YoungDog raises her paw to join in.
Hi, my name is YoungDog and I'm a fucking nightmare.
She reacts to everything. In the house, we've had a visitor this week and if she hears him go to the bathroom in the night, she'll bark 3 o clock this fucking morning. Keys coming towards the front door, someone walking past our back gate.
Out on walks, she's terrible. She'll appear all nicey nicey and wait for a dog to approach her, she'll be wagging her tail, and then When they're in snapping distance, she'll snap at them. If she can't get at he other dog, she'll snap at OldGirl NOBODY hurts my little old woof, I'm very protective of my one eyed freak which is obviously not on at all.
The trainer we got in told me that my tactic of treats in the pocket to distract may not actually be doing much good as its treating symptom not cause. However it makes walkies much better for all 3 of us plus the other community dogs and ownership quiet walking route has been closed off for roadworks, and the other direction has no grass (she won't pee in our garden, and if we set off that way she'll pee in areas she can't pee in before we get to the proper bit).
Everything about her stresses me out. We still did the right thing though. She'd have been put down within a few hours of DH hadnt rescued her from the municipality when he did. She also almost died from erlichia and babesia. We've got her in good shape now.
She's also ridiculously well behaved in front of professionals. She'll sit nicely in the vets waiting room, not reacting to anyone, she behaves well for the vet too. When we got the trainer round, he spent 90 mins walking with us, coming across multiple cats and 9 or 10 other dogs, and nothing. She was so well behaved. In the end we found one owner we know and asked him to explain what she was normally like, after he'd joked about maybe we've brought a different dog out that day. So the trainer hasn't seen the worst in her.
We need to find time to go out separately with the dogs. They get plenty of walks (3-4 hours a day) but always with one human. I think it would be best to walk them separately to my awesome OldGirl gets her walkies too (and she loves walking with one of us without the mentalcase), and so that one can dedicate themselves to sorting out YoungGirl. It just never happens. There's 3 of us who walk them, but we cross over a lot with our times that we can walk them. Once visitor goes and the house is back to normal, this is my first plan. I think we need to set it so that DH does an hour an evening just with YoungGirl whilst I take OldGirl out, get her behaving for him, and then introduce her to walking with me and OldGirl, then me alone, and eventually our housemaid who walks then in the day. It's just impossible when there's two fairly big dogs, one person, and one of the dogs is a nightmare dog.
We WILL get her behaved though. We will. We'll get her life nice and unstressful as she's a lovely dog and she deserves a happy life.