My First Dog's Last Day - Part 1: Not a Normal Day

When I started formally studying dog training, I read in the curriculum materials that the most common reason for dogs to end up in shelters (where their ultimate fate might be euthanasia) is behavioral problems that could have been prevented or addressed by training.  So from the very beginning, one of my interests was to help save dogs' lives.  Volunteering at the shelter, I heard stories of dog bites and comments from the Animal Welfare Manager and other experienced, dog-savvy staff about how the bites could have been prevented if the families had been better educated about triggers and dog body language.  Recounting her witnessing of someone who should have known better hugging and kissing a known fearful dog, one colleague relayed that she wanted to ask, "Are you trying to kill that dog?"  Her meaning was that the person's actions might cause the dog to bite, which could then mean the dog might be euthanized.  It wasn't long before I came across the concept that while obedience training could help prevent behavioral problems, the most effective way to prevent dog bites is to change people's behavior around dogs, particularly children's behavior.

One day, someone was telling a story of a family dog that had bitten a child, and I suddenly made the connection that the exact same thing had happened in my family.  It's not that I had forgotten or blocked it; it was just so long ago that I hadn't connected it to my current interests.  Once the light bulb went on, I started wondering if that bite, 40 years ago, could have been prevented by better training the dog or by different family behavior. Although there is no way to know, and we also will never know if another bite would have happened even if that one didn't, I have some ideas.  My memory of what happened in our house didn't initially seem as straightforward or obvious as someone taking a bone away, playing too roughly or missing body language cues that we know more about now.  However, the same general concepts of managing the environment, teaching children and training the dog come into play.

Not a Normal Day

My first dog was named Casey.  His last day, when he was only about 3 years old, started like any other day.  This story takes place over 40 years ago, so some of the details might be a little fuzzy.  To the best of our recollections, it went like this:

I took the early bus to school every day;
no time to walk the dog.

I got up in the morning and got ready for school.  I was in 11^th grade, and my bus came before 7 am.  It was dark outside at that time of day for much of the school year, so I don’t remember it being part of the routine for me to walk Casey before school.  If he got up, he went outside and did his business in the yard.  I really don’t remember how much interaction I would have had with him before school; I don't even remember where in the house he normally slept for the night. My younger brother and sister were in middle school and grade school, respectively, and my sister’s bus was the last to come.

Eleventh grade started early in the morning and ended in the early afternoon.  My best friend and I sometimes stayed for after-school activities, and our mothers took turns picking us up.  On Casey’s last day it was my mother’s turn, but she wasn’t there at the usual time.  We didn’t have cell phones in the 1970s, so we walked down the street to a pay phone.  It would be odd for my mother to be late or to have forgotten, and she sounded stressed when she picked up the phone.  I think she said something about just getting home after having spent the whole day at the hospital with my sister (who is getting the fake name of “Grace” for this story.)

My high school in 1976.
 The person taking this picture would have been standing on the city corner
near the pay phone we used to call home for rides, day or night.

Hearing that the day had been spent at the hospital, I assumed Grace was sick.  She came with my mother to get my friend and me, and we were horrified to see bandages all over one side of her face.  The bandages covered stitches that circled from her jawline to within an eighth of an inch of her eye.  That is when I learned the shocking fact that my dog had bitten my little sister.

Back to the Beginning

No dog while we rented upstairs
 and had no yard of our own.

Casey was our first family dog. Until I was 13, we lived in a rented upstairs flat in a city in northern New Jersey.  I was the oldest, and it was a family goal to buy a house and move out of the city before I went to high school.  I remember always wanting a dog, and our parents promised that when we got a house we would get a dog.  Meanwhile, we spent plenty of time with dogs at our grandparents’ and neighbors’ houses.  There was a dog that lived downstairs from us that we knew to avoid when he was tethered because he could be mean, and there was a dog next door that I used to walk after school and who I enjoyed practicing “tricks” with – simple tricks like “sit,” “beg” and “give me a paw.”

We got the house and moved during the summer when I was between 8^th and 9^th grades.  Right away, I went for a week-long visit to my grade school best friend’s house. Her family had moved out of the city a year before we did, and their house was about an hour away from our new home.   One evening, a neighborhood group had a “Chinese Auction” – where you buy raffle tickets and walk around putting tickets in cups for things you’d like to win.  On one of the tables, there was a basket of puppies. 

Guess where all my tickets went! My friend’s mother said it had better be OK with my parents, and I assured her that my whole life I had been told I could have a dog when we got a house and now we had the house – so of course it was OK; why wouldn’t it be?  There were about 5 puppies, I think, and a ticket was pulled for each.  My number was called!  I got one!  It surely was one of the most exciting days of my young life!

I called home as soon as we got back to my friend’s house after the auction.  My parents were surprised; I’m not sure how pleased they were, but I had my dog!  First, I named him “Alfie” (after the song, “What’s It All About, Alfie?”), but then I decided I liked “Casey” better (after “Casey-at-the-Bat”).  When I took Casey home, there was a cake in his honor!  It had been baked and frosted before I changed his name, so there was a smear of color in the frosting where “Welcome Home, Alfie” had been changed to “Welcome Home, Casey.”

As far as I know and remember, Casey was a typical puppy.  He made us laugh by doing things like chasing his tail and pushing his food bowl all over the floor. 

I don’t remember many “accidents” in the house, so he must not have been too difficult to train.  We rough-housed with him the way kids do (or did in the 1970s, anyway) and I taught him all the tricks I knew how to teach –  again, “sit,” “give me a paw,” and “beg.”  He would chase a ball but wouldn’t bring it back.

I think he may have growled once when a neighborhood kid came too close while he had a bone, and Grace remembers him growling one time when she walked by while he was eating.  I don’t remember the dog being punished for either of those instances; we were simply reminded that we should keep ourselves and other kids away from the dog when he was eating or when he had a bone.

I don’t remember Casey even being punished the time he quietly stole almost a whole cooked roast beef off the counter.  I just remember that he ate enough of it before we caught him that his belly got really big and I was told to walk him however long it took for him to relieve himself.

In short, we were a normal 1970s family with a normal 1970s dog, and normal 1970s rules about leaving the dog alone when he had a bone or was eating.  No one thought of Casey as a mean dog that might hurt one of us with a serious bite.

Next  - Part 2, The Bite and the Consequences