Tobias: When Growing Up Changed Everything
Tobias struggled through his first year of life, but he did it with his head held high.
His sister Nibbler was always by his side, and his cousins Jasmine and Manney were never far away. After surviving those early months, Tobias finally seemed to enter what I thought would be the fun phase of his life.
Visits to friends. Long walks. Car rides. Dog parks. Family gatherings.
The world was his playground.
He had gone from being a tiny handful of a puppy to a lanky teenage dog who was always up to something. Tobias loved water. He loved socializing. He loved being around people. He was active, affectionate and, for the most part, a really great partner in crime.
There was one notable exception: housebreaking him.
That was a battle I am still not entirely sure how we survived.
But otherwise, Tobias was shaping up to be everything we'd hoped for.
We Thought We'd Hit the Jackpot
To be honest, we thought we had finally hit the jackpot during years two, three and four.
Everything seemed fine.
He ate great. He pooped great. He played. He went places with us. And he was friendly with everyone.
People would stop us when we were out because they wanted to meet him.
And Tobias absolutely loved it.
He was beautiful, too. His coat regularly caught people's attention. I actually had groomers pull their cars over while we were out because they wanted to come take a closer look at him and ask what my secret was for keeping his coat so nice.
Some even asked if they could “borrow” him for practice or advertising.
I always declined.
At the time, I was at the peak of my career and had endless possibilities in front of me. Tobias probably would have made an amazing model for their portfolios. He had the looks, the personality and, most importantly, the ability to make people stop and look.
But he wasn't a poster child.
He was ours.
And at that point, there wasn't anything about Tobias that made me think I needed to worry about his behavior.
Then we started approaching year five.
And something changed.
The First Crack
Looking back now, I know the change probably wasn't as sudden as it felt.
But there was one day when I remember thinking:
I don't know what's happening with my dog.
At the time, I was working in a pet store.
For Tobias, that should have been an incredible place to visit. There were constantly new people coming through the doors. Dogs and other animals were coming and going. There were new smells, new sounds and something happening in every direction.
And I brought Tobias in with me for a bath at the self-serve tub.
Bath time had always been pretty easy.
Except this time, Tobias couldn't handle the environment.
He barked.
And barked.
And barked.
The constant movement of people, dogs and activity seemed to completely overwhelm him. He wasn't interested in the customer I was talking to. He wasn't interested in me. He wasn't interested in the bath.
He was focused on everything happening around him.
At the time, I didn't have the language to describe what I was seeing.
Now, I wonder if the world had simply become too much for him.
Maybe he was frightened.
Maybe he was frustrated.
Maybe he was overstimulated.
Maybe he was reacting to things that I couldn't see or understand.
I don't know.
What I do know is that he seemed unable to cope with all of it.
The Walk Home
The walk home from that bath is the moment I remember most clearly.
Tobias was low to the ground, pulling against me with everything he had.
Then he spotted someone across the street.
His attention locked on.
He barked loudly. So loudly that when I stopped to talk to a regular customer, I could barely hear the person speaking to me.
Tobias couldn't look away.
He stared at the stranger across the street and lunged toward them, trying to gain leverage against me.
I tried to break his eye contact.
Sometimes, even then, if I could get Tobias to look at me, I could interrupt the barking and pulling. But that day, getting his attention was difficult.
He wasn't bouncy.
He wasn't happily trying to make a new friend.
He wasn't acting like the goofy dog who used to get excited whenever someone wanted to pet him.
He was intensely focused on the people around him.
And, if I'm being completely honest, he scared me a little.
Then I noticed the people.
They were crossing the street.
Not because they had somewhere else to be.
Because of my dog.
I could see the fear in their faces.
And that changed something in me.
It wasn't just that Tobias was difficult to walk anymore. I was suddenly aware of what he looked like to everyone else.
He was a large dog.
A very large dog.
And whatever he intended to communicate with all that barking and lunging, strangers didn't know that.
All they saw was a 70-pound dog pulling toward them and barking.
I stopped to talk to the customer, and I remember realizing that my dog was giving the impression that I owned a “bad dog.”
That realization took some of the joy out of taking him places.
I didn't know if his barking was coming from aggression, fear, frustration, overstimulation, or whether some part of him was desperately trying to interact with the world around him.
But it didn't really matter to the people on the other side of the street.
They were scared.
And I couldn't blame them.
When the World Got Smaller
That walk was the beginning of the end of our adventures outside the house.
At first, we didn't completely stop.
We adjusted.
We walked at different times.
The dog park visits went from afternoons to early mornings, when there were fewer people and fewer dogs around.
Eventually, even those stopped.
The walks became shorter.
Then they became less frequent.
And slowly, without ever making one conscious decision to do it, we started making Tobias's world smaller.
That's the part that bothers me the most when I look back.
We didn't wake up one morning and say, “Tobias can't go for walks anymore.”
We simply solved one problem at a time.
Too many people? We'll go earlier.
Too many dogs? We'll skip the dog park.
Too many strangers? We'll stay home.
He's difficult to control on a walk? We'll find other ways to exercise him.
And each solution worked.
Until one day I realized how much of Tobias's life we had reorganized around avoiding his triggers.
At the time, it didn't feel like neglect.
It felt like management.
And there is a difference.
But I also know now that management alone doesn't necessarily address the reason a behavior is happening in the first place.
The Strange Thing About Tobias
The confusing part was that Tobias wasn't like this everywhere.
At home, he was still Tobias.
Most strangers could come into our house without us having to immediately send him to his room. Once someone was inside, he was generally his normal happy-go-lucky self.
That made the whole thing even harder to understand.
This wasn't a dog who simply hated people.
This wasn't a dog who couldn't tolerate anyone outside of his immediate family.
It was primarily happening away from home.
And particularly when he was on a leash.
The difference between the dog I knew at home and the dog strangers saw on the sidewalk could be enormous.
At home, he could be goofy.
Affectionate.
Needy.
Ridiculous.
Outside, with a leash attached and the world moving around him, he could become completely consumed by what was happening around him.
I still wonder if that was the beginning of what I now think of as Tobias being overwhelmed by the world.
The Food Thief
There were other behaviors developing around the same time, but not everything was as serious as it might sound in hindsight.
Take food, for example.
Tobias was not food aggressive.
If anything, Nibbler was the queen of the house when it came to food.
And Tobias knew it.
He would happily take his treat, be extremely gentle with it, and then immediately run away to hide it somewhere Nibbler couldn't find it.
Because if he didn't hide it, Nibbler would steal it.
And she was faster than him.
She might have been about 20 pounds, but she ruled that house.
Tobias did have one major advantage, though.
Height.
Which meant that if nobody was paying attention, he had the ability to become a counter surfer.
There was one particularly memorable incident when his dad stepped into the bathroom for what was supposed to be a very quick moment.
He came back to find that Tobias had eaten an entire plate of raw hamburgers.
An entire plate.
Gone.
Tobias wasn't aggressive.
He was opportunistic.
And apparently very confident in his ability to commit a crime when nobody was looking.
Tobias Knew What Time It Was
For all the things that were becoming difficult, Tobias remained incredibly connected to his family.
He knew our routines.
He knew what time people should be coming home.
He knew when someone was late.
And he had different rules for different days.
If it was Friday or Sunday, he knew Dad would be parking on the street because we were usually going somewhere or doing something.
So Tobias waited at the front door.
The rest of the week, he knew to wait at the back door.
He even understood changes in our work schedules.
If someone was home in the morning before leaving for work, Tobias seemed to understand that meant they were working late.
He knew not to expect them at the usual 5:30 arrival.
Instead, he knew they wouldn't be home until around midnight.
And dinner?
Tobias knew exactly when dinner was.
Seven o'clock.
If seven o'clock arrived and nobody had filled his bowl, he had something to say about it.
It's 7:00.
Let's go.
The bowl isn't going to fill itself.
He knew our routines so well that sometimes it felt like he had his own calendar.
And maybe that is part of why I started wondering whether his relationship with his family had something to do with what was happening outside.
Was Tobias Protecting Us?
This is the question I still ask myself.
As Tobias became an adult, was he becoming overly protective of his people?
Was he reacting to strangers because he felt responsible for us?
Or was something else happening?
Fear?
Frustration?
Overstimulation?
An inability to cope with everything happening around him?
Maybe it was a combination.
Dogs can display aggressive or reactive behaviors for many different reasons, and a behavior that looks aggressive from the outside doesn't necessarily tell us what the dog is experiencing internally. Fear, anxiety, frustration, territorial behavior and learned associations can all play a role.
And there's another important piece I understand better now.
When a dog reacts to something and the thing they are reacting to goes away, the dog can learn that the behavior worked.
Tobias barked.
The stranger crossed the street.
From Tobias's perspective, whatever he was trying to accomplish may have just succeeded.
We can't know that this was exactly what was happening with him.
But it makes me wonder.
Maybe Tobias wasn't thinking, “I want to be a bad dog.”
Maybe he was thinking, “I don't know what to do with all of this.”
And maybe barking was the only answer he had.
Looking Back
This is where hindsight gets uncomfortable.
I can see now that there were behaviors we should have addressed much earlier.
Instead, we adjusted.
We changed our walking schedule.
We stopped going to the dog park.
We avoided situations.
We found ways to exercise him at home.
We worked around the problem instead of addressing the problem.
And honestly, I'm ashamed of that sometimes.
But I'm also trying to be fair to the people we were then.
We didn't know what we know now.
We weren't trying to make Tobias's world smaller.
We were trying to make life manageable.
So what do you do with a 70-pound dog you can't comfortably walk?
You improvise.
There was lots of backyard time.
Lots of throwing balls across the house.
Lots of tug-of-war.
And, surprisingly, lots of playing with Nibbler.
Yes, even though she was approximately 20 pounds and Tobias was around 70, they played intensely together.
And somehow, Nibbler usually won.
Which generally ended with Tobias crying in my lap.
Because apparently being a giant dog did not prevent him from being a giant baby.
And with two young kids in the house, there was certainly no shortage of energy to go around.
There were furry children.
There were human children.
And somehow, we kept everyone entertained.
But underneath all of that was a question I couldn't answer.
What happened to my happy, social dog?
Where did the dog go who wanted to meet everyone?
The dog who loved the dog park?
The dog who went everywhere with us?
The dog who seemed to believe every stranger was simply a friend he hadn't met yet?
I still don't know exactly when that dog disappeared.
Maybe he didn't disappear at all.
Maybe he was still there.
Maybe the world simply became harder for him to navigate.
And maybe we didn't recognize that soon enough.
That's the part of Tobias's story I wish I could go back and change.
Not because I think he was a bad dog.
He wasn't.
But because I wish I had understood sooner that sometimes a behavior that looks like aggression is a dog telling you that something is wrong.
And sometimes, when you love your dog, the hardest thing isn't admitting that there is a problem.
It's realizing that avoiding the problem isn't the same thing as helping him through it.
Tobias had spent the first few years of his life running toward the world.
Somewhere around adulthood, he started fighting against it.
And we were about to learn that there was a lot more going on underneath the surface than we realized.
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