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Post by ham on Jun 9, 2014 5:21:19 GMT
Today I went with DD to our town fete. One of the displays was a dog display. All of the dogs were rescue dogs and had horrific histories, to which DD commented so did I and felt she had a lot in common with them.
What got me was that all these dogs appeared really happy and not a trace of their trauma. The main trainer said that in all his 60 years he has never been bitten.
Why do these dogs appear to be fine when we struggle with our children no matter what we do to try and help them? How can those dogs trust again when our children can't?
Just curious.
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Post by moo on Jun 9, 2014 5:31:21 GMT
Tuff & baffling isn't it ham.... I have wondered often as I am surrounded by animals on a big scale & variety, many of which have had a abuse led past......
What I have noticed is that they tend to rely a lot on body language & demeanour..... They can be calm , but suddenly change when the 'conditions' are no longer calm/predictable..... Iykwim.... It can be very alarming if they turn.... Stampede...literally?!? 
They appear to be unfazed but in fact if the conditions alter then so do they....
I guess to the untrained eye on the outside/surface our beloved children may appear happy if eating an ice cream??! ( or just not taking on anything they find challenging )
But very interesting point....
xx. moo. Xx
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Post by moo on Jun 9, 2014 5:44:10 GMT
As I was writing my reply I was remembering a great book I once read in the lead up to being matched..... ( bet esty has read this )
It is written by the god that is Monty Roberts ( # 1 horse whisperer consult of HRH & all around amazing person & life long foster carer of troubled teens ) & is called Horse Sense For People.... In it he talks of his work with equines the world over but it focuses on body language & "approaching" humans & attempting to repair hurt & trauma.... Jaw dropping book.... Coz it is him he is the master of body language, patience & reading cues....
Amazing book & a fab read.... You don't have to be a horse or Monty worshiper to gain valuable insight into troubled phsysi of humans.... Loved it xx
xxx. moo. Xx
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Post by sockthing on Jun 9, 2014 6:44:23 GMT
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.....
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Post by serrakunda on Jun 9, 2014 7:07:46 GMT
I'm not sure that being bitten equates to not being affected. No experience of rescue dogs but always had rescue cats and some of them were clearly traumatised. I'd say the cat we have now has food issues, I've never heard a cat cry for food like this one. Another cat we had was terrified of brushes, would turn into a cowering heap if she saw one, the previous owner apparently used to hit her with a brush. Maybe like a lot of the children they just learn to hide it.
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Post by corkwing on Jun 9, 2014 7:11:54 GMT
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
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2014 9:02:06 GMT
Interesting one Ham. I've recently taken on a cat (Honey) that had been pampered for 7 years by a loving family until they got a puppy and the poor cat was traumatized by the dog, hence me taking her as they were going to send her off to a re-homing centre.  Anyway as I had already posted elsewhere on the boards, she spent the first week cowering under my bed, refusing to come downstairs - had to feed and litter her upstairs and gradually she has come out of herself, but she has weeing accidents every time she is stressed. A neighbours Tom cat came in to our house and Honey wee'd in the hall and living room in response to this intrusion. Now whenever there are raised voices, (which unfortunately there sometimes is due to YDD's behaviour), she looks so alarmed and runs away and hides and yes sometimes wees where she shouldn't as a sign of distress. When things are calm she is the sweetest most loving affectionate cat and you'd think she'd lived with me all her life, but as soon as things as stressful, she wees in appropriately. So even animals can show their distress in certain ways.
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Post by sockthing on Jun 9, 2014 10:04:09 GMT
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.......
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Post by esty (archive) on Jun 9, 2014 11:57:41 GMT
A lot of my approach to my kids is reading their responses and often using horse tactics with them. With horses you can't tell them to do anything/teach them something new verbally you have to do it by showing or doing and that is what definitely works for mine. I have always physically read Big Fish who is non verbal.
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Post by serrakunda on Jun 9, 2014 12:13:32 GMT
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
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Post by chotimonkey on Jun 9, 2014 13:00:18 GMT
Also maybe the trainer is able to stay in calm therapeutic trainer mode because it his job, he gets to work with these animals knowing he goes home/ has holidays from the animals and if the job is too hard he can quit... So he regulated them, they don't have to face educational/ social challenges
It's been much easier for me to be calm and therapeutic with students and physiotherapy clients then with my own kids
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2014 13:04:12 GMT
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.
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Post by chotimonkey on Jun 9, 2014 13:08:28 GMT
*psychotherapy not physio
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Post by ham on Jun 9, 2014 13:19:02 GMT
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.
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Post by lilyofthevalley on Jun 9, 2014 14:53:55 GMT
Once I was in the car with my daughter in the front beside me and the dog in the doggy section at the back of the car. We were hit by a lorry that was driving fast nearly over into my side of the country road. I drove into the hedge to try to escape but we were still hit. The car was a write off but thankfully we were uninjured. The lorry had ploughed through the side of the car. The dog was completely traumatised afterwards and refused to travel again in the doggy part of the car. She kept a watch for lorries and I had to have her on the back seat of the car behind me. I am certain the dog was suffering from PTSD. My daughter was extremely angry. The lorry driver had the gall to complain to me about her use of language when he had nearly killed us all.
Lily
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Post by lilka on Jun 9, 2014 18:17:15 GMT
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!
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Post by peartree on Jun 9, 2014 18:42:38 GMT
Think this thread is interesting
The really deeply affected dogs, ones that constantly bite or can't stop barking, we know what happens to them. They have a long sleep
The dogs that can be successfully rehabilitated, go through specialist handlers often before re homing and even then their 'success' rates can be low when placing dogs with other children/ animals where there's not enough to do or they're unable to keep to the rules...
I do think HVG has a good point about scared dogs- certainly find people really understand dog trauma far more than children's
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Post by mayan on Jun 10, 2014 15:42:41 GMT
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!
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Post by shadow on Jun 10, 2014 18:49:11 GMT
definitely people expect children to get over trauma and accept animals cant - as a child we had a lovely but terribly traumatised rescue collie - he never was able to see my dad come in the house without flattening himself on the floor watching to see if my dad would kick him, of course my dad never did and sam then would welcome him- but he also made a very strong but insecure attachment to my mum - she couldn't even go to the toilet or bathroom without him - he always was so grateful and joyful when coming home from anywhere (different from our kids)
I have a truly feral cat - and she is hardwired not to be near me - always has to have an escape route - her brain is just unable to accept human contact - she is a lovely wee soul - loves being spoken to if she is outside and can run - will sniff a finger from a distance - she has lived with me for nearly 14 years and cant accept I wont kill her
it makes me upset when folk over the years have expected that shadette should "be over it" or say its "behavioural"
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Post by shadow on Jun 10, 2014 18:51:40 GMT
HVG met my feral cat! when she came to do a consultation about shadette
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Post by shadow on Jun 10, 2014 19:15:34 GMT
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Post by serrakunda on Jun 11, 2014 10:47:21 GMT
Interesting piece in the Observer magazine this week about military dogs deployed in war zones, handlers are trained on how to recognise symptoms of PTSD in their dogs
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