Charlie is one of our family dogs and he will always in my heart be a bit "special". Not because he is a favourite (all of my dogs are my favourites), but because he is a chihuahua......
I have never been a "chihuahua" kinda girl and this has been with good reason. I have seen so so many chihuahuas with behavioural problems over the years. From my Nan's little smooth coat called Beauty, who was more beastly than her name gives credit through to the little diabetic piranha-like Gizmo who I encountered during my university studies when I ran my own pet care business. Gizmo was a little gremlin and I had to don actual full arm length gauntlets to administer his diabetic injection. He would retreat to his crate and guard it with snarls, drool and barking. Sadly his owners had not had the knowledge to train him to tolerate the procedure of administering his insulin, but instead fostered trigger stacking, which lead to each and every experience becoming more and more intensely unpleasant to little Gizmo. From Gizmo's perspective the anxiety and the build up to the event of administering the injection had most certainly become more aversive than the injection itself. I digress........
Back to Charlie. I was introduced to Charlie on a visit to The Dogs Trust with my daughter. We hadn't even intended on looking at the dogs, it was a trip to collect a form for the Shropshire Dogs Festival, but my daughter being my daughter we asked about if there had been any interesting dogs dropped in. We were introduced to Charlie. Of course Emma's heart melted when she saw this tiny 1 year old vulnerable fur ball, it is after all the charm of chihuahuas. We tried to play with Charlie outside in a little wendy house area, we tried to fuss him, but he was entirely indifferent to our gentle encouragement. There wasn't any fearful behaviour, absolutely no aggression, he wasn't choosing to avoid us, he had acknowledge our presence, I wouldn't even go as far as to say that he was timid. He was simply indifferent to us, preferring to mosey about the area, sniffing, lying down, washing himself and at one point enjoying a spot of sunshine. My behavioural training kicked in as I tried to decode this little dog's behaviour, it was so mixed. He was completely at ease with us, not bothered, not interested. When the time came for us to go home I asked for a bit of background about this little dog who in my eyes was the polar opposite to any chihuahua I had had contact with. Gaining the trust of chihuahuas is a big thing, their flight or fight behaviour is usually primed and ready in most situations, but not Charlie. I purposely always change the order of this phrase, preferring to put flight as the first option, because most animals will always innately choose to run in a threatening situation as opposed to fight, as fighting is a risky reaction with an unknown outcome.
It transpired that Charlie had been surrendered from a home where the lady had hoarded chihuahuas. She had at least 40 other dogs and Charlie had been born into this home as a result of an accidental mating. I don't doubt that the lady in question loved dogs and there hadn't been any obvious intentional cruelty occur. However the dynamics of a large group of dogs in an average sized family home would not have been stable without the correct intervention. There would have been competition for space and resources, correcting of behaviours between dogs within the group, which would have resulted in the arousal of the rest of the dogs more regularly than you would categorise as normal behaviour. Corrective behaviour between one dog and another is normal, if only happening on occasion. Charlie's early puppy socialisation would have taught him how to live amongst a large group of dogs and avoid conflict. The types of behaviour this environment would propagate would include what we as humans might interpret as "indifference". The ability to distance himself from the rest of the group without causing offence would have helped him avoid conflict. In addition to this, we would expect to see lots of appeasement behaviour such as licking, rolling over, crouching and slow movement. Suddenly Charlie started to make sense.
So why not raise all dogs this way? The answer is simple. Excessive amounts of any behaviour is not normal behaviour. Dogs should be able to enact their full catalogue of behaviours in the correct context. This is not a normal, gentle stress free environment in which to raise a dog. In simple terms animals by welfare law should be able to express normal behaviour, have access to food and drink, live free from fear. This environment whether with the best of intentions or not contravenes welfare law. Since moving in with us Charlie does exhibit a small catalogue of abnormal repetitive behaviours. One of which is eye ball licking......this is not something that I encounter very often, but is something as a family that we have to be on top of because of the risk of him causing an infection in our labradors eyes.
Eye ball licking can often start as a completely normal grooming behaviour. Mutual grooming results in happy, positive hormones being released that can instantly calm a dogs emotions. When these behaviours become repetitive and obsessive it is often as a result of stress and the dogs attempt to "feel better" in a situation in which it does not know how to behave. In looking at Charlies puppyhood licking would've been a useful appeasement behaviour to show good will and would most certainly have been something that he would have done to build relationships within the group and to maintain relationships during peaceful moments. The eye balls may well be being targeted simply because he likes the taste, or theres moisture where water resources are low, this then translated via the feel good hormones as a behaviour that he knows helps him to "feel good" and ultimately when stressors are repeatedly presented over and over we have the premise for an obsessive repetitive behaviour.
Charlie is a work in progress. Undoing behaviour that has been learned as "normal" during a turbulent puppyhood is a tricky business and it is more about learning about what triggers these behaviours now in the moment where we will find success in adjusting and reducing them. He is a clever boy! He loves a bit of target training, loves a cuddle and a warm spot.
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