Re-homing Advice

[Catzeyess]

Hey all, as some of you have read on my previous thread we are now in a situation where we will most likely have to re-home our DDog.

We got him from a rescue 4 weeks ago and signed a contract saying if things didn't work out we would return him.

When we got him (from a kennels) he knew no commands, had never been in a car/house, his coat was terrible, he was incredibly nervous, he needed 7 teeth out and had an ear infection. He was described as 'a lovely cuddly body with no special requirements' he has territorial fear aggression and had nipped several people in our house but is responding well to counter-conditioning.

We have really worked with him and he is much less nervous, a lot healthier. With just us in our house he is a fab dog, relaxed, fun intelligent. Has really come out of his shell. He doesn't have separation anxiety (will quite happily take himself off to another room to chill and not a peep out of him while we are out according to neighbours). Out of the house is is great (if not a little untrained) and friendly to everyone (still a bit nervous but mostly friendly).

We think in all likelihood if we send him back to the rescue he will end up having a very stressful month or so in kennels and will then be PTS.

We and our behaviourist think that he is a great dog who in the right home would be a fantastic pet. He has come so far in the weeks we have had him and he absolutely doesn't deserve to rot in kennels and then be PTS.

What do we do?

Why do you want to rehome him?

Because he has fear based territorial aggression and we have lots of visitors to our home. He had also mouthed/bitten three of our guests. We are novice dog owners and are doing our best but struggling and the behaviourist has recommend we re-home him.

It sounds like he's come a long way in just four weeks, can't you give it another month? It sounds like you're doing a really good job with him!
I wouldn't have thought the rescue would allow you to rehome any where but with them unless maybe you found a home yourself that they could vet? I know when we got our rescue pup they said to us if we ever needed to rehome it would have to be okayed by them.

My DDog isn't aggressive but quite jumpy and overly keen on visitors. Therefore he is allowed a quick supervised hello and then he goes in his crate with a nice treat. A month is no time at all and it sounds like you have done so well with him. Can you not persevere?

You seem to have done so well in such a short time, although understandable that bitting guests is a big no no.
Is there any reason why you can't just put him on a lead and secure him so he can watch what's happening and learn to be calm around people?

My rescue is territorial, never bitten anyone but looks a bit intimidating so he goes on a lead which I tie to a chair and he's got used to settling there on a blanket and watching from afar when people come.
If you signed a contract with the rescue I don't think you can rehome privately without involving them.

Well we can definitely work with him, the behaviourist has giving us loads of tips and has been really helpful. We are planning on getting a crate as he seems to like small dark spaces to sleep in. We are confident with a lot of work we can get him more comfortable with guests.

One of the bigger issues is that within the dogs lifetime we are planning on having children. Obviously even with a bomb proof dog that is stressful, but for an anxious, territorial dog that has form for biting when over threshold it is going to be really really hard on him and us. The behaviourist basically layed it on thick saying having a baby is like a bomb going off in anyones life without a dog, with a calm bomb proof dog is is challenging but with a dog like him it is going to be really really hard. No impossible and we can definitely work with it but in order for everyone to be safe and happy it's going to be like a military operation.

I've heard a lot about the OP's situation and she has done amazingly, way over and beyond what most would do, however she feels that rehoming is the best option in a difficult and heartbreaking time, and it wasn't an easy decision to come to I'm sure.

I have three extremely aggressive giant breed rescue dogs (not fear aggressive), I have a lot of experience with hyper aggressive dogs but it is a long and difficult road rehabilitating them, certainly not one that I would want to take as a first time dog owner. You need to have the right set up, supportive family and friends (or none ) and it does hugely affect your life.

My three dogs were all about to be pts for uncontrollable aggression, between them they had put several behaviorists in hospital, I'm certainly not one to shy away from dogs with "baggage" but in the OP's shoes and in her situation I would rehome too, and I've never rehomed a pet before.

Catz as you know were not in the UK so I'm afraid I don't have many suggestions. Does your behaviourist know anyone who would take him on? Could you telephone schutzhund clubs and see if they have anyone who would take him and give him a loving experienced home?

It seems to me you have 4 options :

1. Return dog to rescue as agreed
2. Ask rescue if they will let you rehome dog
3. Rehome without telling rescue and hope they don't find out ( not sure what happens if they do ,can they sue you ?)
4. Keep the dog and keep working on improving him I'm sorry but to me the fact that you may have a baby at some point in the future is a bit of a woolly reason to be re homing a dog . You have no idea when or even if that will happen and you can always revisit re homing then but hopefully with a dog that has less issues .

There's also an option 5.

Keep the dog, keep working on the issues but have the rescue trying to rehome him straight from your house rather than take him into kennels.

Good point tab

I mean we wouldn't be having this conversation if he hadn't bitten three people in the space of a week. They were warning bites and have not drawn blood but still he has form for biting now.

To be honest we were all up for keeping the dog and working with him (DH in particular, I'm a wee bit scared of him now when guests are around if I'm honest) however it was the behaviourist who convinced us otherwise (I don't think she did it intentionally at all, but think she perhaps made us realise the long term things we would have to consider. She brought up the children issue, we don't have any immediate plans so could deifnately work with him and see how he gets on for the time being)

Ps thank you hellabeasts

Hi Catz I remember your previous thread.

There is an interim option in addition to trying to rehome from your house. How about a time punted rehab programme. E.g agree to keep dog for 6 months and rehab to a point where he can be regimes.

Tbh I think you'll really struggle to rehome a biting adult cross breed So rehoming may not be a realistic option in any case

That does seem to be the consensus Sunshine, sadly Dogs Trust won't take him (even when our behaviourist put in a good word and she works with them)

So it does appear that we have to make this work or the poor boy needs to be PTS. As he is not currently at the stage of deserving that it appears we are going to have to try. The current rescue will not re-home a dog who has bitten so even if we fostered him they won't re-home him from our house.

So an intense period of zyklene, behaviour modification and lots of love and patience seems to be our only current option at the moment.

Poor dog

As you say he has not drawn blood, have a look at where he stands on the bite scale:

www.dogtalk.com/BiteAssessmentScalesDunbarDTMRoss.pdf

He seems to be at level 2, which generally has a very good outcome with training.

Now, I am not diminishing what occurred: it is clearly something that cannot continue. However, as a first-time dog owner, it is easy to think such incidents are the worst case scenario - in this case, you have a very fearful dog that's going to require a fair bit of work. Shame on the rescue for not being entirely honest.

Why not keep him crated when visitors come, with a kong? If the visitor is dog friendly, they could sit by the crate and throw in the occasional biscuit; build up to on-lead around guests, and see how he goes? The idea of a time limited rehab program seems a good one.

It's a hard situation. The rescue was not up front, and in the middle, is a dog that may well struggle to be rehomed again. If you do go this route, perhaps it would be possible to continue to work with him, and send him on his way to his new home rather than putting him back into the rescue?

He is at level one/two, and has the benefit of the behaviour being completely limited to people coming to our home (he doesn't react too badly to packages being delivered or people who don't cross the threshold, just generally growls a bit and watches them, but is distracted easily by food). He has only ever bitten when people turn their back on him and try and walk away. He tried to bite the behaviourist but within 20 minutes of her de-conditioning he could tolerate her walking her out of the room without getting up or growling.

We can take him to our parents house and he will quite happily being stroked by people he has previously bitten in our house. He let the vet put drops in his sore ear without even growling, we have never even heard him growl at a person apart form in our house. And me and DH can remove food from his mouth/take his Kong or bones away mid chew/touch him anywhere/groom him and he has never growled at us at all anywhere.

If it's looking like the choice is keeping him or having him PTS and you're not ready to have him PTS, keeping him away from visitors isn't that hard to do.

I have to do it with my dog, he gets crated with something to chew and the visitors are told not to talk or try to interact with him (because some numpties still do even when you've said why he's in there) he also has a run in the garden, which actually I don't often use, but it's handy for anything that might be a bit long or too stressful for him.

If you do at some future point have to have him PTS, don't think of him as doing something bad enough to deserve it, but that he deserves it in the opposite way, he deserves a nice peaceful end with someone that cares about him there.

I wondered if you might end up deciding to keep him and go on working with him Catz as it was pretty obvious that it would be impossible to re home him.

You have worked wonders with him, maybe that shows that the potential is there for things to get even better. If the behaviourist can get him to the stage where she can turn her back on him without him reacting it sounds as if all is not lost - I'm not a dog trainer, so maybe I'm talking through my hat - but I think, in your position, I'd want to give him the benefit of the doubt too.

You're welcome .

According to that scale our dogs were all at level 5, and ddog1 was at level 5/6 - she would have killed the last behaviorist to try to work with her if I hadn't dragged the lady out of the enclosure. It can be done, but it is a long and hard road (and we have the set up to make it easier), whatever you do you've done so much more than so many would. X

TheMotherOfHellabeasts what did you do differently to the behaviourist that your ddog1 almost killed?

(misses point of own thread massively)

Catz I don't want to go into it too much as I think it can be dangerous over the internet, but I had a lot of previous experience with the breed (which tend to behave very differently to most dogs) whereas the behaviourist had no experience of the breed, and I understood her motivations. Not once did she try to attack me, or even growl at me, and when I went in to drag the lady out (to the horror of DH and the rescue centre staff) she just backed off and watched me.

It sounds very woo looking back, and it was a highly unrecommended spur of the moment reaction (going into the training enclosure) but when she and I stared at each other, something made sense to me and I was convinced that I could work with her, I wasn't afraid of her, perhaps that was the difference. It was certainly very different to how I would normally approach things and as I said, I would never recommend that approach.

I have read your other threads, I think you have done amazingly well and I feel so sorry for you that you are in this situation. Realistically experienced new homes for aggressive dogs are few and far between. I think you have a choice between keeping him in the short term while trying to find a new home and weed out inexperienced but enthusiastic candidates, or PTS. If you decide to PTS I think it would be better for the dog to go straight to the vets from your home than spend some time at the rescue kennels - an awful decision and experience for you, but better for the dog.

I am very sorry it has come to this.

I'm really sorry that you've got to this point. I mentioned, a couple of times, on the other thread, a page on Facebook for the rescue that my Romanian dog came from. Did you ever go on there? Not only are they a good point for advice, having rehomed many Romanian dogs, but there are lots of other owners who talk through their experiences and any issues that arrived. Even if you've totally decided to give up, they may be good for advice for ways of re homing.

And just a point re the having children in his lifetime. Even if you got pregnant today you would have nine months before this was a real existing issue, nine months of training, nine times longer to settle than he has had so far. Things could be so much different by the time you do actually have a baby...

Hey Catz, just wondering how it's going?