Tag Archives: corgi

Corgis and children

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Some years ago, a Corgi rescue organization asked permission to reprint a post I wrote for a Yahoo forum on their website.

They folded my post into an article they published for people who wonder if Corgis are a good breed for families with children.

Every once in awhile I get emails from people who have read the article. Unfortunately, most of them come from people who have realized, too late, that they have a heart-breaking problem on their hands.

I got one of those this weekend. Woman’s Corgi bit her three-year-old daughter on the face. The plastic surgeon is hopeful that the scars won’t be too bad.

These emails share something else in common: between the lines, what people want is for me to show them how to make it better.

Unfortunately, there is no way to make it better.

Once a dog has snapped at someone, let alone bitten, your options are very limited. If you’ve purchased the dog from a “reputable breeder,” you can probably ship the dog back. You’ll be out whatever you paid for the dog, but at least the problem is no longer yours.

If you got the dog from a “backyard breeder” (someone you found in the classifieds, for example) or a pet shop, or a neighbor whose dog had puppies, things are much more grim.

You can try to find a behaviorist who can help you learn to modify the behavior. Unfortunately, that’s no panacea. If you happen to choose a lousy behaviorist, you may end up with a dog that is more aggressive and less predictable than before.

Behaviorists cost money.

Behaviorists also don’t actually “fix” a dog. They help you learn how to modify a dog’s behavior. You are going to have to do a lot of work. It’s going to take time, consistency, and focus.

And no matter how much work you do, you can’t erase the fact that your dog has bitten. You can’t ever leave your dog unsupervised around children, for example.

So you’ll end up sinking money and time into a situation that, at best, is somewhat manageable.

Oh, and by the way, you may be in for another expensive surprise when it’s time for you to renew your homeowner’s insurance policy.

Hopefully you’ve got the cash on hand to self-insure.

Your only other option, sadly, is to have the dog put to sleep. Rescue organizations won’t take dogs that have bitten (they are glutted with dogs that haven’t bitten — and taking a dog that has bitten opens them to liabilities, should the dog bite again).

Unfortunately, people really really don’t want to hear this. When I wrote to the woman who last emailed me, I got an angry email back, accusing me of being cruel.

Cruel?

Give me a break. Cruel would have been to tell her she’s an idiot for not getting her dog neutered, for failing to train the dog properly in the first place, for allowing a dog that had begun to snap anywhere near her children.

Cruel would be asking her what kind of a mother would keep a dog in her home after it had bitten her daughter’s face.

Cruel, yeah, I could have been cruel. But I wasn’t.

Here’s how she closed her email to me:

I would hate to hear your response to someone you knew and really cared for.

Now, that is cruel.

That’s my dog

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The one eating apples.

Pembroke welsh corgi eating apples

She doesn’t have a terrible solid “leave it” on cue. Yeah, I know, I have nobody to blame but myself. Sigh.

I took the pic yesterday. She’s spent today, of course, doing the too-much-roughage-tapdance at the back door.

I didn’t train THAT!

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It took my little Corgi only three or four car rides before she’d taught herself a trick, not that I realized it was a trick at first. I’d put her crate in the car and had led her out on her leash. I bent over to pick her up, and at the same time, she jumped up. I wasn’t ready. I got a mouthful of dog fur. Fortunately, I didn’t drop her.

On subsequent occasions I did better, and came to admire her little move. The “cue” is partially contextual (crate in the car) and partly my body language: my bending over is her signal to jump. She gives a little leap and I’ve got a Corgi in my arms.

Her best untaught “tricks,” of course, are those involving food. My parents free-feed their four cats from dishes on their kitchen floor. So naturally, my dog dashes for that part of the kitchen the second she enters my parents’ house. Sometimes one of us remembers to pick up the dishes before I let her loose. Sometimes we forget.

Fortunately my dog hasn’t learned to take the shortest route to the dishes. This is probably due to sheer excitement: she runs straight into the house, her momentum propelling her into the living room, then doubles back via the dining room into the kitchen.

I, meanwhile, have suddenly remembered the cat food, and take a shortcut to head Laykey off. So about 5 feet from her prize, she finds me blocking the way, and has to throw on all four brakes to prevent a collision. She doesn’t seem particularly bothered, however. There are usually a few crumbs of dry food on the floor, and plenty of flavor left in any empty cat dishes lying around.

The cat food on the cellar steps is a different matter. Laykey is a timid dog — “reactive” in the current parlance — and until recently never dared venture into any basement. We humans, diabolical creatures that we are, have turned this to our advantage: we move the full cat food dishes onto the cellar steps, beyond the dog’s reach, and partially close the door. Other than having to step over cats sometimes when we need to go down the stairs, this has worked out pretty well, from the humans’ perspective.

It’s a source of torment for my dog.

She stands at the top of the stairs, stretching her nose as far as she dares through the opening of the door. If there were a talk bubble over her head, it would read “If only I were a brave enough little doggy to go into the cellar!”

I suppose it was inevitable that, sooner or later, she’d work up the courage to try.

Cat food is, after all, delectable.

Only it worked out badly. The steps are narrow, and even under ideal circumstances Corgis aren’t shaped right for using stairs. Their bodies are long, their legs are short. They have to ascend and descend at a diagonal. Plus the cat dishes were in the way.

I was in the other room when I heard the crash. I sprang to the kitchen just in time to see my poor sausage-shaped little dog, rolling down the steps in a cascade of cat kibble and plastic dishes.

She wasn’t hurt. I carried her upstairs and put her in her crate, where she promptly threw up. Yes, she’d managed to gulp down two or three mouthfuls of cat food before the disaster.

Which means that, by some measures, the venture was a success. So now the unanswered question is: will she try this new trick again . . .