Post by newowner on Apr 7, 2021 11:26:59 GMT -5
We got our 3 year old retired racer last May (10 months ago). We've had a whole host of behaviour problems which I won't go into detail abou as we have a professional behaviourist to help with this. Much of it just requires patience and gentle care, but for reference there have been 3 bites, of which one was serious and without any more warning than a slight turning away of the head prior to biting a moment later. At the moment we are working with a behaviourist and happy with the results so far. There are things we have done wrong (albeit nothing really 'red flag' such as telling her off, being overly physical or punishing a growl etc) and we want to give her every chance to change her behaviour.
The issue is, we were planning to have children, which we disclosed to the adoption group at the time of getting her. They were of the opinion that she would be fine with children of any age (but she had only been fostered with adults for a week so this was untested).
We are putting off trying for children while we assess how much we can help her with her behaviour and fear (so far going well but in the context of very little physical interaction including cuddles, cleaning paws, removing dangerous objects or touching favourite toys etc in order to prevent any chance of growling at us), but at the back of my mind I can't help feeling that it really is a choice between dog or children as no matter how much she changes there is always the chance of a horrible accident.
My question is regarding the effect of rehoming. Is it more stressful the longer a dog has been in a home? Are we actually doing the wrong thing by putting off the decision? I was hopeful that if we eventually decide we need to return her then at least if we can say it is 6-12 months since we have had any aggressive behaviour, she would be more easily rehomed as we have proved that it was only fear and not inherent in her nature to bite.
We do love her and can't really bear to discuss it, but I think giving up the possibility of having children is probably a sacrifice too far. We have done everything else for her and completely revolved all our lives and actions around trying to deal with her fear, but I think this would be a huge regret.
