Really starting to get worried
I'm really beginning to worry about my mother and my sister. As you all know Rommell passed in February. I encouraged my mother when she decided she wanted another shepherd. So we went and picked one out as a family in May. Things are not going well. He's completely uninterested in the members of the family, no attempts to bond, nothing. Doesn't respond to good OR bad consequences and he's destructive. Shoes, phones, and tv remotes beware. Table mats are just waiting to be shredded. He's extremely high energy and very demanding. Additionally he doesn't act like a shepherd. He doesn't want to please you, he's not interested in learning. He doesn't have that sense of propriety and sophistication that is a hallmark of shepherds, his tail and ears are quite obviously non-standard and not terribly pretty. Now we find that he has mites and they have attacked his nose, leaving it with a slash of bare skin down his snout. All of these things are upsetting but manageable. Not exactly what we expected/wanted but i'm sure we could overcome them. However he bites. He has bitten my mother, and i don't mean nipped her i mean bit her and drew blood, more then four times in the last few weeks. He does it to get what he wants, if you don't pay attention to him and give him what he wants he bites. He jumps on people when they are on the couch, like all four feet off the floor attack mode even though shepherds don't attack from the front, they naturally go for the neck from behind. He will do this without provocation at all. I think he's an unstable dog and that he will become a dangerous dog when he grows up. And he's going to be BIG like HUGE. I'm getting worried. I know that this is a bad idea. I've seen good dogs that become vicious because of poor treatment. This isn't that. He just. doesn't. care. Bad dog means nothings, cries of pain mean nothing. He is very sweet when he's not freaking out but you never know when he will suddenly decide that he needs to bite you. I am afraid that we ended up with an inbred dog (very possible, the breeder we got him from promised to give us his papers, we have yet to recieve them) i am afraid that we will not find a way to resolve this before one of them gets seriously hurt. I'm now encouraging mom to contact the AKC and see if we can somehow get the breeder to take the dog back and either give us the money back so that we can get another puppy (this time stable, god forbid) or give us a new puppy from a different litter. I, however, don't trust this guy worth a damn now. That dog is very sweet. He is NOT a purebred shepherd. Which isn't his fault but it's also not what we wanted to get. But that's neither here nor there. If he was a good fit all that other stuff would go out the window because we wouldn't care about that. He bites. He's unstable. He's going to be a dangerous dog in a very short couple of months. This is all different kinds of not good and i'm definitely worried.