what would Joe Exotic do?

 I took pooch Merlin to the vet's yesterday. He needed a bordatella booster as required by the place we board the dogs. We don't actually have any boarding plans currently, but I keep the dogs on schedule to keep our options open. 

So we're at the vet's, and Merlin was great as usual. "He's a really good dog", was the vet's comment at their first meeting over 5 years ago. And he really is, except...

...don't come to our house.

He's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Sweet, easy-going, compliant. But at home, he's like an over protective junkyard dog if anyone outside the family comes over. 

Friends, friends of our kids, family he's not met, service technicians, etc.

No matter how much we try to get him to chill, he's stuck in full guard mode like something takes over in his brain. We just have to sequester him away somewhere.

He's a shelter dog, and we don't know anything about his life before us. When he was found and transferred to Colorado, he was emaciated.  When we met him, he weighed 35 pounds, and now he's 70 pounds at the same height and length.

We just know he was a stray from Oklahoma, to which Magnum noted, "Oklahoma? Weird things in Oklahoma", referring to 'Tiger King'.

But, it's clear to us that someone loved him, and trained him in his easy-going ways. The way he obediently sits, was house trained, is happy to get into a vehicle. What is it that makes him so protective of our home?

We wonder what traumatic thing happened that led to him being alone and emaciated. What happened to his previous owner(s)? 

On weekends, when we sleep in a little, Merlin comes into the bedroom and sniffs us, seemingly to check that we're still alive. 

My mother-in-law was visiting a few months ago with Magnum's brother and sister-in-law. SIL has had many dogs, and could tell Merlin was not going to warm up to her. MIL tried, and I was certain Merlin would've bitten her if they weren't separated by a fence. It's a conundrum.

I'd asked the vet about this at our meeting last summer. She seemed surprised, as if to say, 

"Him? You're referring to Merlin??"

She told me a little about the muzzle up project,

I didn't do much with the information at the time other than look at the site, but now I'm thinking we should get on with some proper training and teach this old dog some new tricks. 

It came up again yesterday during our visit. As we talked, the tech in the room with us had that similar confused look, 

"Are y'all talking about THIS dog??" 

Sadly, yes. Maybe I'll get him a friendly muzzle for Christmas. Then we'll arrange for some victims helpers to come to our house and commence the training. 

Any volunteers?