Attack in the Exam Room

I almost got myself attacked in the behavior exam room today. Luckily, it was an 'almost'. Stupidly, it was definitely my fault.

It was our last appointment of the day, and we were seeing a dog with a history of aggression. It seemed like a pretty typical aggression case, as far as they go. After seeing a few weeks of cases, I had been lulled into a false sense of security that our exam room provides. The dogs are out of their element, not on their home turf, and the dogs with aggressive pasts tend to keep to themselves, or eye us warily from across the room. I've been in the habit of mirroring Dr. Dodman's behavior, more or less ignoring the dogs, not talking to them or looking them in the eye, and usually not petting them in any manner (unless its a friendly dog with no aggression in its history). This keeps the dogs more or less at ease, and keeps us humans safe.

We started off the appointment learning that this particular dog became aggressive in certain threatening situations, such as a person approaching the dog's food, making direct eye contact for too long, and petting over the top of the head. These behaviors were mostly directed to strangers, though the dog would occasionally lift a lip to its owners. The dog was also aggressive to other dogs when on leash, and was fond of humping other dogs at the park.

The appointment went on as usual. We came to the discussion of using the Gentle Leader to control the dog when he saw another dog on walks, and we fitted one of ours on him to make sure it had been fitted and was being used properly. Dr. Dodman tasked me with making sure the dog, who I will call Ringo, didn't keep trying to rub the head halter off his face while he showed the owners a short video of the Gentle Leader in action. He handed me the leash, and whenever Ringo tried to rub the halter off I would tell him 'stop it' and apply gentle tension to the lead. When he stopped, I release tension from the lead and tell him 'good boy'. All fine. Ringo had showed no signs of aggression thus far.

We determine that we should check Ringo's thyroid hormone levels to see if that could be contributing to his aggression. My fellow intern crosses the room to go see if the technicians are free, and Ringo follows her across the room and begins to growl. She stands still, looks away from him, and his owners are able to interrupt his mood. We place a muzzle on him, for the safety of the technicians, and I take him across the hall to get his blood drawn. We decide on a jugular blood draw, and the technician and I have Ringo sit, and while I hold his head up, petting him and talking to him nicely, the tech does a perfect stick. I notice Ringo's pupils are almost fully dilated, which I attribute to the stress of the blood draw. He was a perfect patient, so whining, no growling, no struggling. I take his muzzle off and bring him back to the exam room, still wearing his Gentle Leader.

Ringo is very happy to greet his owners after this unpleasant event, and starts rubbing his face on the floor in attempt to remove the head halter. Since I had been tasked with this earlier, I called him over to me and picked up the leash, ready apply tension when needed. I tell him to 'sit', and he sits perfectly next to me. Thinking about how good he was for the blood draw, and remembering the Gentle Leader video (and Dr. Dodman) stating how firm petting over the head and neck can calm the dog down, I start petting his head. I look down at him and marvel that his pupils are still so big, attributing that to the stress of the blood draw, and then immediately notice his lip is curled menacingly. His pupils are so dilated because he hates what I am doing, and is about to tell me so with his teeth. In that "Oh S@#!" moment, I remember what I had forgotten from earlier. This dog does not like being pet on the head by strangers, and will attempt to bite.

I don't remember exactly what the dog or I did next, but in my next conscious memory I'm holding the leash vertically above the dog, holding his head straight in the air. I eventually manage to stand up out of my chair, and begin to move toward his owner to hand off the leash. He isn't giving up. There is growling and head shaking, and my heart is pounding. I give his leash to his female owner, and he's still not done proving to me that I had offended him greatly. He's still growling, and I'm pretty sure I let out an embarrassing little shriek when he lunges at me on my way back to my chair. I sit back down, and he settles down at his owner's feet, and I notice his pupils have returned to their normal size. Yikes.

How does the peanut gallery react to this little incident? Ringo's owner looks at me and says 'I'm so sorry!', to which I respond, 'No, it's ok, that was my fault'. Dodman asks what happened. My fellow intern says 'petting over the top of the head'. I nod in horror at my obvious mistake. Dodman looks at me and says 'I'm sorry that happened to you, but now we have seen for ourselves that you guys have a problem that definitely needs to be managed'. This wasn't just one snarl and warning snap, this was a prolonged attempt to attack a human that had committed a grievous infarction against a confused dog. I sit back in my chair and try to play it cool, but my heart is still racing and I notice as I play with my nails my hands are shaking slightly. I hope my face isn't bright red, as it has a tendency to be when I'm feeling stressed. Phew.

The rest of the consult goes uneventfully, and I walk the clients back out to the waiting room, pretending like I hadn't just encouraged their dog to attack me. I walk back into the exam room, and Dodman is standing there chatting with my two fellow students, and tells me 'We were just talking about your close encounter. Of the third kind'.
'It was totally my fault' I say and try to explain it away, feeling slightly dumb and embarrassed. Dr. Dodman doesn't imply that I did anything wrong, and just comments that I should have stood up immediately to take control of the dog. I explained to him that my mind had gone blank and it was a reflex to do what I did. He says that was the right thing to do, just stand up next time. If my brain had been communicating with my legs, I would have done just that. I'm mentally kicking myself. A lot of things had led up to this incident. I was the bad guy that pulled on his leash, I was the bad guy that took him to a scary room to get stabbed by a needle by a stranger. I had a bunch of strikes against me to begin with. Whoops.

The only thing that got hurt in this encounter was my pride. I kept telling myself that I knew better (which I did) and I shouldn't have caused that reaction from this dog. I'm always my own harshest critic, and obviously pride myself on my knowledge of animal behavior. I felt like I had let myself down. Clearly, I made a simple mistake, and after a day full of appointments and boat loads of information, a critical piece of information had slipped my brain. But nobody got hurt, nobody got mad, and I most certainly won't make that mistake again. I know that dogs don't like being pet over the head by people they are unfamiliar with, I consciously avoid doing it, and will never do it again (especially in the behavior consulting room). I've never been holding the leash of a dog that has tried to go after me, and have learned how to react in this situation.

All in all, that ended up being our most exciting moment of the day, and like I said before, the only thing that got injured was my pride. Now I just need to swallow this pride and add this to the filing folder of important life lessons.

I owe you one, Ringo.