I found a super dog. She was friendly wagging tail, lay her head on your lap. You could wrap your arms around her neck and hug her. she would try to get in your lap. Not one thing seemed to bother her. You could hand feed her she took food gently from your hand even though she was very hungry, you could put your hand or an object around her food no growling, nothing! The only thing was she would jump,flinch if she had her head down eating and something was dropped or there was a loud bang. But she did not growl. This is the number of people that came into my yard to look at her. 2 men, 1 woman-> checked her to see if she was in heat, and checked her appearance by touching different parts of her body. 1 lady petted her from over the fence. 4 differrent teenagers were around her and myself and my husband. She was always on a leash as she was a fence jumper. She was taken to the park daily and walked and ran with before bedtime. She never barked or scratched at the basement door , she may have whimpered a couple of times at the door. She never showed any signs of aggression to my dogs( but did not get close to the.shot, disease???) My cats did get near her and she was fine with them. So I find this lady that was willing to take a stray I drive 115 miles to her. We meet in the parking lot. we talk a few minutes she does a visual assement of her , she goes to put her collar on her and the dog lungs at her face. Growing and barking. Thank fully I pulled her back and she did not eevn try to bite me. I got her calmed down and the lady and I continued to talk. So we decided it may have been her Big Dark sunglasses. so she takes them off and we talk awhile walk through the lot. The dog is fine . She trys to approach the dog again. She tried to attack the lady again, but with more intense theis time. This lady that rehomes 200 hundered dogs a year was shocked!!! She was afraid for me to even get in the car with the dog and wanted me to call her every 10 minutes or so to make sure the dog did not attack me in the car. But I felt very safe with the dog and told her that I would call her when I got home. The dog and I made it safely to where I lived 2 1/2 hours later. Please tell me what you think of this? I have gotten help from another rescue group so I went to them they are not breed specific, and are a no kill shelter. We got there and she was fine wandering around smelling the doggy smells, we even talked to a worker walking a dog. She sends a man out to get the dog from me. The dog goes nuts, It was really scary, even worse than with the woman. So we take a walk and the man is instructing me on how to hand the dog to him. She had a loose collar on and a chain leash. He told me to wrap or fold over the chain until it was about four inches and to step to the other side of her and he would reach out and take it. As soon as she realised he had it, she tried to attack. (he was good not a scratch or bite from her). I turned as instructed and started toward my car, this dog dragged him up the small hill (he weighed about 120-130 pounds barking and clawing toward my car. I was crying and trying to talk to her to calm her down, He said go, she will like us to in a few days. Do you think she was really aggressive? or was it just because she was afraid of going to a new place? Btw while I had her she did not bark 1 time, not even when my yappers would bark! I only had her about 2 1/2 days.

Stratmando

Sounds like the dog has had bad experiences you are not aware of, She took to you, and thought she found a home, She may have sensed possible seperation.

labman

That is a little puzzling. There is no getting in those furry little heads for sure. I think she has found living with you far better than before. You may be the first one to treat her decently. Dogs are extremely perceptive. Mine always love to have other dogs visit, but from day one know, and react negatively when one moves in for good, or at least as until it is a year old.

I am sort of surprised at the first lady not having similar experiences. We shuffle dogs between us and our friends all the time. Last Wednesday Holly was left with the girl that was showing her in 4-H. Thursday we left Aster and Samson, a several week guest with us, with our friend that is the 4-H leader. I think she took Holly home after the state fair show Saturday. Monday night, we picked up Holly and Aster. Samson went back to his partner Tuesday. These dogs have little or no bad experience with people and it is people they know. Your boxer may feel everybody except you are abusive, and acts accordingly when it knows you are leaving it with somebody else.

You may not be in a place to give her a forever home. I would suggest, to try letting other people, that she knows won't be taking her, work her while you are around. I think the key is to let her learn there are other good people. I look forward to seeing what RubyPitbull has to say about this.

BTW, Holly placed first in a handful of dogs in her class at the state fair. She also excelled on her hip X-ray today.

bushg

Labman the second group took her, I will probably never see her again, They work with all types. I too was suprised by the first lady. She called last night and spoke with me at great length. She said that she was really suprised that the dog showed no aggression until she approached it. She may have taken her under different circumstances but her husband has lung cancer and she had just been given the news that she has bladder cancer. she was 75. She came highly reccommended from a couple of boxer groups as well as a pug rescue group in Columbus. I guess to many factors going on in her life to committ. She also said that I was probably the 1st person to be good to her and to feed her on schedule. I just wondered if you, with all the labs that you have trained come upon anything like this or know of anyone that has encountered this. I know ruby will probably give me a good reason why. This group that has her will do a good job with her I am sure. My idea is, it will be a long time before she goes up for adoption. I know Aster was a theraphy dog that came back to you after her service was finished. Has she ever shown aggression or fear to another person ? Or for that matter any of your dogs.

labman

Aster wasn't a therapy dog, but a dog guide. We raised her as a puppy and the longest she went without seeing us was from October of one year until May of the next.

The dogs in the dog guide program are carefully trained to be friendly to strangers. I just discovered a problem with Holly. She is a small (47#), sweet dog. She terrorized 2 people yesterday by going to them on the bus, a passenger in the from seat in the morning, and the driver in the evening. I gave her a slack leash to scramble up the steps and she enthusiastically greeted her new friends on the bus. Unfortunately, they were both scared of dogs. I am not sure she had a bus ride before. I have never seen other problems, even though, many times a dog is turned over to somebody they never saw until 5 minutes ago. My work schedule often allows me to help transport strange dogs back and forth to the dog guide school. Our lifestyle allows us to take in guests frequently. In some cases it is a dog we never saw before. Even Belle, the Shepherd did fine with us 3 years ago, at the most maybe having seen us as part of a group before.

bushg

lol I guess you couldn't call that aggression. I have never had a puppy, But someday I will have one.

RubyPitbull

bushg, this is troubling news for sure. Labman gave some good info and I don't know if I can really add much to it. We don't know what her past experiences have been. Two or three days is not enough time to properly assess a dog. They are on their best behavior because they are confused and don't know what is going on. There is a very good possibility, due to the condition she was in when you found her, that you were the first decent human contact she has had. She felt safe & secure with you, there was plenty of food to be had, she had a comfy place to sleep, positive handling and surroundings, and she wasn't tied up and left alone. Since we don't know her background, hard to say if she was physically abused but she was most certainly neglected. She sensed that these other people were there for her and to take her away to another unknown situation. In these cases, it really is best that the person who brings the dog in doesn't see the dog again, unless they are willing to adopt it. Honey, considering her reactions to these people, there is a very good chance that once she became completely comfortable in your home, she may have turned upon you or a member of your household. I have seen this happen frequently. You did absolutely the right thing in surrendering her to people who know how to work with dogs that have issues. They will do an assessment, and will attempt to work through her problems. She will adjust to her new surroundings and after retraining, they will eventually find someone who will adopt her who knows how to handle her. I know it is upsetting and heartbreaking for you, but as I said, I have seen seemingly good dogs do exactly what this dog did. They are accidents waiting to happen. It is for the best that she be with people who will do their utmost to undo the damage that has been done to that poor dog.

bushg

thank you fro answering I will respond when I am ca;mer.

bushg

I saw on here where someone said that if the person on the other end of the leash was not comfortable then the dog would react. I was so afraid that I did something to cause her to react negatively to these people. I just wanted her to have a chance at a good life. I hope that it was not my fault that she reacted bad to those people. I can't see what I did other than if Maybe it was because I was tired after working till midnight and getting back up at 6:00 am. and driving such a distance & getting lost..I do hate to drive. Do you think maybe she was reacting to my tiredness?. It just boggles my mind that she was so sweet I would have allowed her around anyone. I am cautious My son was attacked by a dog, so I do not just let any dog interact with my kids. I guess I just want reassurance that I did not cause her already hard life to be any harder, and that I did not put my kids in unneccessary danger.

RubyPitbull

I don't think the dog was reacting to your tiredness. You might have been nervous or upset about letting her go to a stranger and she picked up on that. bushg, please don't be upset if this is what ocurred. It actually will bode well for her future if that is what happened. This issue can definitely be worked through.

Honey, please don't beat yourself up and drive yourself crazy over this, trying to figure out if you did anything wrong. The only thing that was wrong for this dog were the conditions she was living under prior to you finding her. You went out of your way to do the right thing by this dog. Most people don't do that. They look at a dog that is wandering and figure someone else will take care of it. You should be happy and proud of yourself that you have given her a new chance at life. Nothing bad happened at home, so there was no harm done. Don't dwell on the "what ifs". And, just remember, you are teaching your children an important lesson in caring for those that can't care for themselves. You most certainly should be giving yourself a pat on the back instead of beating yourself up. SMILE! She will be okay.