Muzzle: still fail

I thought I had solved the muzzle problem by creating a hand-tied one. After all, hand-knotted halters were very fashionable when I had a horse, why not a hand-knotted dog muzzle? Clearly it could use some fine-tuning, but if you really want to know, it's like this: first a bowline in the bight for an adjustable noseband, then the two ends are tied together in a Carrick bend at the back of the head; then the free ends are seized each to one standing line with a hangman's knot, and from there diagonally to the top of the noseband where they are tied together again with a Carrick bend, with the noseband seized through it; then the free ends go back through the hangman's knots and are stopped with a figure-eight.

At first the creature was unable to take it off, so she lay on the floor miserably pretending to be dead, like this:


As long as we're on the leash, she fights with the muzzle like a fury, but as soon as I let her off, she pretty much forgets about it and goes running around as she normally would. Yay, victory!

...

So I thought. It worked well for two days, and then she attacked a dog. For no particular reason, that I know. It wasn't even a small poofy dog. So she went at it a few times and then realized she couldn't bite, ran away, and lay down again in her "poor pitiful puppy" attitude.

When she came back a few minutes later, she had gotten the noseband off again.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Fine. I put it back on and tightened it, and she ignored it for the rest of the walk. But the next day she saw a dog again, so she ran away, and came back with her muzzle undone again. I put it back on and she went to remove it right away, so I saw how she's doing it. She gets a claw under the side and pulls it across her nose. It squishes her poor little nose all out of shape, but she's motivated. And there is nothing else I can think of to stop the muzzle coming off that way. I don't even think a basket muzzle would stand up to it.

Blah. I thought finding out the muzzle stops her from biting would motivate her to quit fighting; instead it just motivates her to try harder to get the muzzle off. That's how determined she is to fight with other dogs.

This isn't a good thing.