Yet More Bad Press

Such a sad situation. It also makes you question the behavior tests shelters perform. I guess there isn't any fool-proof method. But for instance the food test...you have a shelter dog, probably very hungry and easily spooked by it's surroundings.

Then you put a fake hand in the cage and try to move the food bowl. If the dog complains...food aggressive, fail. But a psycho dog might pass all the tests yet still be nuts. The family isn't blaming the dog, but rather the shelter. I don't know if I'd say it's their fault either.

The poor dog looks like a clone of Sophie. Spookier still is that I could imagine her possibly reacting that way in a complete stranger situation. That's why if something ever happened to me it would be safer to euthanize her. She's an old lady and way too unstable to rehome.


http://www.newsday.com/long-island/s...say-1.10816285

I seem to recall reading that story with a bit more information. I think the family was told to give the dog time to decompress, away from most family members, that the dog was really stressed out. And instead they took him out a long walk, hyped him up, didn't give him any down time and unfortunately that stress ended up resulting in some pretty nasty aggression. Would it have happened if the dog had time to decompress and was introduced to the family in a quiet way when calmer? Hard to say. But shelter stress can be AWFUL and it sounds like this dog was kicked around a lot in a short period of time.

It's a terribly sad case of a family wanting to do right, a dog who was stressed out and in a bad place, and mistakes made. I'm not sure the shelter can be blamed here really, though. The family can't either, really. They made some mistakes but those sorts of mistakes shouldn't have resulted in that kind of aggression. Just a bad situation all around.

And like Sophie, sometimes even in the best of situations the dog just isn't wrapped too tight. She was lucky that my children were all older and I had the patience for a very needy frightened pup. As you say, if they had given this poor dog a few weeks of downtime it might have made a difference.