So, Im going to sort of fast forward a bit.....We are aware of Mollys "issues" and over the years we kind of went back and forth on trying different ways to deal with her behaviors. It got to be exhausting at times and I had ( and probably still have) MANY doubts on if we can ever fix her, but then I said, is there a such thing as being fixed? I mean, in reality....we ALL have issues in some way, right? So, maybe we can just modify them? As for the title of the post.....As Molly aged she did mellow out. By the time she was 5, she seemed to be pretty content with life. Yes, we still have to stay on top of her and we cannot slip up, or she will know somehow that we let our guard down. For her, this was progress. We learned that either we just work with her in a positive way. The other 2 dogs seemed to adjust to her well and her and Rufus continued to have their bond, in fact we started to notice Rufus was getting some of her behaviors as well which was BAD. He learned to dig in the trash cause he saw Molly doing it one day and wanted some of the goods. She never once growled at the other dogs if they came near her when she was doing something bad but if I were to come even 10 feet away, I could hear her entire body rumbling. She was fierce and she wanted that stinky trash all to herself....no sharing for the humans. She would begin gulping everything down quickly and at the same time staring me down as though it was a showdown, she showed her UGLY side and I knew she meant business as though saying to me "Come Closer Human and I can show you how much we are like wolves. However, I was getting smarter as well and decided that it was not that important that she was out there spilling nasty trash all over the yard at least that what i wanted her to think............so I ignored her and came inside and waited a minute, then went out there with something from the fridge. I called Rufus and Amber over for some and she lifted her head just a little to see what I had, went back to eating the trash, and noticed we were all enjoying ourselves as well and she decided that what I had was MUCH better so I lured them all back in the house and closed the door! Easy enough.....I am not about to challenge a 100 lb dog with a full set of teeth over a measly bag of stinky trash. It was easy enough to offer the trade. Once she walks away, that incident is then in the past and we all know that dogs live IN the moment. We as humans however, dwell on the past and I was doing exactly that when I had to clean up all the trash and then realize that I should have not had the bag of trash in her direct view anyway....
So, my lesson here was that because of my laziness, I let the dog think she won by stealing the trash, but in the end I WIN cause I was able to successfully ( and without getting bit) get her to walk away from the trash.
How would you have handled this situation? We dont always think before we do things, its one of our biggest problems. I hear horror stories of bite cases where the owner aggressively goes out and would start yelling at the dog and trying to take back the item..........resulting in a bite, which then the owner blames it all on the dog being vicious but in all honestly....Wouldn't the owner be acting the same exact way so 2 wrongs never make a right, RIGHT?
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