The Spotlight shines on a special rescue dog, Enzo, who is working through multiple issues with the help of his owner Alexis Brewer, an animal behaviorist. Enzo was trapped in his kennel during a house fire while living in his first home. He suffered physical injuries and mental anguish as a result of the ordeal. Enzo is now in a permanent loving home with Alexis and getting release for his amazing drive through disc and agility. He is a member of the Agility League Elementary-level team Rock City Revved in Arkansas, and Alexis hopes to advance to trialing him one day. She tells more about their incredible journey working through his reactivity, separation anxiety and other issues.
Call name: Enzo
Age: 4 years
Breed: Border Collie
AKC registered name: All Torqued Up
Owner name: Alexis Brewer
City/state: Little Rock, AR
League team name and division: Rock City Revved, Limited Elementary
How did you come to own Enzo?
Enzo’s backstory is a difficult one. To the best of my knowledge, I am his third home after his breeder (who I do not have any knowledge of). While living with his first owner, he was trapped in his kennel during a house fire. He then had an extended stay in an animal hospital while he recovered, and while he healed physically, the additional confinement likely added insult to injury behaviorally.
This experience would be difficult for any dog. For a high drive, high energy border collie like Enzo, this early life experience was exceptionally hard for him. He developed some OCD-type behaviors, reactivity, confinement anxiety, and separation anxiety. He also struggled with over-arousal issues and would lash out when he felt like he was going to be physically restrained or controlled. While I do not think that all these issues were solely due to the trauma of the fire and turmoil surrounding that time, they were certainly exacerbated by them.
After he recovered from his injuries due to the fire, an acquaintance of mine took Enzo in and started his rehabilitation process. Unfortunately, though, it was not a good fit, and she decided to rehome him after approximately 6 months.
I was looking for a new sports prospect and his good looks, insane drive, and athleticism caught my eye. I had no idea about his back story at the time, but I decided to take him home on a trial basis. I quickly realized he would need a lot of rehabilitation, both physically and mentally. While it wasn’t the project I originally planned on, he had stolen my heart too quickly to even consider a different path.
How did you start training Enzo and at what age? How did you discover agility and decide to start training in that sport?
I adopted Enzo when he was about 2 years old and started training immediately. Prior to realizing how extensive his behavioral concerns were, we started with flatwork, disc, and obedience basics. However, very quickly, I realized that he was struggling with things that sport and obedience training just couldn’t solve. So, we took several steps back and switched our focus to fitness, building trust, and reducing his anxiety.
Since he is a high-drive border collie, he still needed work and physical exercise to have his needs completely met. Since I already competed in disc sports, I used that for his main outlet. He is the keenest dog I’ve ever started on the disc and is an amazing partner in that sport. He also loves his herding ball, and it is a wonderful outlet for all those Border Collie instincts.
I had always wanted to try agility and had even trained another dog to nearly trial ready. Sadly, she developed intervertebral disc disease (IVDD) and was retired before we ever competed. It was her retirement that led me to adopting Enzo. However, with his behavioral challenges, I didn’t feel confident taking him to a class or even private lesson. So, we focused on the basics at home. It has only been recently that he has turned the corner, and we’ve started training in agility together.
Can you describe some of the obstacles that the two of you have encountered in agility and how you are working through them?
Our journey into agility has come with some normal bumps and detours and most of those we’re still working through. He used to always run under jumps and will still pull off obstacles if I breathe wrong. Mary Basu, our agility coach, has been a huge help overcoming those obstacles and many more. She’s been wonderful now that Enzo and I can attend lessons regularly. But as I mentioned before, Enzo has a host of behavioral challenges, and it’s been a journey even getting to the point I could take him to lessons. I will only go into two of his behavioral challenges as these two are the most salient to our journey so far.
His reactivity seems to come from over-arousal issues and a lack of trust in humanity. He can lunge, bark, and growl at unfamiliar people when he isn’t focused on his work. He has bitten both me and a friend of mine while in a panic. I would often call his moments of reactivity almost like a fugue state. You would look into his eyes, and no one would be home. Those things made me very hesitant to bring him into competitive or even public training sessions. We’ve done a lot of desensitization work together, utilizing pattern games (mostly from Dr. Leslie McDevitt’s Controlled Unleashed program) and careful exposure. We will likely always have some work to do when it comes to reactivity, but he has improved significantly and can hang out before and after our lessons. Our other saving grace is that when he is in “work mode” much of his reactivity and fear is masked by his drive. It doesn’t fix the issue, but if we get into a sticky situation, I can pull out a toy and get through it.
His confinement anxiety, which feels like too small of a term, was very severe, but it was also critical to his success. He has always been willing to go into his kennel, despite everything he has been through. He’s just a very willing dog. However, his mental state in his kennel was terrible. He would scream, dig, and bounce. He would defecate. Every tooth in his mouth is broken from trying to escape his kennels. Or at least, I assume that is how he broke them since they were broken when I adopted him. He recently had surgery to remove a canine that was painful.
The first step I took was to stop kenneling him altogether. While he does have some separation anxiety – so it’s tempting to kennel him while I’m gone – it is by far the lesser of the two phobias. Plus, confinement wouldn’t help the separation anxiety. During this phase of his training, I had to use a lot of management, and we worked on relaxation while loose. When I determined that he was ready to start reintroducing the kennel, we went at a glacial pace, using shaping, choice, and consent as our guiding principles. I mentioned he is a very willing dog, so he was willing to try the kennel again.
But, otherwise, it was a rough process. It often felt like one step forward and 10 steps backwards, especially when I started introducing even a second of duration. Every time I used a release word, he would spiral out of control. I would see that blank look in his eyes, and we would have to stop. So, I went back and retrained his release word separately. Eventually, we could use the release word and the kennel together. It wasn’t pretty, and I was just saying “break” as he was already exiting, but it let me put the two things together.
But eventually something changed. We had our first session where he went into the kennel, I closed the door, immediately opened it, he waited a moment, I gave his release word, and then he came out of the kennel successfully. I was sitting on the floor, and he came out of the kennel and collapsed into my lap. As we cuddled, he stayed relaxed. His eyes were expressive. And when we were done? He went back into the kennel just softly and easily.
I would like to say that it was magic, and he was kennel trained from that moment on, but of course, he wasn’t. It took many more months before he could be put in his crate for any length of time. And he still isn’t crated and left alone at home. But it was a turning point. If I had to put words into his mouth, I think it was when he realized he could trust me with this big scary thing, and if he could do that, then he could trust me with other things too.
What do you like best about League and how has it helped Enzo?
I really appreciate the Elementary level. It’s achievable, but it still pushes us since we’re such a green team. We hadn’t ever even done a cross of any kind over obstacles until agility league! We just ran our Round 2 course, and it’s so amazing to see how much he’s improved even from Round 1.
The other great thing about the league environment is that it’s a good stepping stone for (hopefully) future competitions. There are people and dogs there. Some he knows. Some he doesn’t. But it’s nowhere near a trial situation so we can work on finding that optimum arousal level for him.
It’s also a lot of fun to be on a team with our friends and see them perform. They are really killing it! And he loves it when our teammates cheer for him too.
What are your goals for Enzo?
My main goal for him will always be emotional and physical health. He’s been through so much and has come so far. Despite all of that, there is not a day that goes by where he doesn’t give me his everything.
Now that he is more behaviorally sound, we are signed up for our first UpDog Challenge disc trial in over a year. I am hopeful this will be the first of many to come. I would also love to compete in agility with him someday soon. Other than disc and agility, we are working on some competitive style obedience though that is a new thing. It really feels like we could do anything. He’s got such great “try” that I think if I am interested in a sport, he would gladly dive in headfirst.
What does he like to do when not training?
We are part of a dog fitness program with Hannah Johnson (aka Canine Physio and Fitness), who is amazing and keeps us in shape. He loves swimming, hiking, and playing fetch. But perhaps his favorite pastime is playing with and watching his doggie siblings play. He has two brothers, a sister, and a foster sister right now. He is the goof ball of the bunch and will throw himself down on the floor and writhe around until someone takes the bait and pounces on him. His brothers (Border Collie, Saint, and malinois mix, Hum) are older and usually too distinguished for that nonsense. But the girls (jagdterrier-aussie cross, Pua, and corgi mix, Wink) are younger and love his antics. Otherwise, you’ll find him curled at my feet, usually staring at me in hopes we will go on an adventure together.
Tell us more about your background in animal behavior.
I have a background in animal behavior, but I’m careful to only call myself an animal behaviorist, as my schooling qualifies me for that. I don’t have a certification or degree in applied behavior, which I think are important, and I don’t want to misrepresent myself. I went to school for neuroscience as an undergraduate and then earned two postgraduate degrees in animal behavior. My first postgraduate degree focused a lot on animal welfare (in addition to animal behavior theory), and the second one delved into the effects of human behavior on animal behavior. However, I worked with wild animals throughout my academic career. It was only through my personal journal that I fell into the world of domesticated dog behavior. I adopted a challenging dog and when I struggled to find a trainer that didn’t make things worse, I did what any good nerd would do. I read–everything. Eventually I came up with a training plan that helped him and over the years I’ve worked with dozens of other dogs with similar issues. These experiences shaped how I saw Enzo’s issue from the beginning. I realized that the issues he faced weren’t normal. He is a very high-drive, high-energy Border Collie. It would be very easy to look at him and say, “He needs a job/activity/exercise/structure,” or what-have-you. While he does need appropriate outlets for his innate behaviors, that’s only one small piece of a much larger puzzle.
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