Incident at AKC agility show - Page 2

I beleive this dog was shown in agility at the 2013 GSDCA National in NJ. The catalog is on line if anyone is interested.

When I worked as a tech we always muzzled strange GSD's before lifting them to the exam table. The most diffcult to handle dog I ever met was a black GSD from the Czech Republic. No one could get near him other than his owner, a police officer. Yes, the breed does have a less than sterling repuation with the veterinary world both for their aggression and their many health issues. You never know how a GSD will behave when it's owner isn't present. 

I have yet to meet a veterinarian including those at the self proclaimed wonderful state veterinarian school hospital that know the GSD as a breed or any dog individually as well as they think they do.  Being an auto mechanic does not make you a driver.  If I am not the expert on my dogs then there isn't one and it surely isn't the folks in the white coats who rush them in and out of their offices at the veterinarian's clinic.  I started using a mobile veterinarian who came to me when I had more dogs than now because of the stress and possibility of disease exposure going to the veterinarian's office.  That area outside where they want you to walk your dog in and out of the office as well as the "potty" area has had every sick dog and disease known to man at one time or another.  Not going to the veterinarians office is best thing I can do for my dogs.  Veterinarians are primarily interested in running their business and getting as many customers in and out of the office as possible per hour while maximizing profit per customer.  The customer by the way is not your dog.  There is more danger to your dog from many sources at the veterinarian doc in a box ... from other people and their animals to the veterinarian's green assistants.  The veterinarian is going to make an evaluation of your dog's personality and temperament during the usually 10 minutes or less they spend with your dog??  Most of the time your dog is in the veterinarian's office it is with a tech or office worker so the idea that a veterinarian is able to decide as to the temperament of a dog and whether a dog is dangerous seems to me a stretch.  If the veterinarian has training in dog behavior and psychology and spends the time necessary to do an evaluation other than jabbing a needle in the dog's butt then that might be a more useful diagnostic. 

The vet I use takes a very active role in interacting with the dogs. My current GSD has had 3  implants, a c-section and a spay/tack. The vet has always examined her before admitting her, he puts her in her kennel and he brings her out to me when she is discharged.
 

bubba, if you're an auto mechanic, and you see 1000 of a particular make, model and year of vehicle regularly, and out of that 1000, you consistently find that 950 of them experience head gasket failure at 40,000 miles, would you not expect to see the same thing when new customers with the same make/model/year vehicle start using your services?  Of course you would...and you'd be doing right by any customer who has such a vehicle to advise them to have the head gasket at least checked when the vehicle is approaching or over 40K miles if it hasn't already been replaced.

But the auto mechanic thing really isn't comparable to the average vet's experiences with the GSDs they see at their practices, since a car that blows the head gasket isn't going to harm the mechanic, and it also isn't going to potentially make it impossible for the mechanic to perform his job temporarily or permanently. When the vet examines a dog on an exam table, they are at significant risk of being bitten in the face and/or hands if the dog's temperament is not sound and/or the dog's owner insists on restraining the animal but is not really able to do so.  My vets don't examine large breed dogs on an exam table, because they recognize that most dogs of that size aren't used to being placed up on tables; for them, the risks are amplified because the dog now has the ability to bite the vet repeatedly, since it will take a moment for the person to stand up quickly enough to avoid a second bite.  Bites to the face and hands will take the vet out of service at least temporarily, since they need to use their hands to perform the work, and wounds on the face are likely to affect their ability to use the exam scopes and equipment which require them to put something up against their face, or put their face down against something.

And you really think it's surprising that even the best of vets are suspicious of how a GSD that they don't know very well will react to exams, injections, and so forth, and to prefer to err on the side of caution?  My current vets care for the local LE K9's, and they are the practice on-call for one of the National LE K9 organization's annual training event that's held at the Combat Readiness Center in this area--so they don't dislike GSDs, they just dislike being bitten by specimens of the breed with poor temperament and inept owners who can't or don't or won't train their animals.

I am uimpressed with vets and their staffs and generally their level of knowledge and ability to handle high energy dogs.  They want easy and quick.  The OP was about a dog that was given a label of dangerous or aggressive by a veterinarian as an expert witness.  I do not accept that any veterinarian I have met thus far has the knowledge or experience with high energy level GSD such as used in police, sport, or other competitions to make an assessment of my dogs.  That includes some veterinarians that do IPO as many IPO competitors are a lot less gifted than they imagine themselves to be when it comes to knowing dogs and where the dog's mind is.  I do not presume to evaluate others dogs for them but when a veterinarian gives me or one of my clients an opinion that is blatantly wrong as to the temperament of a dog that I know well then I must conclude that they are a pompous idiot.  So when a veterinarian presumes to offer "expert" testimony about something they have little or no expertise in I am skeptical.  Each dog is an individual and saying that because one breed is more problematic for vets to work on then that label applies to all dogs of that breed is likewise stupid.  I guarantee that a 2000 pound Holstein bull is more dangerous than an 85 pound GSD yet most vets would not label all holstein cattle as a dangerous breed of cattle and probably not an individual animal.  A Holstein bull is a bull and you treat them like what they are .. big and capable of killing you easily.  I have never been bitten by one of my dogs when it was not my fault.  I have been stepped on and smashed by cattle and I can tell you that they are way more dangerous to work around than dogs.  Likewise horses are more dangerous than dogs to work around and I have been bitten by a horse more severely than any of my dogs has bitten me,  The real veterinarians that came before our "vet in a box" small animal veterinarians knew this but the current state of veterinarian medicine does not impress me that they know as much about the GSD as they think and any competent attorney could tear their competence apart if they knew the buttons to push.

We never muzzled GSD's until one of our vets was bitten rather severely on his hand when lifting one onto the exam table prior to being anesthesized for surgery. It sent him to the ER and kept him from doing surgery for over a month. The owner of the practice had a GSD and we vetted the local K-9's so we weren't unfamiliar with the breed. Some days it was a challenge to make it through the day without getting hurt in one way or another.  

By all means muzzle any dog that could be a problem ,, I prefer to muzzle my dogs and often do at the veterinarans's office or at my residence if the vet comes to me.  The veteinarian's office is likely not the place for the dog's temperament to be assessed nor is the veterinarian the best person to assess it. 

bubba, the vet did not label the dog 'dangerous', he merely said he found the dog to be aggressive and had advised the owner to stop showing her. Since we don't know any more than that--and we don't even really know that, since the vet himself isn't interviewed for the article, so we don't really know if he actually said 'aggressive' or not--we also don't know in what context it might have been said. As I mentioned, a fairly common residual effect of Lyme in dogs is the appearance of unwarranted aggression that can range from mild to severe enough to warrant euthanizing the dog--so if the vet did make that assessment, it could have been in the course of a post-Lyme treatment examination, or something similar.  Low thyroid levels can also cause an increase in aggression, in both appropriate settings for display of such as well as inappropriate situations for it. There's more that we don't know than there is what we do know, but you clearly have little to no respect for the veterinary profession as a whole, so there is clearly no talking to you on that subject.  I would be insulted by your statements but for the fact that you don't know me, and consequently have no knowledge of my handling abilities as a vet tech in a veterinary practice setting, so I'm secure in my knowledge that your belittling comments about vets and techs doesn't apply to me.  I'm also grateful that the chances of me ever working for a practice where you'd be a client is zero, because clients like you are more of a nightmare than any fearfully aggressive dog or feral cat. 

I have had veterinarians tell me that my dogs need 12 month continuous heartworm treatments, that raw food will kill my dogs, and that if they didn't give the distemper parvo to my dogs it just isn't legal and I must let them give it for it to count.  At that point when they tell me something I know to be untrue is when I start to lose faith and feel disappointed.  Thus far all the veterinarians I have dealt with have disappointed .. pretty much when not if.  So I am happy not to darken the door of any veterinarian's office and I certainly take everything they tell me with a grain of salt.  A veterinarian runs a business and has employees loyal to the practice working there.  Everyone but especially the poor newbies should do the work to find out what is best for their dog as regards health care choices and not what is best for the veterinarian's bottom line.  Veterinarians are not experts on dog nutrition, dog training, dog breeding, or dog behavior unless they got additional training outside or after vet school and should not be considered expert in anything other than what they have learned in vet school.  It is the dog's owner and trainers job to know what makes their dog tick and living with your dog is the price of admission to that rodeo.