When Training Isn't Enough

TW: Euthanasia

It has taken me a lot longer than I thought that it would to bring myself to write this post. If you have followed our previous Instagram content and blog entries, then you may remember us sharing Archer’s case.

I wanted to try and follow his journey in real time and shed light on the realities of attempting to rehab and rehome a dog showing early signs of severe aggression. Very quickly, I realized that I was not in a place to keep up with editing videos and writing well constructed updates on his training. As we moved further into training, a variety of factors prevented me from sharing more details, and it has taken me some time for me to really reflect on the experience and consider my full thoughts and feelings.

I considered slimming this post down to just the main points that I hoped to communicate, but I think it is important for people to gain a full perspective of what this kind of experience really looks like. This is a long, detailed entry, but one that honors the experience of many dog owners in a way that is not often publicized. It is a hard story to write, and likely a tough one to read, but it offers perspective on an experience that is too often hidden due to fear of judgment and misunderstanding.

In early October, we made the incredibly hard decision to euthanize Archer due to his behavior. For the first couple of months following that decision, I just wasn’t ready to touch those memories and unpack all that had happened. It was still painful and brought up an awful combination of sadness, loss, guilt, shame, and failure.

For the first few weeks of our work with Archer, things were looking really promising. He presented so many wonderful qualities that I was hopeful that with the right combination of structure, management, and training work, we would be able to help him gain confidence and work through his aggression towards humans. He was pushy and rude and easily overstimulated, but he was also extremely affectionate towards his trainers and smart and driven for training work. He learned new behaviors remarkably quickly, and we were able to build many, many skills that we would be able to implement to help him through his issues with people down the line.

There were a couple of red flags along the way, but nothing so severe that we could easily disqualify him as a rehome candidate. At one point, he lunged at Tarah during training over a piece of kibble. It was unclear if there was true intent behind it or if it was more of a miscommunication in training, but we filed it away as a consideration. A week or two later, I had a similar incident with him when I scattered food in his crate. I was in a rush at the time, and in retrospect, I knew that I had set him up for failure, but he gave what I would categorize as a “warning” bite to my hand. It did not break skin, but did bruise and again posed a red flag to be seriously considered as we moved forward. I worried about it, but I mostly blamed myself and felt so much shame that I had made what I felt was a stupid mistake.

As we continued, his obedience continued to improve, but other behaviors posed problems. While he could handle some quiet time in the crate, he was getting more and more vocal in the crate and would have intense outbursts where he would cry and scratch at the door. He was nowhere near ready to have safe freedom in the house, and was visibly distressed when spending longer duration in the crate.

The boarding bills began to stack up, and I worried about whether we could afford to continue the

work that we were doing with him. I was covering all of his care costs, and spending a significant amount of time each day training and caring for him. Only Tarah and I handled him, meaning that we experienced very little break from the responsibility. As the financial and time burden became heavier, AJ agreed to keeping him at the house for a few weeks while we continued training. This is something that I know stresses AJ and posed a potential for conflict for us moving forward. He was supportive and understood the position I was in, but I was now spreading the burden of Archer’s behavior and the liability of keeping him to someone who did not sign up for this.

In a week or so, we reached the point in his training where I felt ready to begin working in introductions with new people. Even if the problems weren’t totally resolved, we would need to at least have strategies in place to effectively and safely introduce him to new people so that he could transition to an adopter or longer term foster home in the near future. Now that we had built so much obedience work, he was ready to begin learning how to appropriately interact with strangers.

As usual, AJ became my first guinea pig. I love having AJ assist, because he carries a calm energy that settles even uncertain dogs and he has a great natural feel for how to interact with them. It always makes me a little sad that he isn’t more interested in training work, because he is so naturally good at it. We did a low and slow introduction in our backyard, with Archer muzzled. Everything went exactly as expected without a hitch. Within a few minutes, he was approaching AJ with confidence, soliciting attention, and being his generally dopey, goofy, lovable self. We finished up that day feeling really hopeful that things were turning a corner. If we could generalize the experience that we had just engineered with many people, we had a good shot at creating solid new introduction strategies, counter conditioning his perception of strangers, and teaching him a safe behavior to complete if he were to become nervous or overwhelmed.

Later that same week, I decided to work on the same routine with my mom. This time through, we saw a much different response. We followed the same routine, taking things nice and slow, and he showed really promising signs for the first part of the session. His body language was loosening up, and he was approaching her to solicit attention. My mom, getting more comfortable with him, looked down at him and went from giving him a treat to petting the top of his head, and he immediately flipped and came up at her and attempted to bite. Had he not been wearing a muzzle, I am certain that he would have been successful. It is extremely scary to have a dog come up at you like that, and my amazing mother trusted me enough to continue working him through the session. Even after the tense interaction, we were able to end on a high note with her walking him nicely on lead without incident.

However, I left that session with a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. He had recovered well, but I couldn’t get past how easily he had flipped. Later, I watched the video footage, and it was easy to point out the mistakes made. My mom asked “that was too much, wasn’t it?” right after the incident happened, and I saw errors in my own handling that could have prevented the scenario as well. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t successfully engineered the session for a better outcome, and I felt a lot of self doubt. It made me question my abilities, and dented my self confidence. I felt out of my depth, and out of options. I knew that I could have done better, but I also knew that if this interaction was still a likely outcome after weeks of work with skilled handlers, the odds were extremely high that it would occur with a foster or adopter with less knowledge and skill to draw from.

Mistakes happen, even with experienced trainers, but they happen a lot more with inexperienced handlers. This experience made it clear that there was very little room for error, and this concerned me deeply. My mom had moved too fast, but she had done what probably 95% of people would do on instinct in the exact same situation. And all it would take would be one foster or adopter getting too comfortable and going through that same scenario without a muzzle, or a leash breaking, or someone entering the home unexpectedly to result in a serious injury. And I couldn’t carry that.

Over the weeks since Archer had begun staying in our home, his trouble in the crate had escalated. This heavy decision was now living in my house, and I felt the weight of it. I never felt that I had given him enough exercise, enough time, enough attention, enough training. The more stressed that I became, the worse my handling became. It was so colored by anxiety, frustration, and worry that I found myself avoiding time with him. He was not thriving and was under almost constant stress to some degree. I didn’t want to rush into any decisions, but I came to the realization that he was barely living. He was existing, and his existence was not the pleasant, warm, fulfilled existence that it should have been.

My own life had taken a serious toll over the past weeks. My mental health had tanked, and I found myself avoiding working not only with Archer, but my own dogs and clients. Almost all of my time was spent either caring for Archer or worrying about it. AJ, my family, and my friends were getting a stressed out, minimized version of me. I wasn’t attentive to my business, I wasn’t there for my employees in the way that I should have been, and I found myself frequently rescheduling appointments because I just didn’t have the energy to help other people through their training work. I was moody and easily frustrated and always edgy and sensitive. I felt constantly guilty, and I had no escape from the pup that was struggling the next room over.

I was not okay, and I knew I had my answer.

As a last resort, I did a little digging to see if we could find someone who specialized in this kind of behavior modification that I could trust and that would be willing to take him on. Bluntly, he was a liability, and I would not hand him off to anyone that I didn’t feel had the skill set to handle him and responsibly rehome him. Unsurprisingly, we did not find such a match.

You might ask, why didn’t you put out a post on facebook or connect with other rescues to see if they would be willing to take him on? In theory, this sounds like a great option. Why not let someone else decide whether or not they are willing to try to work him through his issues? In reality, the number of individual owners or even rescues that are equipped to safely handle a dog like Archer are extremely low. And the vast majority of skilled trainers and handlers that would be capable of safely handling a dog with Archer’s problems don’t want to add that too their plate.

If you have the skills and knowledge to work through cases like this, you understand the incredible commitment you are making and the liability and risks you are accepting into your life, and most people, when faced with that decision, won’t accept that. For the most part, the people online claiming that they would take a dog like Archer, or shame people for rehoming or euthanizing dangerous dogs, have never worked with a serious behavior issue and do not have the skills necessary to do so. And in my opinion, an even more important consideration is the fact that bringing an aggressive dog into a home does not exclusively pose risks to the person who chose to adopt the dog. More often than not, the people and animals most at risk are the adopter’s neighbors, community members, friends, and family members who had absolutely no say in the decision to bring the dog into their life. The person who made the decision to take on the dog is not the one most likely to be injured if things turn sideways.

This is why I almost never recommend rehoming dogs with a bite history, and generally do not assist owners in finding new placements for aggression cases. I see post after post after post online of owners trying to find new homes for dogs that have bitten people, and while I empathize deeply, I cannot support passing that kind of risk off to another person who likely doesn’t understand the commitment that they are making and the risks they are taking.

For me, these risks were just too steep. The weight of ending Archer’s life would be a heavy one, but it would be a lot less heavy than the weight of another person or dog being maimed because I was unwilling to make the call. At this point, I had to ask myself the same question I ask every client that approaches us for aggression cases. What would it take to make the euthanasia call? Is it after the dog has broken skin? Is it after the dog has bitten a child? Is it after the dog has caused someone to go to the emergency room? Is it after the dog has killed another dog? I have read many, many accounts from owners who have shared their behavioral euthanasia stories, and the ones that haunt me are the ones who say they regret waiting until true disaster struck.

Trying to help a dog through these issues is a kind and noble thing, but it is important to figure out where the line is ahead of time. It is so easy to rationalize each occurrence and wait too long to make the call. It is so easy to say “it was my fault, if only I had done XYZ, it wouldn’t have happened.” You forget that having to tiptoe around your dog’s triggers and walk on eggshells in your own home is not normal.

Tarah and I gave Archer a happy last day, full of attention and play and hikes and donuts. We tried to

make it as enjoyable and stress free as possible for him, and supported each other through this sad and surreal experience. We went into the office with him and held him as the vets completed the procedure so that he would be as comfortable as he could be and in his final moments, wouldn’t have to be alone with the strangers that he already feared.

I was ashamed, because at the time, I felt a weird mixture of numbness and relief. The weight of having to make the decision and the stress of knowing that he was unhappy in the only safe situation that we could give him was finally gone. I had a sense that I had gotten my life back, and it was a very strange mixture of feelings of relief and guilt for feeling that relief. I wasn’t happy about the loss, but I finally felt that I could return to some semblance of normal.

This experience was incredibly difficult, and it took me months to recover. As I write this, I have relived the whole roller coaster of emotions again. I’m shaky and on the edge of tears with a hard lump in my throat, but overall have recovered and am finally beginning to return to really enjoying running the business and working with clients and their dogs again.

For me, my biggest takeaway from this was a profound level of empathy for dog owners navigating similar experiences. This story is nowhere near unique and plays out all the time. It is so incredibly hard, and there are no right answers and nobody holding your hand and making the call for you. Living with aggressive dogs is an unnaturally difficult experience, so for anyone reading this, I urge you to approach anyone you know that is facing this issue with kindness and understanding. Check yourself before you comment on social media, or make comments about owners not trying hard enough before making the call.

Even seemingly innocuous comments can be hurtful for someone who is already struggling, so please think deeply before inserting your opinions. Even at our final appointment with the vet, we explained the situation to the technician, and she responded with what I am sure she thought was an appropriate comment, saying something along the lines of “It’s sad when people bring home dogs and don’t commit to them.” I was so overcome with the rest of the situation, I didn’t fully unpack the content of what she had said at the time, but later, it bothered me. These owners had made the responsible call. They were not equipped with the skills to safely provide for this dog. To gain those skills would have required a massive financial and personal commitment, and most people are not in a position to make that. It isn’t fair to hold people to a commitment that they made without having any way to understand the full magnitude of the one that they were making.

It’s a sad story with no happy ending, but it’s a reality for many, many people. It is an impossible situation, but one that should be approached with empathy and a willingness to understand.

As trainers, it is our responsibility to educate and advocate for dog owners. There are dogs that are not safe to live in typical pet homes, and we hold a responsibility to help owners navigate this kind of decision. It is my hope that others in the industry provide the support owners need to make these difficult decisions. If you or someone you know is struggling with this decision, please feel free to email us if you need support. There is also an excellent Facebook group called Losing Lulu dedicated to providing emotional support for dog owners that have gone through behavioral euthanasia. This is an isolating and lonely experience, and this group provided much needed perspective.

If you made it this far in the post, I appreciate you sharing a piece of this journey with me. Thank you for supporting us. Be kind, and give your dog a little extra love today.

Good Bad Training Moments

A good bad thing happened during our walk this morning.

Archer and I joined Tarah for today's Pack Adventure, and things were going super well! Working through Archer's dog reactivity is a major goal in our training, but until this week, we had been focusing on addressing his base state of mind and basic obedience, as we would need both to be more stable before introducing other dogs into the mix. When we first popped out of the car, he was very overstimulated, and generally edgy towards the other dogs (hair raised on his back, whiney, teeth chattering, ignoring food rewards, and generally erratic and busy physical movement). Within a 15 or so minutes of walking together and continuing to reinforce the leash skills that we have been building, he began to settle and become more neutral to his surroundings. By the middle/end of our walk, he was very relaxed and engaged, enthusiastically working for treats and ignoring the other dogs. I was really, really happy with his general behavior and recovery from the initial stress.

When we were beginning our second loop on our chosen trail, we spotted a woman with a large off-leash dog a small distance away. Generally, I am not super concerned about off-leash dogs so long as they seem to be under control, responsive to their owners, and a respectful distance from us, but I am ALWAYS aware of where they are, and keep tabs on their behavior to avoid problems and ensure the safety of the dogs that we are working with. Sure enough, this dog spotted us and began to approach. I politely but firmly called to the woman "please call your dog!" She proceeds to attempt to call him multiple times with absolutely no response from the dog, and seems supremely unconcerned about the lack of obedience.

When I get into these situations, I go immediately into defense mode. I don't recommend allowing

dogs to meet other dogs on leash as a general rule, but I especially don't recommend doing this with dogs and people that you aren't familiar with. I don't know this dog, but clearly the owner does not have enough controls on this dog to intervene if an issue were to arise, so there is no way that a dog with that little control will be allowed to meet any of the dogs that I work with, even ones that are highly dog social.

When this incident happened, I had a reactive and temperamentally unstable dog in my hands. We have worked hard over the last few weeks to build Archer's trust in us to keep him safe and look to us for direction when stressed, and if this scenario is mishandled, it can destroy some of that hard earned trust. Though this is a risky scenario to find yourself in, there are also ways that you can use these interactions to communicate to your dog that you are in control of what happens to them. As soon as the dog failed to come when called, I stopped, positioned Archer in a sit behind me, and squared up to the dog, communicating an assertive "tone" with my body language by standing tall and square, staring very directly at him and possibly taking an assertive step to two towards him. Thankfully, this dog slowed down and kept a small distance, but did not return to the owner.

*Note: if this dog continued to approach, or charged us, I would do everything in my power to prevent them from having access to my dog, whether than means grabbing their collar (this is risky and is an easy way to get bit, so be extremely careful when choosing this route!), yelling at the dog and stepping towards them aggressively (my go to is "no, get!"), using your feet and body to block or shove away, or using a dog deterrent spray, walking stick, or other item to keep them away. Any discomfort caused to the dog in this moment is far less than the injury that could result from a dog fight.*

At this point, I very directly told her to come get her dog. She made more than one comment that made it clear that she did not consider this to be an issue, at which point I impressed upon owners how incredibly dangerous it is to other people's dogs, your dog, and the people involved that would need to break up a fight when you choose to allow your dog to roam off-leash without a solid recall. I'm never unkind, but I've begun favoring directness to politeness in these situations. The feelings of dog owners that choose to ignore the rights of other dog owners to choose whether or not they would like to meet your dog place lower on my priority list than the safety of the dogs that we work with. She retrieved her dog, and we moved on.

Rocky and I after experiencing a very similar experience a few weeks ago while on a trip to Cape Cod.

By experiencing that moment, Archer learned:

- Dogs in the environment will not be allowed to approach him.

- His handler will take control of situations that are scary or stressful.

- His handler will advocate for his needs.

- He will not be responsible for responding to stressful situations. It is not his job to control dogs and humans around him.

- He can look to his handler for help when he is nervous.

These lessons are critical, and can hold far more value for nervous or reactive dogs than traditional obedience work alone. By trusting the handler to advocate for their safety, dogs become much more comfortable when navigating all environments. Taking this one step further, they will often tolerate triggers at a much smaller distance, or even begin to show curiosity towards their triggers, now that they feel safe and know that they have back up and can ask for help if things become stressful.

So while being approached by off-leash dogs that do not have a solid recall is frustrating, it can also be an opportunity for your dog to learn to see you as an ally and advocate for their needs. I saw an absolutely HUGE improvement in my own dog's reactivity after a few moments like these, and that has been invaluable in our training journey. Don't be afraid to be assertive, and remember, the person allowing their dog to approach strangers and dogs in public spaces without their consent is already choosing their own comfort and desires over yours. You may never see the person again, but you'll likely spend a lifetime with your dog. Your relationship with your dog and your dog's physical well being is worth more than some stranger's opinion of you, and you have every right to peacefully enjoy public spaces without having strange dogs forced on you.

Sincerely,

-A grumpy dog lady

Meet Archer.

I have been battling with myself about whether or not I wanted to share this guy’s story, but I think that there are just too many important details of his story that people need to hear and could benefit from.

His case hit me at a tough time. Most days, I love this job, and I love this little community that we have created through Summit K9. But some days, this work is really hard. It is emotionally and physically draining. And it involves some really challenging decisions that peoples’ and animals’ lives literally depend on. Decisions that are full of grey areas and what ifs, with a hundred variables that make predicting the future and weighing your options a tricky business indeed.

Archer came to us as a client dog, whose owners were struggling with his reactivity and other related behavior problems. The problems were escalating, and were weighing on his family’s day to day life, taking a significant toll on their mental health, relationships, finances, and potentially even their physical well-being, if things continued on their current trajectory. They brought Archer into their home third hand. With the best of intentions, they took him off the hands of a friend to remove him from a bad situation as a very young puppy. He had already changed hands previously, so they knew nothing about his origin story, or his lineage. Like many families with younger kids, they decided that they were ready to enrich their lives by adding a family dog. Unfortunately, as Archer began to mature, red flags began to pop up. His behavior was challenging and over the top. His family tried to do right by him, and provide him with early training and enrichment, but they struggled. By 7 months of age, veterinarians prescribed him with anti-anxiety medications in an attempt to help him settle at home. By 10 months, things had escalated and the medications did not appear to have made any impact on the issue. He had begun growling at the kids on occasion, was territorial of the house, and extremely reactive to strangers and strange dogs.

By the time we began private in-home lessons with Archer, there was already a steep climb ahead. They had experienced one minor bite incident to a neighbor reaching towards him through a cracked doorway, and another attempt to a friend entering the house unexpectedly while Archer was loose in the home. By the time of the latter incident, the owners realized that they were in over their heads, and that they had a dangerous situation brewing that they were not prepared to address. The demands of this type of dog are great, and it is a lot to ask of anybody to take that kind of responsibility on. When most people bring a dog into their lives, they are looking for a companion that they can share their lives with and enjoy in a way than improves their well-being, but when owners bring a dog with these kinds of issues into their homes, they find themselves in the opposite situation; isolated, stressed, and emotionally exhausted. Cases like these are also very expensive to attempt to fix (we’re talking in the thousands of dollars), unless you happen to be highly skilled in training dogs already. Gaining those skills is expensive and time consuming to begin with, which is why working with a quality dog trainer is never a cheap or quick endeavor, so even highly skilled dog trainers have paid to prepare for these situations, in one way or another. Experience and skill in the industry take an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money, and people living normal lives quite frankly don’t often have unlimited amounts of those resources, nor should they need to in order to fulfill their role as a responsible pet owner.

The phrases “it’s all in how you raise them” or “it’s all in how you train them” never fail to trigger me. Sure, training and early structured socialization can have a huge impact on behavior, but they are not the only factors, or even necessarily the most important ones. Genetics play an absolutely massive role in behavior and temperament of dogs. This is not incidental. We have spent thousands of years selectively breeding dogs for certain desirable traits, which is why you see specific breeds being chosen to do specific work. It’s the reason why gun dog handlers choose retrievers and spaniels, why sheep farmers choose border collies, and police forces choose German Shepherds and Malinois. We can’t always predict what exact traits will surface for each and every dog, but through selective and responsible breeding, we can have a really good idea of what the likely outcomes will be.

When we look at cross bred and/or irresponsibly bred dogs, however, things get a bit murkier. The results of breedings become less predictable, and instability in temperament and unexpected physical issues become more likely. What the dog will mature into is truly a gamble, and while we can steer dogs in certain directions through training, we cannot change their genetics outright. Even following training, a nervous dog will still likely be easily spooked and an anxious dog will likely still be quick to mentally spin out, in the same way that a confident dog will likely be unflappable in most situations. Training can help us teach our dogs to cope with certain environments and scenarios in healthy ways, but it may never fully “fix” the issue at the core, in the same way that therapy can help someone cope with their anxiety, but may never fully dissolve it.

Circling back to the Archer situation, I touch on these details because they are extremely important when considering the owner’s predicament. People, especially on social media, have a tendency to lack a considerable amount of empathy when they hear about a dog being rehomed, surrendered, or euthanized due to behavior problems. They assume (usually wrongly) that the owners were terrible pet parents, who simply didn’t try hard enough to find a solution, or provide the dog with enough love. These people have usually never owned a truly challenging, unstable, or dangerous dog, and know nothing of the risks and struggles that this kind of situation truly entails. So much shame and guilt is thrown at the owners by people who know nothing of their journey, and those words are often echoed in the minds of the owner long after the commenter has forgotten they were typed or spoken. These exhausted and struggling owners are a daily reality for us as dog trainers, and it upsets me immensely to see the amount of unkindness shown to these struggling people when they realize that their best option involves saying goodbye to a beloved family member in one way or another.

When Archer’s owners realized that they could not provide the kind of structure and long term training required to address his escalating issues safely, they were faced with an impossible decision. When we run into situations like these, we meet with the owners to map out the realities of the options on the table, and give them room to make the decision they feel is right for their family. If a dog has bitten or attempted to bite a person, they are generally left with 3 options.

1. Keep the dog, implement strict management procedures, and invest in a significant amount of training. The owner’s expectations must be realistic, with the very real possibility that the dog may never be safe to be around the public or even loose in their house, but they are willing to work at it and get as far as they can possibly go. They recognize the risks of keeping the dog in the home, and they are willing to accept that level of responsibility and liability.

2. Rehome the dog or surrender to a shelter. If the dog is human aggressive, I always strongly discourage this route. It is an option, but in my opinion, it is usually a highly unethical one, as the owner has decided that the risk is too great for them to carry, but not too great to hand over to shelter staff or future adopters and that adopters neighbors, friends, and family. The added stress of rehoming can cause an upswing in the problem behaviors, increasing the likelihood that there will be another bite incident (or multiple) during the rehoming process. The dog undergoes a significant amount of stress, multiple people are put at significant risk, and often the dog ends up being euthanized anyways, just after a great deal of suffering by all involved.

3. Euthanize the dog. This is the saddest and hardest option, but sometimes the kindest and safest for all involved. It is an impossibly hard decision to make, but it ensures that no others are put at risk, and the dog leaves this world in the hands of humans that it loves and trusts, never knowing the stress and anxiety of the shelter or the confusion of rehoming.

When we met with Archer’s family, I outlined these options for them, and told them that the decision lay with them. They knew that option one was off the table. Their lives just didn’t have space for that kind of commitment. With two kids, full time jobs, and a limited amount of disposable funds, the cost of long term training was just too great. Though they loved and wanted to do right by this dog, they simply did not have the skills and resources to work through the problems with a dog this advanced. Option two on the surface seemed ideal, but finding a safe placement that wouldn’t put others at risk was unlikely. There is not an abundance of skilled dog trainers waiting to take on project cases with bite histories. Rehoming dogs like Archer is a challenge, and the people who can handle these types of cases are few and far between. Option three was a possibility, but such an impossibly hard decision, especially with a dog that was only 10 months old.

Archer had been working with Tarah, one of our trainers on staff, so I asked them to bring him out so I could handle him and evaluate him. After working with him, I now shared the family’s conflict more intimately. He was enthusiastic, food driven, and quite frankly, just a lot of dog. He was a bit nervy and over-aroused (he shot out of the door with his teeth chattering at a million miles an hour), but he learned quickly and was willing to work to figure out what I was asking him for. He was what I would categorize as an “advanced dog.” He wasn’t outright dangerous, but required educated handling and training in order to be safe. In the wrong hands, I could easily see him escalating to the point of posing a threat to safety, and he had already proven that this was a potential outcome.

I chatted with our rescue partners, Operation Freedom Ride, to see if they had an experienced foster available to take his case and house him while we completed training with him. They didn’t. I was out of options, and I spent two nights tossing and turning, trying to puzzle out a solution for him. I couldn’t let it go. In what was one of my weaker business decisions, I decided to take him on and cover his boarding at Green Valley K9, our partner kennel for our Board & Train program. They agreed to offer us a discounted rate for us to keep him kenneled there, so long as we were handling all of his care. It felt like a gift. Through this arrangement, Archer’s family would officially sign over his ownership to Operation Freedom Ride. Both Tarah and I would donate our time to his care and training, and we would take the following weeks to see if we could reboot his structure and training enough to make him safe to be homed with a typical foster. If he reached that point, he would move into the hands of Operation Freedom Ride. If, after a good amount of time and training, he still posed a significant risk to human safety, we would take him in for euthanasia, knowing that we had at the very least tried our best to exhaust every option for him first.

Pick up day for him was hard. Watching his little humans say goodbye and cry at the loss of their first dog was heartbreaking. Though the relationship was no longer a healthy one, there was still so much love there. Nobody present at that scene would dream of accusing this family of ignoring the needs of their dog, or selfishly choosing to abandon their pet. It was simply not the right fit; everyone involved was a victim and nobody was at fault. Sometimes, these situations just happen, and you would be surprised how common this scenario is.

It has been about three weeks since we took him in, and he has been making steady progress. We are hopeful that we can prepare him for safe rehoming, but it is still very much in the air how his story will end. While we love him and want to help him find success, I refuse to risk the safety of others in the pursuit of that.

By sheer coincidence, the very week that we took Archer on, another dog in our training program experienced a serious accident. We had been making steady progress on her human and dog aggression through private and day training, but through a failure of equipment, she had gotten out of her crate while the family’s other dogs were out in the house, and nearly killed one of the dogs. The dog was left with serious injuries, and the owners were severely scratched up from attempting to separate the dogs. They euthanized her later that day, which was the kindest and most responsible and respectful option they could have chosen for her. They were excellent clients, and poured so much of themselves into their training and management procedures to try to help her find success. And still, accidents happen. Management almost always fails at some point, as it relies on perfect maintenance by the human end. I dealt with a huge amount of guilt, wondering if I should have encouraged them to pursue euthanasia sooner, which would have spared their older dog the trauma and injury. I was plagued by the very real possibility that they could have been seriously injured while breaking up the fight, and wondered if I could have counseled them better.

These are the worries I have when considering the ethics of rehoming a dog that has shown any propensity for aggression. Naturally, I love dogs, and want to see them succeed, but not at the expense of others’ safety. With training and with the right owner match, Archer may live a life without ever exhibiting aggression again, but under the wrong set of circumstances and with an uneducated or careless owner, he could have a serious incident. We are working in a grey area of predictions and probabilities, with too many variables for full accuracy. I can’t read the future, and can’t be certain how he will respond in every situation, but we can prepare and test him for many, and make our best judgement based on that, and this is what his future will ride on.

I will try to post regular updates on his progress, and document his journey to the best of my ability. This story may have a sad ending, I don’t know yet, but even if it does, I think that it holds important realities that people should know and understand in order to better empathize with those who are struggling with similar situations. These problems are HARD. They are not black and white, and there is no roadmap outlining the steps. But we will try our best and provide an honest peek into the realities of this side of the dog training world.

**Disclaimer: As a general rule, we do not bring on project dogs through Summit K9 for rehome. Archer’s case is a special one, so please do not approach the business if you are seeking to rehome or surrender a dog with behavioral problems. We can provide resources for training prior to attempting to rehome, and can provide behavior evaluations as we would with our usual training cases. If you are seeking assistance rehoming your dog, we recommend reaching out to local foster organizations, particularly our rescue partner Operation Freedom Ride.**