Just wondering if anyone can give me some reassurance.
After rehoming 2 dogs who were amazing, both rescues, both staffies, we rehomed a 3rd rescue dog last August.
He has staffie, pug and jack russell in him.
He was never let out of his house, so never experienced people, other dogs, or traffic (we live in a town).
The first 3 months were traumatic to say the least! He would shriek when he saw other dogs, try to run into traffic going by and generally was unmanageable.
We got some help from a fab dog trainer, and soon he relaxed seeing other dogs, and now he's pretty good on a busy road except when it's raining (everything's louder).
Now we're at a point where we can let him off the lead. Usually he's lovely and happy with most dogs, but with some he will approach them with tail stalked up and be hostile to them. Others, he may start playing with but the level of aggression will ramp up as he plays.
It's never an actual fight but he is so difficult to read.
He also zones out... one moment you're having a lovely walk and the next he's face planted into a lake and is swim chasing birds. It doesn't matter what you do, he won't hear you calling him. (This happened this evening and I thought he was going to drown).
We can preempt situations (and we do!) but sometimes we can't.
I really don't want to have him permanently on the lead but we clearly can't control him in certain situations, and we cant seem to predict those situations.
His randomness in how he choses to greet other dogs causes me massive anxiety. I don't want him on the lead all the time to prevent his weirdness 20% of the time, but I can't handle the 20% situation where he reacts badly.
Help!
Is there anything I could be doing better? Like I said, he's my 3rd rescue staffie so I've been around the block, but he's really challenging me and I find myself struggling to love him when he's do hard to read :(