Rex: A Suitable Case for Therapy?

We’ve had Rex, a border collie, for nine months now. He is a rescue dog. At first he caused little trouble (apart from his bad habit of chasing cars); we think he was just glad to have a home where he got regular food and he wasn’t beaten. But over recent months his psychological disturbances have become more apparent. He has become very demanding of attention and deeply jealous of anything that he perceives as a rival.

His primary rival is my bicycle. He cannot bear to look at it or even hear it (the rear wheel clicks distinctively). When he sees me going out to the garage, where the bike is kept, he flies into a rage. He howls and barks madly and does his best to attack my car. I’ve now had to park the car where he can’t get at it, as he has scratched the front and wing in previous rages. He also perceives the mower and the wheelie bin as love rivals. So when we are mowing the lawn or taking the bin out, he again flies into rages and tries to attack my car.

We do our best to calm him by stroking and reassuring him, but his hatred of these rivals is so deeply felt that he will only be temporarily pacified. And when our attention wavers from him and towards the mowing or the bin or the bike, he again flies into a rage. I first became aware of this about a month ago when I was fixing up my bike for a wee ride. It was a good day and I had the bike out on the lawn to do some maintenance. I’d taken off my watch and put it on the garden table. When I wasn’t looking Rex came up, took my watch from the table and began to chew it. Luckily the watch is stainless steel and I noticed what he was doing before he could damage it too badly.

A couple of days later, the relief postman (who is scared of Rex) left some parcels on the garden table. When I came home I found all of the parcels shredded and the chewed contents strewn across the driveway. The butt of his rage this time was a book of poetry by David Harsent; Rex may not be much of a critic, but he knows what he doesn’t like. I chided him for attacking my watch and my parcels and since then his rages have been directed towards my car

T, who reads counselling books, thinks that he has moved up Maslow’s hierarchy. Now that his needs for food and shelter are being regularly met, he has moved on to his needs for attention. Here there is a huge deficit from his first year of life with the abusive old farmer. We do our best to stroke and reassure him each day, but you could pet him for 24 hours every day and it still wouldn’t be enough.

It’s significant that he has selected my car as the primary target for his rage. Does he really want to attack me for not paying him sufficient attention? But I imagine that I’m not a safe target for his anger as I am also the person who feeds him and takes him for walks. So he diverts his rage towards a safer alternative. He never attacks the bike, the mower or the bin. My car has become the scapegoat. However, on occasions, I have taken Rex for a walk whilst also taking the bin out to the corner of the lane. It is interesting that on these occasions, when he was getting something he likes and my attention, he wasn’t disturbed by the bin at all.

Any helpful advice from dog owners (or dog therapists), especially those with experience of rescue dogs, would be most welcome.