Many people would eventually get to the point where they painfully and reluctantly kill the dog. Some will spend thousands of wasted dollars to save their dog’s wasted life. Why wasted? Because the drugs don’t stop the behavior. In the case of seizure disorders there can be a balance between drugs and mental freedom that gives the dog a meaningful life. In the case of obsessive behavior, there can be a complete freedom from the obsession – but not with drugs. It also comes with a serious price tag. To ride that train takes courage to stand up to the opinions of others.
The Price of Mental Health: Telling the world to screw off.
In the world of modern dog behavior your tools are limited. They are only those things that are politically correct – some permutation of positive reinforcement or deprivation. The problem is that neither positive reinforcement nor withholding positive reinforcement can end obsessive behavior. To attempt it would be just as intolerable as Gypsy’s epilepsy and Sandy’s obsession with caring for her. Even then, at best you have “management on steroids.” You must abandon your life to your commitment to constantly watch your dog and intervene with some happy event. Not many people are going to do that. The dirty little secret of modern dog training and behavior is that it’s invariably a non-solution or so incomplete as to be useless at stopping problem in a practical manner. That is because positive methods cannot stop anything. Giving gifts to and throwing a party for passengers on a runaway train isn’t going to stop them from going over the cliff. The train’s brakes are designed to stop the train. If they fail, gravity and the cliff will certainly end the head-long rush. So it is with problem behaviors. Fix it with controlled force or go over the cliff. Dogs with continued behavior problems rarely survive.
Now you have ventured onto a different train with a different cliff. This train is filled with only you and your dog. Experts on train locomotion line the tracks. They know how to make a train go faster, but have no knowledge of how to stop one. They shout to you to stoke the engine so you can go faster. They do not mention the cliff at the end of the tracks because once acknowledged, they are no longer experts and you wouldn’t take their advice. The cliff is your dog’s life being snuffed out or so compromised as to be a living nightmare. Despite this very real danger, you may not suggest applying the brakes. They will shout you down and label you ignorant. They are the experts, after all. They will produce scientific studies that prove that brakes can catch fire from friction and you could burn to death. I guess that would logically be before you go over the cliff. Also, stopping too quickly might cause some damage to the train’s ability to go fast. Don’t say there is a cliff. There is no cliff, there is no cliff, there is no cliff. This is the mantra. Speak against it at your peril. However, you are already in a greater peril. You have a simple choice. Hit the brakes and live or suffer the nasty attacks of the experts urging your forward. Needless to say, the experts aren’t on the train. They suffer no ills if they are wrong. You pay the price one way or the other. The question is which price you will pay. Do you suffer the words of non-experts or protect and help your dog? Nobody can answer that but you.
These are two videos from one of my clients. I didn’t ask for the over-the-top endorsement, I just wanted before and after video. There is also a caveat. Steve overstates my position. I do not oppose the use of drugs in treatment of neurological disorders. That would be stupid and I’m not stupid. I oppose the knee-jerk use of drugs that have never been proven effective but are used before a more straight forward training process is attempted. The expense of a drug treatment (blood tests, office visits and more) is going to cost the client more than a complete training program that could completely control the behavior, as in this example. The dog has had the problem for awhile so there is no emergency need to try the drugs first. I know how to control obsessive behavior – as all working dog trainers do. Veterinary behaviorists do not. They are psycho-pharmacologists. Dog trainers have been controlling obsessive behavior for 15,000 years. English Pointers. Blue Heelers. Norwegian Elkhounds. The list of bred-to-be-obsessive dog breeds is long. The same tools that control obsessive behaviors in those breeds can work on any individual dog diagnosed with OCD. Wouldn’t it make sense to try those method first?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BevB7CadN7M&feature=youtu.be