Behavioral Euthanasia

[Anonymous]

Never. Plenty of people will work with dogs like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bit of a tangent - I dropped my middle school kid at a new friend’s house so the mom could take the kids to a movie. The mom had to hold her dog back from attacking us. It was a snarling crazy dog - trying to protect the family from us. We are dog people, but this was nuts. Who keeps a dog like that with children? This is a dog I would euthanize. I can’t let my kid hang out at their house. She might actually get bitten.

Who allows their kid to visit a house where that dog lives?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never. Plenty of people will work with dogs like this.

That is how people end up maimed or killed.

There are plenty of good dogs in this world. There is no reason to kerp the aggressive ones alive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never. Plenty of people will work with dogs like this.

LOLZ. Yeah, no. I am the sort of person who has worked with these sort of "last chance" dogs for decades now, but I 100% support behavioral euthanasia. There are a few of us who are not just willing but competent to handle dogs like this. Willingness alone isn't going to get it done, and it's likely to get someone hurt.

Behavioral euthanasia is an appropriate end for a violent animal. As has been said many times on this thread already, there are plenty of non-aggressive dogs looking for homes.

[Anonymous]

I suspect that OP’s dog has not bitten anyone- if so, OP would have included that in their post instead of vaguely saying “behavioral issues.”

[Anonymous]

We had to put down a dog for BE. She ripped out the throat of our other dog, and we had small kids. I wasn't going to risk my kids getting hurt.

We did everything right, too. She was socialized, positive reinforcement training classes, everything.

The issue was that she was a breed that was bred to escalate aggression very quickly. So while most dogs would growl, bare teeth, etc to communicate, she would bypass all of those and jump straight to locking on another dog and tugging hard. You couldn't pry her off easily, either.

No rescue would touch her (and honestly, I wouldn't trust a rescue to convey how aggressive she actually was), the shelter said they euthanize aggressive dogs anyway. So we opted for BE.

Zero regrets. With young kids, it's not worth the risk, and I didn't have the money or bandwidth to train a highly aggressive dog who would likely have needed to be kept away from my kids at all times for the rest of her life. That would have been cruel to isolate her from everyone else.

People forget that for most of dog history, if a dog was aggressive, bit someone, killed the chickens, whatever, they were taken out back and shot. That helped keep certain traits out of the gene pool. That's literally how dogs were domesticated, you breed the ones with good traits and cull the ones with bad traits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had to put down a dog for BE. She ripped out the throat of our other dog, and we had small kids. I wasn't going to risk my kids getting hurt.

We did everything right, too. She was socialized, positive reinforcement training classes, everything.

The issue was that she was a breed that was bred to escalate aggression very quickly. So while most dogs would growl, bare teeth, etc to communicate, she would bypass all of those and jump straight to locking on another dog and tugging hard. You couldn't pry her off easily, either.

No rescue would touch her (and honestly, I wouldn't trust a rescue to convey how aggressive she actually was), the shelter said they euthanize aggressive dogs anyway. So we opted for BE.

Zero regrets. With young kids, it's not worth the risk, and I didn't have the money or bandwidth to train a highly aggressive dog who would likely have needed to be kept away from my kids at all times for the rest of her life. That would have been cruel to isolate her from everyone else.

People forget that for most of dog history, if a dog was aggressive, bit someone, killed the chickens, whatever, they were taken out back and shot. That helped keep certain traits out of the gene pool. That's literally how dogs were domesticated, you breed the ones with good traits and cull the ones with bad traits.

I’m so sorry. I had to put a dog down for multiple bites. They were low number bites (quick snap and back off) but we couldn’t risk more and nothing we did improved the situation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect that OP’s dog has not bitten anyone- if so, OP would have included that in their post instead of vaguely saying “behavioral issues.”

You don't need to wait until it's a bite incident. Aggressive behavior (snarling, baring teeth, snapping at people/other dogs) is easy enough to spot. Waiting until someone has gotten hurt is idiotic. Most people aren't equipped to properly handle aggressive dogs and it ends in tragedy. Acting like you have to wait until the dog bites a human or another dog is crazy.

Aggressive animals should be put down. Zero shame. There are plenty of non-aggressive animals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect that OP’s dog has not bitten anyone- if so, OP would have included that in their post instead of vaguely saying “behavioral issues.”

You don't need to wait until it's a bite incident. Aggressive behavior (snarling, baring teeth, snapping at people/other dogs) is easy enough to spot. Waiting until someone has gotten hurt is idiotic. Most people aren't equipped to properly handle aggressive dogs and it ends in tragedy. Acting like you have to wait until the dog bites a human or another dog is crazy.

Aggressive animals should be put down. Zero shame. There are plenty of non-aggressive animals.

Actually things like snarling and bearing teeth are a good sign for aggression. The dog is giving warnings and trying to avoid biting. Dogs who bite out of nowhere are far more dangerous, and dogs who give signs of upset and distress are unlikely to bite out of nowhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect that OP’s dog has not bitten anyone- if so, OP would have included that in their post instead of vaguely saying “behavioral issues.”

You don't need to wait until it's a bite incident. Aggressive behavior (snarling, baring teeth, snapping at people/other dogs) is easy enough to spot. Waiting until someone has gotten hurt is idiotic. Most people aren't equipped to properly handle aggressive dogs and it ends in tragedy. Acting like you have to wait until the dog bites a human or another dog is crazy.

Aggressive animals should be put down. Zero shame. There are plenty of non-aggressive animals.

Actually things like snarling and bearing teeth are a good sign for aggression. The dog is giving warnings and trying to avoid biting. Dogs who bite out of nowhere are far more dangerous, and dogs who give signs of upset and distress are unlikely to bite out of nowhere.

Zero dogs "bite out of nowhere". Plenty of owners don't know how to read their dog's body language and respond appropriately, and way too many people know way too little about how to properly handle their dogs in general.