Just found out that one of my student's dogs mauled another trainer and was pts.
This dog was kicked out of one of my obedience classes after attacking another dog almost 10 months ago now. The handler and I agreed that private sessions would be best until the handler had better control and understanding of her dog and the dog's threshold had increased. She attending one private session where I explained in depth the idea of thresholds, why alpha rolling her large dog was not the best idea, and we worked on LAT. The dog was brilliant. He caught onto everything very quickly, had obvious triggers/tells and I had high hopes that he would respond well. Obviously the handler was not on the same page as my solution to her aggressive dog as she made excuse after excuse on why she couldn't attend future private sessions. All updates and feedback I got from her were positive and she felt like she was making great progress through the homework I gave her.
Fast forward to a couple days ago. My boss tells me that this same dog had gone elsewhere for training. At some point (the details are fuzzy), either the handler or the trainer reached to grab the dog by the collar and the dog lunged at the trainer. Luckily, she managed to hold the dog back and was wearing protective hidden sleeves, but the damage to her forearms was still intense. She told the owner to euth.
Part of me is frustrated that this handler didn't stick with what was working. The other part of me is grateful it wasn't me, but I have to wonder what provoked the dog to react that way? All of my interactions were careful and under threshold with great observance of the dog's body language. This dog was an open book, very predictable in my eyes. This other trainer has been training for over 20 years and is respected, how did she miss this? Did the dog really change THAT much in 10 months? Did he really go that far downhill? What was the handler doing in the mean time to make him not so predictable, was she continuing to alpha roll him over everything?
I'll never know the answers to these questions, but it's really bothering me. I agree that this dog was not the best fit for this home, the owner was hyper sensitive and was not great about concealing her nervousness and stress. She also had planned on having her daughter handle the dog in 4H, which I squashed hopes of during our first meeting. All I can hope is that the owner learned some valuable lessons from this experience about how to handle dogs in the future. Maybe one day I'll get to talk to her.