 Barked: Wed Feb 15, '12 11:35am PST |
 | |  | | Warning, his story follows and it is pretty long...just trying to give as much background on him as I know of.
I have an approx. 11 month old male German Shepherd puppy I acquired right near Thanksgiving last year. I was looking for another dog (a younger more active dog than my 9 year old English Mastiff, I love her to infinity but she's a couch potato) so I did some hunting for awhile and found a German Shepherd puppy that was younger than the 2 year old average I was going for, not the "look" I wanted either but something made me call them up. The first thing they said was to come with $300 in my pocket (their "rehoming fee") or not to come at all. I was a little put off but still went. I found a super high energy shadow of a German Shepherd puppy when I arrived. He was larger than my last German Shepherd/Wolf mix I had many years ago but he was emaciated. They thought he was in perfect condition. I thought I wanted to put them in jail. I spent 3 and 1/2 hours at their house trying to talk them into letting me take him as the husband did not want to give up his dog (even though they obviously put up an ad in craigslist). During that time Hunter (the puppies' name) never stopped. He literally trotted throughout the entire house that he could reach and licked the floor. They had to yell and scream at him to get him to stop long enough to go to the husband so I could actually see him when he wasn't moving and have a chance to pet him.
The second the man released him he would start his rounds again, never lifting his head from the floor, constantly licking to try and find any crumb or smell of a crumb that the babies might have dropped from their snacks. The people had a little girl about 5 years old and a baby in a baby walker. The woman gave the children some soda crackers and Hunter snapped the cracker from the 5 year olds' hand faster than the eye can see almost. The woman (though 7 months pregnant) screamed at him, grabbed him and alpha pinned him to the floor yelling "no!!!" the whole time.
I couldn't believe that she would do something so extreme over something that was clearly HER FAULT! She's lucky her child still had fingers!!
The poor dog was so thin his hips stuck out like a sore thumb. There were deep crevices between his ribs and his joints were over-sized and bony. His rib cage wasn't anywhere near as wide as his shoulders and his waist was even thinner. The bones of his shoulders stuck out like sharp blades, there were deep crevices around his breastbone and when I gently picked him up (it was later that I did that just to see how he'd handle it) I guessed his weight to be no more than 40-45 lbs at the most.
He was starving and dehydrated. They didn't even have WATER in the house. If the dogs wanted water they would have to be taken outside. From what I have observed about his behavior and from what they told me (I read between the lines so to speak) I'm guessing he spent most of his time in a crate or in their fenced yard playing in an extremely nasty algae filled pond. They also fed the dogs in their crates. I saw zero dog toys in the part of the house I was allowed to see though she did produce one rope toy she said he liked. However, since they did have 3 other dogs, a Cane Corso, an Australian Shepherd and an American Bulldog (according to her) and since Hunter was the newest addition to their 'family' he was probably at the bottom of the pile and I doubt he hardly ever even got to touch a dog toy.
I asked about his food, she said they fed this certain brand of food that was supposed to be as good as a much more expensive food, I asked about puppy food and she said he didn't need puppy food, too much protein. By that point I was starting to feel like the superhuman self control I was exerting not to kill the morons was beginning to slip...still, it probably took an hour and a half after that even before the husband gave up and said that I could take the dog. I gave them $300, she gave me a photocopy of the 'records' she kept of the shots and worm medicine she supposedly gave him herself and the husband deposited Hunter in my car (he wasn't about to do anything on his own) and I left. He was so terrified he peed almost immediately and then threw up the entire contents of his stomach all within a block of their house. She had told me she fed him at 7 am that morning. It was just past 6 pm when I left. That means if she told me the truth, his entire meal was still fully formed and hadn't even digested one piece of dog food for nearly 12 hours. If that's good dog food I'm the queen of sheba.
Now if you've gotten this far..this is where we get to my question. Knowing his history, now he is physically rehabilitated (he weighs almost 90lbs now, what a change!) but his mental stability is plaguing me. He is very possessive with our Mastiff and the cats. For the first month and a half she allowed him to do whatever he wanted including attempting to dominate her which she ignored. I'm guessing she knew he wasn't ok yet and didn't try to assert herself, because she is usually queen bee, no questions asked. Well she has asserted herself as alpha of the dogs and he accepts me as 'supreme' alpha, and after one incident not long after he first arrived with him growling at me and snapping when I tried to take the bone away from him when it sounded like he bit off a large piece I have had no trouble with him personally. However, with our Mastiff that's a different story. We have probably more than half a dozen bones littered around the house at any given time (and probably more hiding who knows where) plus squeaky's and rope toys etc. He takes them all and puts them in one spot and guards them. If Daisy (our Mastiff) actually manages to get to a bone before he gets it he lays down practically on top of her with his front legs on top of hers and his head as close to hers as she's chewing on the bone as he can possibly be without crawling inside her. He waits there until she stops chewing and raises her head, then he snatches the bone and runs.
It's gotten to the point where she wants to chew on a bone so bad but can't find one, and half the time once he's taken one from her I can't even find it. Sometimes she actually growls and refuses to let it go, which sometimes makes a few sparks fly but it's nothing too serious. He'll snap at the cats if they get near his food bowl (I had a real fight on my hands when he first came, he would chase them nonstop until we were all about to have a fit) he lays down to eat with one front leg on each side of his dish and looks side to side as he eats with his ears back. I have to monitor food times because if I leave them alone he will stop eating, run to her dish, shove her out of the way and eat her food, lick her entire elevated food dish bowl and stand and the floor around it then go back to his food and pretend to eat it.
Basically what it boils down to is that if I don't intervene he does not allow her to have anything at any time, anywhere. If he had his way she would get no food, never touch a toy again and wouldn't even get to sleep on her own bed. (Ok so she actually has the entire 9 foot couch to sleep on so that's not so bad, but still, it's the principal.)
Is there anything at all I can do about his unreasonable possessiveness? It's seriously starting to get on my nerves but I have no idea how to handle something like this because I've never had a dog act this way.
If anyone has some wisdom to shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it, thanks!!
(Edited, apparently replies are not showing up for me, if you reply and I don't respond I apologize, I don't know how to fix it.)Edited by author Wed Feb 15, '12 12:09pm PST
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