For the last week or so I have physically hurt or intimidated my one-year-old pug on a number of occasions. They were all for his own good. He broke off one of his nails as a puppy that started growing back. It was getting swollen and looking bad. The vet gave me a gel to put on and told me to check it regularly. The pug does not like having his feet looked at and the gel hurt him. I had to pin him to the ground to put it on. And it did not work. So he had the nail removed. I had to change his post-opt bandage by pinning him the ground and re-wrapping it, which hurt him. I also had to pin him the ground and basically shove my finger down his throat to get him to take his pain meds. (He always found and spit it out if I put it in meat.)
Now why doesn’t he act afraid of me? I have been repeatedly hurting him for the past week. Can a dog tell you are trying your best to lessen the pain? Does a calm voice let the dog know it is not intentional? Or is it just that I have been nice long enough that he will never associate me with being mean?
You have to understand wolf society. If you’re not the top dog you will get beaten up and attacked fairly regularly. The thing is that it’s not arbitrary and its not constant. You get attacked because you are doing the wrong thing, or because you aren’t showing proper submissiveness. Then it stops and you’re back in the good books.
You’re the top dog, your dog knows this. You pinning him down is no different to what he expects the top dog to do. Provided that you let him know it was coming he won’t have a problem with it. You wanted him to do something, he didn’t do it, so you pinned him to the and hurt him a little. That’s normal for a dog. At worst he will be a little confused about what exactly he did wrong. But especially at his age, basically late adolescence, his brain expects him to get roughed up to keep him in his place After its over everyone apologises and it’s back to business as usual.
Dogs suffer from abuse when it’s arbitrary and constant. If you beat a dog just because you’re in a bad mood, when you don’t allow it any way to escape from the abuse and most importantly when you don’t allow it to get back into your good graces. Lock your dog outside constantly, neglect it, beat it for no reason, then it becomes a psychological mess. That causes damage because the dog thinks it’s doing something wrong and can never figure out what and it can never figure out when the danger comes. So it either becomes perpetually submissive or perpetually aggressive to try to ward off further attacks.
In your case you called the dog. You tried to get it to do something, it didn’t do it, so you rolled it and hurt it, then you both apologised. That’s perfectly normal from a doggy point of view. It won’t worry the dog at all. At worst, if you did it constantly, the dog would become very submissive every time you grabbed it. Now if you randomly kicked as you walked past, that’s another story.
I think that dogs pick up on audible clues and can read emotions in addition to physical pain.
Since we’re on the subject of pugs, I’ll use mine as an example. There’s been plenty of times where one of the lil buggers get underfoot and get stepped on. They yelp, we say “OMG we’re sorry! We didn’t see you!” and everything is just fine.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Mr. Athena, at times, can get VERY emotional while watching sports. There’s been more than once that something bad happens to his team, and he yells and screams in anger at the TV. That’s guaranteed to get both pugs running in terror as fast as they can from the living room. I’m usually upstairs and get both of 'em on my lap wondering what in hell they’ve done so wrong that the big hairy human yelled so loudly at them.
I think they sense that in the first example, they got hurt, but it wasn’t on purpose, they didn’t do anything bad. The second situation, not so much. They weren’t hurt or even touched, yet they know that Mr. Athena is PISSED OFF and they got scared.
So there you have it; watch more football games in which your team loses badly, and see if you dogs start acting abused.
There is a secret to getting your dog to swallow a pill that you should try; much nicer than shoving a finger down the throat of a squirming dog.
We use peanut butter, not meat, and our dogs loooooooove peanut butter, but that’s not the secret.
Using your fingers (this is a bit messy), smear the pill thoroughly with pb; basically try to encase it.
Now let the dog lick some peanut butter (NOT the part with the pill) off your fingers to “prime the pump” and get him excited.
Then give him the peanut butter lump with the pill in it – but that’s not the secret.
IMMEDIATELY while he’s just starting to taste that, produce ANOTHER fingertip-lump of peanut butter and offer it to him. Make it clear more pb is coming , and fast.
Our dogs greedily and indiscriminately swallow the lump with the pill in it to clear the deck for the additional incoming peanut butter. It’s the follow-on treat coming fast that does the trick; they don’t take time to fiddle with and carefully taste the initial lump with the pill.
Appeal to their instinct to “wolf down” food before another dog can take it from them.
Once we started using this trick, I don’t think ours have ever been aware they were being medicated; they just think that peanut butter orgies occur occasionally at our house.
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That’s funny. When I yell at sports - or actually even the other night I was yelling at someone on the phone - my dog gets excited and starts barking. It is one of the few times she’ll bark. She doesn’t know why I’m upset, but she knows she’s got my back!
I agree with this, you can yell and be mean to a dog and he sulks off and then five seconds later (in a sweet voice) say “Come here puppy” and the dog run over and has his tail wagging and loves you again.
Also remember animals, as a whole, don’t hold grudges. When a lion eats a zebra the zebras don’t hold it against the lions. Momma Zebra gets mad, but then after a bit she’s like “OK, well lions gotta eat too, and she just has another kid.”
When a male chimp takes over a group of chimps from another male he’ll try to kill the babies of the chimp he took over from. If the male chimp does succeed in killing the baby, the Momma Chimp doesn’t say “You bastard, I won’t let you mate with me.” No she let’s the new dominant male mate with her.
Now this doesn’t mean animals always forgive, abuse a pet one time he’ll forgive you but eventually he’ll hate you.
In the OP post, she may be mean to the dog (for his own good), but I’d bet in between times she loves him and kisses him and makes him feel a memeber of the family and very welcome.
If the OP was mean to the dog 24/7 he would grow to hate you.
On the other hand I had a cat, that hated my brother. I don’t know what he did to her, neither did he, but he lived away from home and he’d come home like twice a year (he traveled for his job) and stay for a week or two, and during that time the cat ran and hid under the bed. She never came out. The dog loved to see him, but the cat? No way, I am sure my brother is not the type to abuse any animal. This cat just didn’t like him.
Thank you! I’ll try this with the worming pills in a couple of weeks. They seem to be the only ones my two dogs don’t just wolf down on their own. I have used slices of cheese wrapped around them but have variable results. Usually I end up poking the pills to the back of their mouths and holding their mouth shut until I get them to swallow.
I don’t have a dog to try this trick on. I just wanted to say that I’m going to start trying to work the expression “peanut butter orgies” into my day-to-day conversation!
I don’t know if this works with dogs, but what I do with the cats when it’s pill time is grind it up in a mortar and pestle, then mix it in with wet cat food (which they think is a treat). They scarf (wolf? :dubious: ) it all down and are none the wiser.
Years ago, before I met Mr. S.,* there was a stray black cat that used to hang around here (way out in the sticks). He offered it food, and it ate sometimes, but mostly it fended for itself. But it liked coming around for some reason, and I think he could even occasionally pet it.
One day it showed up all torn up from a fight. Mr. S managed to corral it and clean the wounds with some hydrogen peroxide, which you know had to sting. But the cat just calmly let him do his thing. It’s almost as if he knew that Mr. S was good people from its previous experience, and came to him for help.
The cat was still here when I met him, but this incident happened long before that. I got a very cool picture of the cat one time that we have in a collage frame with other assorted past pets.
So I agree with what Markxxx, Blake, and others said about how you don’t otherwise act like an abuser, and your dog knows it.
