Blitzen is our newest family member. He is an 8 month old Vizsla and is also the half brother of our Zooka.

Sometimes you plan to add a new dog to the family, do your research, take your time and bring home that new dog when you are ready. And sometimes, you have a new family member that you didn't quite plan on.

Blitzen was intended to be a temporary visitor with us. But sometimes the temporary visitor turns into a permanent one!

I first met Blitzen in early November 2020. He was six months old at that time. His family was having some trouble and had contacted their breeder (also Zooka's breeder) for some help. She recommended they contact me since we are both in Colorado and the breeder is several states away.

Zooka and Blitzen have the same mother. Zooka was born in May 2019. Blitzen was born in May 2020. Same mom. Different dads.

Blitzen and his family came out to see me and we discussed all the issues they were having. Their presenting problem was resource guarding. He would get something he was not supposed to have and would not easily give it up. He might growl, snarl or snap. Or bite. He had not had any serious bites, but he had made contact with human skin.

He would guard objects he was not supposed to have. He would also guard high value bones/chews. So they had stopped giving him chews to prevent him from guarding those particular high value items.

In our initial consult, I also determined that he had some handling issues. What they initially thought was also resource guarding was actually a completely different issue. When he did not want to be handled a certain way (nails trimmed, picked up, etc.) he would also growl, freeze, snarl, lip curl, snap or bite. If he didn't want you to handle him in a certain way, he let you know it.

But it was not just husbandry issues like grooming and nail trimming. You could be petting him and he seemed ok but then would suddenly turn and snap or bite.

I got them started on breaking things down and working on these issues. They were working hard on things and making steady progress on the resource guarding.

We did another session a few weeks later and the sessions went very well. He did great with what we worked on.

He still had lots of work to do on his resource guarding but was making progress and I was confident they could resolve those issues.

The handling stuff was not going so well. Then he stopped doing the stairs at home so they could not get him up to bed at night. They would try to carry him up the stairs but he would not let them pick him up.

It was possible he had slipped on the stairs and was scared. It was also possible there was something else going on.

Then they had visitors over one evening. He approached happily and was getting petted. Then suddenly turned and bit the hand that was petting him. They gave him some time to calm down and tried again an hour later. Same result.

They were understandably upset. He seemed very unpredictable. Happy and engaging one moment and biting someone the next.

With young kids in the house, we had to be extra careful.

They were afraid to interact with him because they never knew when he would be the happy loving pup they knew or the suddenly ready-to-bite pup.

I suggested our next step was getting a thorough vet check and possibly meeting with a board certified veterinary behaviorist. I suspected there might be some pain issues going on.

We agreed that he would come and stay with me for a couple of days so I could assess him. And we also agreed he really needed to get assessed by a vet for possible pain or physical issues.

He came to stay with me right after Christmas 2020. And I was able to get him an appointment with a great vet near me who specializes in pain issues.

When he came to stay with me, I could see – as they had described – that he was definitely more likely to have issues in the evenings. Things you could do to him early in the day with no problem could potentially get a bite from him in the evening.

That indicated a possible pain issue. If you're not feeling well, you usually feel worse at the end of the day. What might be tolerable in the morning becomes less tolerable as the day goes on.

I also noticed that he never seemed to sit or down straight. Legs tended to splay out to the side. Or he would lie on one hip, rarely if ever in the sphinx / straight down. I was also noticing that he seemed to have trouble with his rear movement. While we were not doing any big jumping or climbing, I noticed even small steps seemed awkward and especially on one side.

That could be partly due to poor hind end awareness, but it seemed as if there was something going on in his back/hips/rear legs area.

The assessment from the vet confirmed it. He was definitely having some pain issues in his back end. And while he most likely had some learned behavior that biting makes everyone stop what they are doing, he also was clearly having some of his issues because he was in pain. If you're not feeling good, you're not going to tolerate stuff as well. Whether it causes more pain or you anticipate it might cause more pain, you react. And you try to prevent further pain.

Turned out that he also still had worms. Though he had tested negative, it appears they either came back or never went away. So we got him on meds to get rid of the worms. The worms probably didn't help him feel any better either!

We decided that he would stay with us for a while longer so that we could get back in to the vet for further evaluation. The following week, he had x-rays and a more thorough physical exam with some sedation to prevent further pain and prevent him from being frightened at all that was happening since he was already very uncomfortable with lots of handling.

We also got him on some pain meds, anti-inflammatories and things that would hopefully get him feeling better as soon as possible.

Further evaluation showed that his x-rays looked good! But it appeared there was some type of muscle/tendon issues that needed time to repair. And he also had some kind of skin infection in his groin area that certainly did not make him feel any better.

Three weeks of meds and minimal activity. And slowly working on some PT exercises to get him back in shape and feeling better.

During this time, the owners had decided to relinquish ownership back to the breeder. There was a lot going on and we had to consider the safety of the young kids in the household.

We also were concerned about finding him a new home until we had more info on his issues. So finding a new home had been put on hold for a bit until we felt we had a good handle on what someone would be looking at for his future well-being.

Meanwhile, he was staying with us. I was working with him every day on training and helping him work on overcoming his resource guarding issues. And working slowly on accepting handling that did not cause pain or the anticipation of pain.

While we had planned to add another dog to our family in 2021, we had not planned to do it quite this soon. But Blitzen needed a new home. He needed someone who had the patience and understanding to work through all of the issues he was dealing with.

Zooka and Blitzen love playing together and both have plenty of energy.

So we decided that Blitzen would stay with us. He is a very loving and fine young man. He simply ended up with sort of a perfect storm of “stuff” that put him and his family in a difficult place. We don't know how long the pain issues were going on. And if you didn't know what to look for – and if you weren't looking for it – it was not easy to notice anything out of the ordinary. I certainly did not notice anything the first two times I met with him.

From an outside look, it seemed he had some behavior issues. And he does. But it would be very easy to not be able to recognize there might have been some pain issues contributing to and exacerbating some of the behavior issues going on.

His first family is a wonderful loving family. They love him very much. They worked very hard to help him. And if they did not have young kids in the household, I am confident they could have kept him and helped him work through all of these issues.

Any time there are young kids in a household you have to be extra careful with these types of issues. We don't want young kids being bitten. Often times, with young kids, the bite can easily happen to the face since their faces are much closer to the dog's face than adult faces are.

Though we have LESS chance for biting once we resolve pain issues, that does not change the fact that, for this particular dog, his way to deal with the pain was to bite. There are plenty of dogs who have pain issues and never bite anyone. So even when we resolve this pain issue, what happens when we have another one in the future?

With the blessings of his breeder and his original family, we will be providing a home for Blitzen for the rest of his life. We are thankful that he has had such loving people in his life from the start. We are thankful that we can continue to provide a loving home to him.

You will hear lots of stories about Blitzen as we move forward!

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