advice needed asap.

zaksmum

My Jack spends a lot of time with all 3 grandsons and is a little angel with them.all.

They are 14, 10 and 2 and there are never any problems at all.

They all adore him and he loves to sit quietly alongside them while they stroke his fur.

Florenceem

I took in a Labrador from a family member. She was 11 months old and very excitable. I don't think she had been walked regularly. The first time we let her off lead - she jumped at me and bit me through my clothes.
I believe she had not been off lead and was so excited that she didn't know what was happening.
When we were out with her on lead - if we stopped for any reason - she jumped up and bit our hands. My Vet told us - put your fingers down her throat when this happens. It was only Mr F and I who were walking her and so were bitten.
In time - all this biting stopped. She has never bitten anyone else or another dog.
We went to dog training classes - she was always fine with other dogs.
She was hard work but we persevered. Now 8 years on - she is a much loved member of the family.

neveranymoney

Scamp has no interest in children, negative or other wise. Behaviourist man says it is good that he will take himself away if he's not bothered. He is really not a playful dog either, the guy say with my daughter playing with his ball and he wasn't a bit interested! He will take a wee notion now and again but they are things to be worked on and encouraged.

Thanks again for all your support, every time I feel positive about it, I think of the other woman and her dog and how now my dog had made her dog scared of other dogs forever and then I start the hand wringing again. It's a bloody awful situation.

neveranymoney

I have recieved a very detailed email, training do dah and prognosis, if you like of the meeting with the behaviourist.

Whilst it is mostly upbeat, positive that we can handle scampers issues with other dogs through the appropriate training, it is made very clear that;

This was quite a severe bite and we do not know if he has bitten at this level before.

Whilst showing no signs of human aggression, we do not know if he ever had before and the next point is the killer.

He shows signs of 'aloofness' with my son and is not as bonded to him as the rest of the family and this would be a concern.

I could scream really, he is lying having a wee doze and is so great with us, but I do admit that him and my son are definitely not best of friends. The behaviourist had the gut feeling, the same as ours that he may have had elderly owners and possibly he has never had any interaction with children.

This morning, my husband took him to a flat bit of grass, full 360 view of other dogs AND STILL an elderly man let his little white dog bounce all round him, sorry, but !!!!!!? My husband very quickly explained the situation, the man said, oh my dogs alright and yours is muzzled and went to carry on the chat. At this my husband said I don't mean to be rude but my dog is getting stressed and walked on. Scampers was apparently yelping, pulling and barking.

I am really at a loss what to do. We are fully prepared to put the work in, and would 100% be keeping him if it were not for the bit about my son. Even my husband had said he is now being hyper vigilant and the whole atmosphere is odd.

When the behaviourist said yesterday that he had arrived fully prepared to take scamp to the rescue, I think he was hinting at us then getting the 'family' dog we 'signed up for'. I didn't let him finish and said NO, I don't want another dog. I think this had stuck in my husbands head, as he said, quite honestly that I am unable to take scampers on the long school run as it would be far too stressful for him with a thousand card, dogs, kids and also for me, we can no longer enjoy him running mad in the grasses in the glens and rivers - something we loved to see as the dog LOVED it and people still won't control their dogs when scampers is muzzled. Please someone, tell me what to do.

Person_one

You're swinging back and forth, and while this is understandable its not going to do any of you any good!

I think you should set yourself a deadline. Maybe a month or six weeks, and book a sit down discussion with you, your OH and your daughter where you will discuss the situation and make a 'final' decision.

Until the deadline, you can put the rest out of your head and focus on the here and now and on helping Scampers and the training. Don't even think ahead to past that deadline.

If you do this, then whatever happens you'll have done your best, and you'll improved Scamper's behaviour and socialisation massively.

YORKSHIRELASS

OK deep breath. I want to say so many things to you OP! We rescued a JRT x a year ago. My kids are 12 and 14 but this is the first dog we have owned.

3 days after we rescued Bertie another 11 year old boy came to visit and the kids were all messing about. Suddenly Bertie jumped up, started barking and rushed in and nipped the visitor. I was devastated, rang the rescue and said the dog has to go back. After a long chat with the behaviourist and loads of advice we agreed to keep him and to very closely supervise the dog with kids as well as working on some training exercises.

Everything seemed to be going well until a couple of months later another kid came around and Bertie grabbed his sleeve. Just clamped his jaws on the boys sweatshirt and refused to let go. Made no contact with his skin but even so... I didnt sleep at all that night. Again back to the Rescue Centre and they put me in touch with a trainer.

Bertie is very reactive with other dogs too but shows no aggression, just barks and lunges like a lunatic. We had him properly assessed and were told that he is not dog aggressive, just badly socialised and very excitable. I have been reduced to tears by this and got to the point where I didnt want to walk him.

My salvation was a local trainer who runs group socialisation classes. At last I found other people who had "problem dogs". My confidence soared and I learned that I could love Bertie for who he is - rather than the dog I want him to be.

I will never 100% trust Bertie with visitors. He is crate trained and goes in his crate when the kids have friends around. For sleepovers the dog goes to my parents. He has never ever shown any aggression towards my own kids, although I will say that I am careful with the dog and if my own kids are being very loud or silly I will remove the dog just in case. Bertie is visibly closer to my 14 year old than my younger boy. Even though we have explained many times my 12 year old does tend to treat Bertie like a cuddly toy sometimes, and you can see the dog tolerates it but would rather be left alone!

As for dog walks, well things are manageable now but Bertie will never be the sort of dog that we can take anywhere. This is sad in a way but there you go, lots of dogs are like this and its not the end of the world. I have found lots of places to go that arent too busy and I love our walks together.

For me I focus on the good things about my dog. He is fun and playful, he is brilliant when he is left alone, never chews anything, is a wonderful companion and slowly over the year we have had him has got more calm and settled.

The one thing no-one has said to you is that it takes a long time for a rescue to settle in. This is tricky because the longer you have him the harder it is to let him go. I hit a bad patch when we had had Bertie for about 5 or 6 months and remember crying to my husband and saying we had made an awful mistake. This seemed to be some sort of turning point though and after that things started to get better.

I suppose what I want you to know is that you can have a less than perfect dog and still make it work. I wish you and Scamp all the best and I hope it works out. If you come to love him as much as I love my boy despite a bad start things will be OK.

catkins

Neveranymoney, it's not going to be a quick fix and I think Personone maybe has the right idea for you to set a deadline and until you get to it just take one day at a time, doing what the behaviourist has told you to do, not stressing about Scampers and trying to keep upbeat and cheerful.

No, you can't take Scampers on the school run at present but there is no reason why, if you keep him, you can't in the future.

Also when you say you can no longer see him enjoying himself on runs, in the river etc, yes that is true but hopefully only for a while.

What is Scampers recall like? If it is good or you can get it to be good you will be able to let him run offlead and call him back as soon as you see another dog. When I first started muzzling my dog I was upset at the thought he would never again run around free - he was a big dog and needed a lot of exercise which walking alone could not really fulfil and he loved running free. His recall was brilliant and, after a while, I started letting him run free again. He wasn't interested in going to see other dogs on the whole anyway. He did occasionally play with some other dogs though.

As to moronic dog owners - well unfortunately there are quite a few of those about. I used to get the same. I would warn people that my dog wasn't keen on other dogs so not to let their dogs get too close and would get the response "oh my dog is fine, yours won't hurt him/her".

There are quite a lot of idiot owners where I live who insist on walking their dogs along the street offlead. I live in a built up area with fairly busy roads, a couple of which have buses running along. Most of the owners seem to have no control over their dogs whatsoever. One guy has a Labrador who totally ignores everything the guy says to it. It will run up to other dogs, jump around them, sniff around their "bits" and just be a real pain. If you carry on walking his dog will just come with you all the time being a pain to your dog.

As I said, my last dog was attacked by a Labrador so you can imagine his reaction when he was onlead and this Labrador would keep pestering him. I seemed to have a knack of bumping into him despite walking at different times and despite me keep asking him to keep his dog under control he just didn't. One day I saw him in the distance and crossed the road and his lab ran across the road to mine and narrowly missed getting hit by a car.

I know most of the idiots now and just turn round or cross over when I see them. My pup is friendly but I still don't want these dogs jumping all over him.

Apart from trying to avoid them, there is not much you can do about idiots. Scampers can't hurt another dog while muzzled but it's not fair if Scampers gets upset.

With regard to your son, I can't really help. Does your son want a dog to play with? If Scampers did live with elderly people he is just not used to children but, again, in time, he may well change.

I know quite a lot of people who have rehomed ex racing greyhounds. When they get them they don't have a clue about playing, don't know what toys are but just about all of them, regardless of their age, eventually start playing even if only a little

neveranymoney

Flip, but I would be lost without all your sensible advice. My very black and white husband has said if I don't trust him with my son, I don't trust him and he must go.

I'm in from school run and had pre prepared tiny bits of cheese and got James to tell scampers to sit and he did it and ate the cheese beautifully out of his hand. My husband now says I am flip flopping as I am getting James to interact but if I don't trust them together the dog needs to go and sooner rather than later as we are only setting ourselves up for more heart ache.

I'm so glad others know where I am coming from and know I am not taking any decision lightly. The deadline was already set for tomorrow and I then mental had set the next one for the next time the behaviourist man came out, but his honest assessment has given me much food for thought.

I am sitting down with scampers now and he is quite agitated, the herd of elephants that live next door are charging up and down the stairs and that's making him funny, he is licking at himself and being a bit fidgety. He is slowly settling as I type but I think today's dog trauma has put him in a right one.

neveranymoney

Oh! He has no recall whatsoever, I had been training him to sit, leave it and my daughter was trying to teach a turn trick but they both lost interest. He had escaped from us, he actually broke his collar and took off like a rocket and was never going to come back and he ran away once before too and only he stopped at another dog and their owners grabbed him, we would still be prowling in the undergrowth for him.

These are things the behaviourist will have us work on, in my innocence at the time, I thought he would have as he follows you round the house and will come when called there or in garden.

Person_one

Sorry if this sounds critical, but you really need to make more effort to avoid other dogs on your walks. Drive miles to isolated spots if you need to, go after dark, turn round instantly when you see another dog so that Scampers doesn't see it.