Our Life With TinkerBelle

by Pam Voit

TinkerBelle was my first American Hairless Terrier puppy and I was so excited when she arrived. We scooped her up from the airport, took her home and instantly fell in love. Everything seemed to be just fine...though I really wondered where her battery compartment was hidden........she had endless energy.......she never stopped.

Along with the abundance of energy she seemed to have a gift for stealing and shredding anything that was not nailed down. If it wasn't picked up off the floor or out of her reach....it was hers and her lot in life seemed to be to destroy anything she got her mouth on.  We took all of this in stride and thought...okay, this is just terrier.  Afterall...it was really a funny sight to see a pair of runaway underwear going down the hallway.

Sorry to say things didn't stop at shredding underwear, socks, blankets, shoes and whatever else was left on the floor. She then began doing something strange..atleast to us it seemed strange. She would walk around biting from side to side as if she was taking a chunk out of the air. Just snapping like "take that and that and that!" Weird behaviour but we would just take it as one of her silly little quirks. As she got a bit older...maybe four or five months old now...her mouthing got harder and correction wouldn't stop it. In fact it seemed to make it worse....she did not like correction and it was usually followed with an aggressive outburst. We still chose to accept this as normal terrier behaviour and lived with it.....dumb really dumb!

Through the endless energy and hard play we did see a beautiful young lady developing. Tinker was a very pretty dog and we knew we had a winner when it came to the show ring and a very nice breeding dog for the future. This made us very happy and probably helped a great deal with our making all the excuses for her bad behaviour....it really was just terrier behaviour, right?

Now being the first American Hairless Terrier in Virginia and me being the President of the AHTC I felt I needed to promote the breed as much as I could by taking Tinker to as many places as we take her.....though this was not always easy. Most of the time she behaved pretty well...fiesty and uppity....but she did seem to like meeting people. I could never be sure she wouldn't lunge out at someone to jump on them and start mouthing their hands though and that always worried me.  So whenever someone would approach us I would just choke up on the lead to let her know I was in control...yeh right!

The hardest was having people come over to see an AHT in person for the first time. To promote the breed I always wanted to make our home open to visitors. Tink was not always cooperative though....she would jump incessantly...I mean non stop...trying to get in their faces or nipping their hands. It was definitely not a good representation of the breed....but still this was just an energetic dog......a terrier.......nothing more....right?.....another excuse.

We went through several months of the nonstop action and materialistic shredding and her inability to submit to anyone.  But we still were not ready to accept there was a behavioral problem.  I am not sure when we finally decided we had had enough but I can tell you what we went through before we finally said......we gotta send her back!

I am not sure what happened first....it has been quite a while and I have pushed so much of it out of my memory. It was a painful time in more than one way and it has taken time for us to heal.

I believe it was simply a time I went to sit down on the couch and went to scoot her aside and she growled and snapped at me. Well this certainly did not set right and she was swiftly punished and removed from the room to her crate. She didn't really care though...she liked her crate and didn't mind being alone. She finally got so nasty about what she called her space and no one could touch her when she was laying around. If she happened to be in your spot...that was just tough and if you tried to remove her...you were going to hear and feel her wrath. It finally got to the point she would square off and growl at anyone simply entering the room without getting her permission........NASTY! But she was still our little girl. 

She was corrected every time things like this would happen but it did not seem to phase her in the least. In her eyes we humans were no threat to her and she had her plans to work her way from the bottom to the top.  She was working on my youngest boy first and laying down plans to work her way up.

Poor kid....he couldn't move or come into the room without her stiffening up to challenge him. She would square off, bare her teeth and growl when he came around.  She would begrudingly back down when I would correct her but the correction was still followed by a growl or snap.

My older son didn't have the problems with her like the rest of us because he was 15 and didn't spend as much time around her as the rest of us.  But he was still greeted with the bared teeth and growl if he entered the room. He usually just ignored it and walked away which Tink took as his backing down....exactly what she was looking for.

By this time we were very much leaning to sending the dog back...we knew she was a bit much to handle and I was beginning to see this was NOT a dog I would want to breed. I certainly didn't want others to possibly get a dog like Tinker...heavens no! We really needed to start thinking things out for her and us.

We could see her trying to pull herself up in the family ranks. She had put herself above my youngest by her intimidation and my other son was no threat to her because he wasn't around that much. Since he was no threat that ranked her above him so now there was the next rung to climb......now it was time to work on my husband.....

There had already been several times of her biting him when he would go to sit down and would have to scoot her over.  Somehow it seemed we had just gotten used to it all and we were accepting it as "oh well".  He would keep making excuses for her...."Oh..she was sleeping and I bothered her" or "She's just warning me so I don't sit on her".  He just wasn't ready to admit she had a problem and needed to go.  Even after she jumped up on him while he was laying down and urinated all over him (a sign of domination) and the time she jumped in his lap and placed her paws on his chest and stared him down to show her authority over him.  He just wouldn't allow himself to believe there was anything wrong with his "little girl".

So she had my three guys under her (mind you she had already gone through all the canine members of the family and had them in their places)...now I was the only one that stood between her and the top of the ladder. Sure she had been snapping and growling at me all along, but I wasn't giving in.  I was giving the corrections....to no avail....but atleast I was showing her she was not the boss here.  I tried to work with her...tried to get her to submit...but that was not going to happen.  She was going to be TOP DOG or die trying.

The final straw was when I was sitting watching television with my son one evening. I was sitting on the couch with Tinker beside me and he was sitting on the floor next to my legs. He turned to ask me a question and Tinker leaped up and bit him in the face. Thankfully she did not get close enough to break the skin......but he had huge red whelts running down his face for several days.  That was it......this dog was out of here.

My poor husband was so attached to this dog and not being home all day because of work he didn't see the horrible things Tinker was doing throughout the day.  He only heard me talk of them.  His experiences didn't seem to matter to him....he was man enough to take the growling and snarling and biting. Well maybe he was......but I wasn't and I wasn't about to have my son perhaps get his face ripped off with the next attack.  And what if someone was visiting our home and she pulled her nasty act? Are we liable?

There was one day that I remember my sister coming over for a visit. To be on the safe side I decided to put Tinker in a crate and it was a good thing I did.  When my sister walked by the crate I thought for sure Tinker was going to chew her way out and attack her big time. This was one vicious dog at this time and I hate to think if I hadn't locked her up. My sister even tried to talk calmly to her...sitting in front of the crate...but Tink would have none of it ...all she wanted to do was to get out and go for her throat.  It was horrible!

I do believe that was the point that I finally became afraid of her. myself.  Mostly afraid for my children and any visitors...but yes, I finally was afraid of what she could and would do to me. I had seen far too much of her aggressiveness now and I had been bitten far too many times to make anymore excuses. She was going back and I didn't care what hubby thought about his little baby girl getting booted out.

TINKER WAS OUT OF HERE....NOW!

Well I am happy to say we made the right choice and took her back and got two more AHTs when we were there. We now have five AHTs living here and have had three wonderful litters.....all with terrific temperaments. I have not personally come across another dominant/aggressive dog. It is my hope they are few and far between and that I never see another one.

TinkerBelle was enough to last me a lifetime and I hope by sharing my story others can see what it is like to have such a dog in their home.  I hope it makes people think twice before picking up just any puppy.  Ask questions and study the temperament of the puppy and the parents and don't put yourself in the position I was in........

What more can I say? Now you know dominant/aggressive dogs are out there....rare maybe...but still out there....and now you have the knowledge to ask questions and search for the right answers. 

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