Thanks. He’s the most obedient, well trained dog I’ve ever had, short of his psychiatric issues. Not many dogs are as obedient and well trained. It would be tragic to have to euthanize him when I know there are people who are competent, experienced and capable of working with him. For most of his commands, I don’t even have to say the command, I just have to give him a look in context and he understands.
I’ve been lurking through this entire thread because I have nothing constructive to add, but just a thought, have you had bloodtests run on your dog to see if there is a chemical imbalence that could be corrected? Specifically, I’m thinking of low thyroid.
Although your dog is fairly young, we have a 2 year old setter rescue with borderline low thyroid that we will have to watch, and two of our rescues needed thyroid supplements when we adopted them at ages 4 and 5.
I’m also wondering if it could be a food allergy, or a reaction to some type of toxin in the environment that you are not even aware of.
I wish you the best during this trying time.
IMHO, it does not sound like you are the leader in the eyes of your dog - have you ever considered the difficulty lies more with you than your dog ?
Sounds like a classic case of you are the friend of the dog. He very intelligently does what you tell him for numerous things. But when it comes to defending you, i.e., any other living thing, he right away “takes over” and “assumes command”. He takes the iniative to go into attack mode, and at that point he ignores your verbal commands. Commands of the “alpha” are never ignored. The dog will obey off leash with verbal commands only if in the dog’s eyes the commands are from the leader.
If you were the leader in the eyes of the dog, i.e., alpha, or pack leader, YOU would be calmly and assertively calling all the shots when it comes to meeting other people or animals. A simple, verbal “hey, knock it off, this person’s ok”, would put him into “normal” mode, looking to you for instructions and getting familiar (smelling) his new friend.
Dogs (any animal for that matter) sense stress and uncertainty as well as fear. When friends or strangers come around, you tense up because you know what he is about to do. He senses your stress level and translates that into “Houston, we have a problem”. He instinctively does his “job”, defence. At the pool (in an old post), he took it upon himself to decide that you were in danger and that he needed to save you from your foolishness of being in the pool. You were definitely not the leader in that case, and, to top it all off, you let him pull you out of the pool. This reinforced the fact in his mind that he thinks he is the leader of you; he owns the house, you just pay the mortgage.
Any time a dog has to be physically restrained or electro-shocked into obedience, then that restraint is all that stands between the guest and the dog. Of course, this is a dangerous situation for everyone. For example, if you had a medical emergency yourself, were barely conscious on the floor, and called 911 then passed out, even if you had a shock collar on the dog, when EMS arrived they probably would not be able to help you without incapacitating the dog.
Since you’ve abdicated your authority in the area of self defence, and you let him take over, he now intelligently assumes the role of defender.
IMHO, a person who has good success as a master of similar dogs could rehabilitate him as long as he has not gotten too far into any attack situations. He needs a leader as much as he needs love (most people are too lovey-dovey with pets).
IMHO.