This weekend I did a presentation for the Foothills Humane Society. The topic I was given was “Canine Aggression, Fears and Phobias: Treatment and Prevention”. A slightly daunting task to talk about for only 1 ½ hours. To a captive audience I could talk forever about behaviour. To keep it interesting, I added as many pictures and videos as I could. What I hadn’t expected was the effect of talking about a certain case.

This summer I took in one of my behaviour patients. Coal was an American Cocker Spaniel who had impulse control aggression and fear aggression. I had worked with his dedicated owners for almost two years but when their son first began to crawl, it was evident he would bite their son, given the right situation.

After saying I would never do it again about 13 years ago, I took Coal into my home. We needed to see if he would respond to more training in a safe place. As I do not have 2 legged children and have been training for so long, I decided to take him in. One of my thoughts at the time was that if it worked better for Coal, I could keep him and they could visit whenever they wanted.

When he was in training mode, I could not ask for a more motivated dog. He loved to make me click him. The problems occurred at random times and twice I was bitten. It was crushing to know that we would not be able to get the control we needed. Liability wise, I could not keep him as I could not guarantee he wouldn’t be put in a situation where he felt he needed to bite. I couldn’t stop the tears the day we sent Coal to Rainbow Bridge.

Coming back to the presentation, there I stood in front of a room full of people. One of the pictures I had taken of him was up and the tears started. I wanted the group to know how hard we tried but there are some cases that no matter what we do, we will not be successful. In the future I will share more of Coal’s legacy.