This Time My Dog Drew Blood

It's 2:30AM and I'm deeply confused. This afternoon when I tried to stop my Lhasa Apso Herman from running to front door when the doorbell was rung he turned on me and bite me in 8 places on my hands so badly blood was running down my fingers. My wrist has swelled up and turned black and blue. Now if you've been following my blog you know this is not the first time I've had this problem but never to this extent. I guess its been slowly building up as each time he's attacked me its worse. The dog trainer I've worked with before emailed me a "bite scale" to access the level of possible change. The scale goes up to 5 and Herman teeters on the edges of 3-4. That means its possible to change his biting behavior but it will require extensive work on my part.

Its so hard to hard to understand how the quiet ball of fluff snoring beside me on the bed savaged me the way he did earlier in the day.  I try to keep the fact that he's an animal first in front of me at all times but he's also my companion. He sleeps beside me and goes wherever I go in the house. Now I can see that behaviors I thought were affection on his part were actually dominance.  He must go up the stairs ahead of me always. Must eat when and what I eat, refuses to remain house broken. Whenever he's not permitted to do what he wants he begins with a low warning growl.  If I ignore it and continue my behavior things escalate. The problem with today was there was no warning except to say "Let me go now or I'm going to bite you." 

Anyway now I'm at the point of trying to change this behavior or have him put down.  My hands are badly swollen and bruised and since the majority of the bites are on the palm of my left hand I can't close it.  I cry every time I look at him which makes me feel really stupid.  The Dog Whisperer says that dogs are initially a blank slate so any inappropriate behaviors that occur are the fault of the owner not the dog. That idea drives me nuts.  So I'll see what the dog trainer wants me to do and take it from there.  Meanwhile, he lies sleeping peacefully beside me and I'm sitting here so broke up I can't sleep.  Isn't it ironic?