I have a foster dog right now. A young, sunny, ball-crazy Lab-pit mix. He loves people and looks highly trainable except for being so hyper he can’t pay attention for half a second.<\/p>\n
He’s the usual story in young rescue Labs; his owner never trained or socialized him and now he’s completely out of control.<\/p>\n
This would be do-able except for one thing. He’s so insanely dog aggressive that the moment he gets near another canine, he attacks. No butt sniffing. No toothy warnings. Just — wham!<\/i> <\/p>\n
We can’t adopt out such an unpredictable dog. I can’t keep him much longer for the obvious reasons. And no other foster home will touch him. So our volunteers have been trying to get a shelter or another rescue group to take him — one that has a training program for hard cases. No luck.<\/p>\n
It was starting to look really bad for his chances of leading a long, healthy life.<\/p>\n
Then this morning we got a lead. A drug-dog trainer<\/i> wants to meet him.<\/p>\n
Turns out the ideal narco-sniffer is a super-high-energy, ball-crazy dog like this one. Since drug dogs live and work independently from other animals, they don’t care if he wants to eat his fellow canines for breakfast.<\/p>\n
So it might come down to this: death or joining the drug war.<\/p>\n
I can’t blame him if he becomes a snitch to save his life. But …<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
ADDED:<\/b> Many commentors have spoken up to say this boy might also be good in search & rescue or some other work. That’s great! But saying in theory<\/i> that he might be able to do some job and actually finding a specific group that wants this dog at this moment<\/i> is another thing. If you know of some group (preferably in the northwest but we’ll consider anything) that is looking for a boy like this and has both the resources and the willingness to take him in right now and work him through his problems, please post their contact information. We’ll follow up. Furrydoc (who is now this boy’s doc) has said she’ll board him at her kennel while we arrange transport. Our volunteers have already made many contacts and gotten turned away from (almost) every door. This is not as easy as a lot of people seem to think.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
UPDATE 5\/22\/12<\/b>: Happy turning to this boy’s story. He’s been accepted into a shelter that has a behaviorist on staff and an excellent program for rehabilitating pit bulls. Though he’s more Lab than bully-boy, dog aggression is something these folks are accustomed to working with. He’ll be transported there later this week. The shelter is not no-kill, but it’s very low kill, and after strenuous searching, calling, and emailing, by several volunteers, this is the best chance they found for him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a foster dog right now. A young, sunny, ball-crazy Lab-pit mix. He loves people and looks highly trainable except for being so hyper he can’t pay attention for half a second. He’s the usual story in young rescue Labs; his owner never trained or socialized him and now he’s completely out of control. This would be do-able except for one thing. He’s so insanely dog aggressive that the moment he gets near another canine, he attacks. No butt sniffing. No toothy warnings. Just — wham! We can’t adopt out such an unpredictable dog. I can’t keep him much…<\/p>\n