Congenital Behavioral Conditions and Doc
Warning: I usually edit my work several times. This has not been edited at all.
As many of you have heard, I had to put Doc down last Monday, May 22nd, 2023. If you’ve heard that, you probably also heard why. The rest of you will have to wait.
Congenital: Adj: of or relating to a condition present at birth, whether inherited or caused by the environment, especially the uterine environment.
Roughly 7% of dogs have a physical congenital problem: a heart murmur, hip displaisia young, allergies, a kinked tail, etc. There isn’t a statistic for dogs born with congenital mental or behavioral problems, but given I’ve trained dogs for almost 30 years, and I specialized that entire time in dogs with major behavioral problems, I probably saw more than most.
To know if a dog has a congenital behavioral problems (ie, rooted in its biology, like my ADHD, depression, or anxiety is rooted in my brain chemistry and function), the problem is:
- Protracted
- Does not improve or only improves a small amount over time with consistent work
- Appears before 8 months of age
That “8 months” thing is the biggest indicator. To say a dog has a congenital behavioral problems — has a defect in its brain or brain chemistry — based on the first two things is very dicey.
The number of dogs I’ve seen that had a congenital issue, rather than a learned and highly ingrained behavioral issue, was maybe .5% of all dogs I saw.
Most of the time, when we spot a congenital behavioral issue, it’s because the issue is aggression. “My six month old puppy attacks us when we come near her food” is a red flag for a congenital issue. “My one-year-old puppy attacks us when we come near her food” is a learned behavioral problem, and therefore can be unlearned.
Less often, we see anxiety and phobic disorders. These frequently aren’t caught until later because nearly all puppies start out with separation anxiety (of course they do; they were yanked away from their families once already, and it really isn’t natural for one puppy to be left alone: that way lies getting eaten), so you really have to have a solid foundation on their language to realize if it’s congenital.
If your young dog or puppy starts razoring you open with it’s teeth in a terrifying and consistent way, you’re probably going to get help. If your young dog or puppy starts leaping on people every time they see one, you’re probably going to assume… it’s a young dog or puppy.
Consequently, not much is known about handling dogs with other forms of congenital mental or behavioral problems.
Enter Doc. It took me close to two years to identify that he wasn’t still jumping on people in friendliness, or hurting himself badly and continuing to play, because he had learned over-excitement which had shifted to hyper-arousal (what I term “mania”): it was because he couldn’t regulate his own emotional state.
Happiness became mania within the time it took him to lift his front feet off the ground, at which point his brain was so flooded with endorphins he couldn’t actually hear, see, or feel much.
Frustration became aggression in an eye blink. (Because of his pit bull blood lines, he was never aggressive toward humans, thank god. That had been genetically bred out of him; he was congenitally safe around people.)
Stress because of another animal became unbearable and therefore elicited aggression.
Wariness about another animal, say an animal stranger, one giving a signal he didn’t expect, or one that had startled him before, became major stress and elicited fear aggression.
If he was injured but still playing, he couldn’t feel it. If he was injured without the adrenaline rush, he was in agony.
I was very lucky that he was, overall, a happy guy. His biggest problem was mania.
I also busted my ass to hone my already-pretty-darn-good dog language skills so I could predict him in what the few signs he gave before things would go sideways. I busted both our asses in training so that when I saw one of those signs and knew I had, say, less than ten seconds to act, he’d listen to whatever I said and we’d avoid or mitigate the problem.
Training shortcuts you can use on most dogs didn’t work on him, because his brain didn’t work that way.
It’s almost impossible to know what is wrong in a dog’s brain. Sure, we now have fMRIs and CAT scans to say, “Ha! We don’t think this is normal brain activity!” but for the average vet that’s inaccessible, and trying to get your dog into a study where they’re doing that… well, I never had any luck.
Reasons for brain dysfunction can be seizures, seizures in the temporal lobe, mucked up brain chemistry, lesions in the brain, areas of the brain that aren’t doing their job. The possibilities are as wide as when we look at all the problems humans have. The difference is that they can’t tell us what’s triggering them, how they feel, or what helps. We guess.
When I finally realized what the heck was going on with Doc, I knew he wouldn’t have a full lifespan. I knew that, for instance, because a sore muscle from playing too hard could turn into agony, which would then turn into aggressive defensiveness, that I might have to put him down for, say, arthritis that we couldn’t 100% control.
Doc was 8. About 6 months ago he started becoming harder to manage. He put my niece in danger. He attacked the bunny and then, for the next 6 months, acted as if the bunny had attacked him and became dangerously defensive of his space. He got “cranky;” he was stiff in his hips, which meant he was lashing out at other animals and dogs. (And when I say “lashing out,” I don’t mean giving them a snap. He was launching into fights. Usually mostly noise, but not always. Even when it was, it put the other people and animals around them in jeopardy.)
And then it suddenly got much worse.
Because of how quickly he degenerated, how unprovoked his behavior became even to me, and a few other things between her and I, my vet thinks that things in his brain could have degenerated. He was very possibly having tiny seizures, and we know from different medications and under-anasthetic procedures that if his mind feels a little off to him, things can get very, very bad. He could have had a brain tumor. It could be that the dozen little neurons he’d started with weren’t replicating correctly, and when the last one died his mind failed. It could just be that he was hurting.
We don’t know with congenital behavioral issues, and that’s the rub. I will never know. I do know that my initial response, to parse out triggers and buckle down on training and positive reinforcement and conditioning around them, was defeated when he attacked his doggie BFF with a frightening amount of violence and determination, without any sign or provocation whatsoever. I could go through every aspect of this horrible decision and defend and explain the choices, but if I start, I’ll never stop.
I gave Doc seven more years of life, and right now, that’s what I need to hold onto.
So. what did I want to say in writing this post? I didn’t actually want to talk about Doc, and why this was the time, although I ended up doing so. I’m not sure what I wanted.
Maybe just to give a nod to other owners out there, who have had to make this sort of call. This was far, far harder than any other animal I’ve had to euthanize. They were old, or hurt, or ill. He was mentally ill, unpredictable, and dangerous a small percentage of the time, but growing more frequently. He was full of life and vitality and happiness.
So… to my family in this kind of hurt, I hear you. I get it. And you’re right; it’s a pain not like anything else. If you opened yourself up to this much pain and guilt (deserved or not), then you probably tried everything within your power to try, and it was time. You did the right thing.
If you’re inclined, with an utter lack of knowledge about what someone has gone through already, to condemn those who couldn’t save their dogs, I hope you’ll stop and consider: we’ve already put ourselves through hell. We’ve sobbed our hearts out and second-guessed and tried everything. You can hurt us further, but you’ve had painful experiences, too. They might not be the same, but the hurt is. We are — I am — already devastated. Please don’t hurt us more.
Maybe that’s what I wanted to say with this post. There are more reasons than congenital behavioral disorders to have to put a young dog down. I see your pain.
If you have a dog with a congenital behavioral disorder, I pray you never have to get to this point. But if you do, you’re not alone.
If you never have experienced this, I’m so glad. I hope you can find compassion.
Jenna
