Why? - Animal V's Children Trauma

Interesting thread.

Interesting observations moo, because as I was reading your post it made me think of Kipper. On the outside he seems happy and gregarious, he is loud, and energetic so people - including our families - assume he is really happy and relaxed...but DH and I see all the tension and fragility, the hyper vigilance. Very subtle signs sometimes.

On the subject of dogs, my parents in law have a rescue dog - they adopted it at 9 months old, by which time it had already had 4 homes, and been abused. This dog is CLEARLY traumatised still, 6 years later. It's is the most anxious animal I have ever met. She goes ballistic when anyone leaves the house, she follows my FIL everywhere, even to the loo. She is muzzled when we take kipper over because she she has nipped every single one of us (not that my in-laws will admit that). My MIL used to have to carry a water pistol around with her when she was at home alone with the dog, because the dog was so frightened of women and kept trying to bite her.
To be honest, she's a very hard dog to like, but I can see underneath my dislike of her, that it is not her fault.

I have to say, it makes it all the more annoying that my in laws refuse to believe what we tell them about Kipper. Many's the time I've wondered why they understand it for their dog but not a small child!!

So......to go back to your question, maybe it's the age that the abuse happened. We've all rad how the earlier the neglect/abuse in a child the more detrimental it can be for brain development. Why not animals.....

Interestingly Holly van Gulden often talks about rescue dogs and traumatised kids, linking what you'd do with the dogs to how you might approach your kids.


Love,

Corkwing

Serrakunda, I know that in general dogs biting doesn't mean that they are affected by trauma, but in this case if you could see the dog you'd know exactly what I mean! She's got horrendous separation anxiety, she's hyper vigilant, she's on flight or fight all the time, she flinches if your hand moves near her head, she jumps at every sound.......

Im in agreement with you Sockthing, there is a crucial word missing in my post, I meant to say that the fact of rescue dogs not biting doesnt mean that they arent traumatised, absolutley convinced that animals do have trauma responses. Read a very interesing article this week about dolphins committing suicide. As dolphins breathing mechanism requires them to make a consious decision to surface to breathe, dolphins in captivity have been known to effectively commit suicide by choosing not to surface. The behaviour of a lot of captive animals indicated truama

Good point Choti.

I'm sure if adoptive parents had regular respite, they would be able to be more theraputic on their return as they'd get a break to re-charge their batteries.

Having though about it.in some cases maybe before the pups get taken away maybe the care from their mum and their owners have a positive effect on them so after then being removed from an abusive situation it is easier to retrain some of the dogs. Many of our kids never even got a good few weeks parenting.

I saw a profile of a dog waiting to be rehomed once, and it said the the dog had attachment issues. I did a double take!! Disclaimer - I know very little about dogs
I had a rescue cat years ago, she was already getting on for an old lady when I got her, but she had been sent to the cats home by the previous elderly owner and never abused as far as I knew, so I never saw unusual abuse/trauma based behaviours from her. I've seen other cats have them though.

Eventually if you go back far enough we were all the same ancestor species, and we have a lot in common with other animals, including things like PTSD/fight/flight responses etc. Having said that, we humans are programmed to understand and read other human beings, so we're always going to notice subtleties in language/behaviour/emotional state in other human beings that we wouldn't recognise in an animal of a different species. We might not notice subtle differneces in how dogs are relating to each other, if they're geting on okay with us. Also with our brains being so complex and being able to think as we do etc, we have more noticeable problems when things go wrong. If dogs had frontal lobes as big as ours, we'd see more effects of abuse. More can go wrong in a bigger brain when it's developping.

I know I'm being very simplistic, but that's my take on it!

We have had a lot of rescue animals of one sort or another over many years including dogs and so have many friends - for many there are still signs of the trauma they suffered and a certain wariness in certain situations but their resilience has been amazing too - I think as a result of building a trusting relationship and body language is a key part. The American pitbull rescue folk do an amazing job with some very poorly treated animals and manage to turn some very dangerous animals around though some animals cannot be rehabilitated unfortunately.

I do think there is a fundamental difference between the maltreatment of a securely attached animal and its subsequent resilience and perhaps some of our children that had completely dysfunctional attachments from day 1 and were highly likely to have been very stressed or subjected to substance misuse in utero - and even yet some can manage to overcome such huge challenges to achieve despite all they have endured. Secure attachments in the first place do help with subsequent resilience as evidenced by charities working with children in war zones etc. So much is also about being able to tap into the individual spirit too whether that be human or animal.

I would also agree with folk getting animals being traumatised much more easily than children - as I have written elsewhere recently my sil who is a teacher simply does not get the impact of trauma and abuse on the children she daily comes into contact with - let alone any challenges my children have faced - yet she has also taken on a very traumatised dog and is forever talking about the fear and aggression it exhibits and to her "peculiar" behavioural traits around food and hoarding of items etc yet is completely unable to translate that into the impact on a child!

HVG met my feral cat! when she came to do a consultation about shadette