What do do with a St Bernard, the Rescue won't take him

[taximomfor4]

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I take it, the owners never had the first two bites reported to Animal Control, because the matter would be taken out of their hands.

As for your nephew feeling guilty, he should be reminded the order of events and certain distinctions made clear: The dog had already bitten 2 children. The dog, unprovoked went after him. While it will be sad and unfortunate to have the dog put down, your nephew has nothing to feel guilty for.

The first bite (the neighbor girl) was reported to Animal Control. The second bite (the nip to my adult-sized 10 yr old )niece was not.

I will certainly remind my nephew of the order of events. It's a very good way to put it. Thanks!

About the dog's training: Not sure where many pp's have gotten that they didn't properly train their dog. They did all they were supposed to do, and worked hard with him. They started it up right when they got him, thinking it'd be best done BEFORE he was too big to control. They got training help from several professionals, and YES the kids worked with him, too.

 

[pyrxtc]

I don't think it's a matter of how well they trained their dog. Sometimes life happens and things happen and it all goes very wrong despite preparation.

 

[yoopermom]

I have not read the entire thread, so forgive any duplication...

This dog, no matter how much training it may have previously received, no matter it's genetic makeup, is a dangerous weapon, in essence. It's behavior cannot be predicted and, because of it's size, it could cause serious injury, if not death.

I know of "no-kill" shelters that would take this type of dog, but it would live out the rest of it's life in a kennel, with little to no human contact, being fed/watered, but that's it (like a zoo). Is that the kind of life they would want for it?

I'm the BIGGEST dog lover in the world, but I would have this dog humanely euthanized if it was mine. It might be a blessing for it to be released from the mental/physical issues it faces here on earth. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for a loved pet is to make the right, but difficult, decision for it.

Terri

 

[sbell111]

Which is pretty much what johnsontrio said, that s/he wouldn't be able to commit to this dog, but you felt that was not an OK response.

The difference in my response and John's is that I can't make that commitment, so would not take the dog. If I had the dog, I would have already accepted the commitment and would honor it. John, on the other hand, seemed to be making the argument that he would not keep the commitment once he already owned the dog.

That said, I cannot agree with the suggestion of using your contacts to find a suitable home for this dog. That is well and dandy for those of us that are in the dog loop and actually have contacts, but this family is not even the least bit qualified to assess and evaluate a proper home for a known aggressive dog.

Perhaps this was bad wording on my part, perhaps not. Basically, I feel that you use your contacts to solve problems and that you develop the contacts that you need.

In this case, one of the many steps that I would take is to create threads somewhat like this one to see what help is out there and whether anyone is willing to accept the challenge of this dog.

Interestingly (or not), when I got home last night, I told my wife about this thread. She defaulted to "Let's go get him". I told her that we couldn't because we have too many irons in the fire but that doesn't mean that there isn't gobs of qualified people that wouldn't be willing to accept this commitment, if they only knew about the issue.