Northern Inuit needs a new home

Hello everyone,
sorry this is my first post but we are trying to rehome our 4 year old female Northern Inuit. She's called River and she's spayed. She was spayed at 18months as it was this long before she had her first season.
I'll start off with the bad bit and the reason we are trying to rehome her.

We have been told that she has a high prey drive and that she might be unsafe with our 7month old baby. She had always been interested in smaller creatures, but was well behaved around them in our presence, and we had taught her the 'leave it' command since she was a pup. Then last year she managed to kill a rabbit and a cat so we sought help from a behaviourist who told us she had an active prey drive.

I found this website that seems to sum up the issue accurately: sorry the link didn't work i'll try find another one

We went for several one-on-one training sessions and the outcome was that training out the predatory nature would take along time and even at the end it would be unlikely that it could be eliminated altogether and she could not be trusted with small animals. Although we have only introduced baby and dog for limited periods we have been advised against it as a precaution.

So that's probably scared everyone off straight away, but i'd like to tell you a little bit more about her, she isn't a nasty dog, she doesn't growl or bark.
She is a very loving dog, she loves fuss and attention. She enjoys training and she is incredibly intelligent. She doesn't always want to be peoples friend straight away, she has to get to know them first.
She likes cuddles and long walks and sitting on the sofa having her belly tickled afterwards. She loves to play with other friendly large dogs.
Her recall is excellent when there are no distractions. We no longer walk her off lead and her recall is good when on an extendable line, she walks to heel well but when a Halti.
She is house trained but she does suffer from seperation anxiety and will howl.
She is trained to go in a crate.

We have two dogs and they are both in a large garage attached to house (they can see into the house through the dining room window), the other dog is fine with the baby but we can't let him in the house as River then gets upset as she's on her own. We feel it's unfair to make them live their life in a garage and it's unfair on our other dog to leave him in the garage when he could be inside.

We are very attached to River and we're very upset to have to try and rehome her, but the behaviourist said that she would not take the risk herself and our vet agreed. She would be perfect for someone with a little bit of space, ideally have another bouncy large dog that she could play with and keep her company if left. Ideally she would go to owners who were at home most of the time. She's fine with teenagers and adults.

I know it's alot to ask, but could anyone help? If anyone has any questions please ask.

Here's a couple of pictures:











P.S. We did contact the breeder, but although she was a well known breeder she was reluctant to help. Apparently even though she has many, many kennels she did not have room for her, and we've been at the top of her 'waiting list' for rehoming for about 6 months now but have had no luck.

Good luck in finding your girl a home..
Sad that the breeder could or would not help you further ,but that seems to be normal by what you read on here ...

Hiya, and sorry your first post is a bit of a sad situation.
However, I really would advise getting a second opinion. Where did you find your behaviourist? I would perhaps recommend finding one off somewhere like the APBC website.
Sadly I've heard many behaviourists, and indeed many vets, give out what I would say is bad information - not saying this is necessarily the case but it would be very sad for you to rehome your dog if it wasn't necessarily.
I myself live with a very high prey drive dog. She was a lot worse when I first got full care of her - she was initially living with family and they would let her chase rabbits, deer, etc. because she'd always come back - eventually - but it's such a self-rewarding behaviour that the more she did it, the more she wanted to.
I have managed to get her to improve so much - the main help was this article by David Ryan
http://www.dog-secrets.co.uk/how-do-...y-dog-chasing/
Even though I wouldn't trust her unsupervised around my pet rats (she does manage to settle in the same room supervised, with them caged, now though, which is a big improvement), she has never given me a single worry about how she is with children. When she lived with family we often had my young stepsisters visiting - and the youngest, being dog-mad, was often found curled up on the floor asleep with Kiki. She's also great around my half-sisters who visit, who are all pretty young (all under 10). I wouldn't leave them together unsupervised because there's always the risk of a child accidentally hurting a dog and the dog reacting out of pain, but I certainly don't worry about her hurting a child for no reason.
A baby may be slightly different but if River has given you no cause for concern and it is only the word of two people, who don't live in your house and see River's behaviour day-to-day that's making this decision, it would be a real shame to rehome her. Can you not arrange the house with babygates and such so that River can be in the house but not loose with the baby? Use a crate to let her spend time in the room with you when the baby is with you?
I'm not a mum myself but perhaps you could start a thread in the training and behaviour section to see if other parents have been through similar worries and could perhaps give you an account of their experience and how things worked out?

Hello thankyou for replying so quickly. The trainer we used isn't on the APBC list. One of our vets had recommended the behaviourist to us, and we had used them previously for puppy training classes as well so she'd already seen River that's why we went to her.

We didn't want to try babygates as she can easily get over them, but we could try the crate in the house.

I read the artcile too and it was very interesting, thankyou.

We did introduce them before, one of us held the baby whilst the other person held River. She showed interest but (appeared) to lose interest quickly.
Everytime she ignored the baby or did something else, we rewarded her.
The next time we did it with her on a long lead and did the same thing and it went well.
The third time she showed no interest in the baby and acted normally, so we did a little test. We pretended not to pay attention to her, like we were busy doing something else and straight away she changed and was round the back of the dinner table coming up behind me holding the baby. No attack or biting or lunging but it's that immediate change in behaviour.
It's this we have a problem with.
She will act fine until she thinks she's not being watched and then it changes, and i'm not sure we can take that risk. It would only take for us to make one mistake for bad things to potentially happen.

I did forget to mention that she has met children before and she's been very friendly with them, she's even met small kids and been fine especially if they were used to dogs. But over the last couple of years there's been a group of children (chavs) that wind her up outside our gates. They tease her and it seems to make her worse, they try and get her to chase them and they shout at her and poke things through the gate, we've tried to catch them but they dissappear before we get there, if we hear them we'll put her away so they can't wind her up. So that's not helping things either.

I have no advice to offer, unfortunately, as I'm not qualified to do so. Krlyr has advised you brilliantly, and there will be others who are highly experienced in this sort of problem who will respond.

Can I suggest you post additionally in the Training and Behaviour section? You will get a high response there.

My sincere hope is that you don't have to part with River - she is beautiful - but I also understand your concerns.....

x

Name and shame them! Although from where you live I can pretty much guess who you are talking about. I think it is DISGUSTING that the breeder won't take the dog back!

If the honest reason for you wanting to rehome is because of the baby then I am certain this problem could be easily overcome with the help of a proper trainer and a lot of time and effort. It seems a shame to rehome her

From what youve said about her reactions to the child, she dosent sound too bad at all. certainley not interested?

keep her on lead indoors for now, until the child becomes bigger, or maybe tethered. Dogs should not be left alone with babies/young childern full stop.

How disgusting of the breeder , not to help

We did travel to collect her, she wasn't from a local breeder, we'd rather not mention the breeder here as I don't want to distract from the threads original purpose. It's just unfortunate they are unwilling to help properly, although we have been told they have produced other dogs with a similar problem.

The trainer we had wasn't just a puppy class teacher, they had considerable experience and came highly recommended, we spent a considerable amount of time and money on both private lessons and home visits. The upshot of it was the conclusion that although the behaviour could be reduced it cannot be eliminated completely and it would be unwise to home her with young children or small animals.

Dan, I am sorry, I don't know what to say. I really hope you can keep River, but I will keep an ear out for a decent home xxx

Just been looking at her pics again, she is so sweet looking Dan, the fact that she is spayed will hopefully mean she will not attract the 'wrong' type of owner. It may also be better that she didn't go back to the breeder, if they aren't that bothered, they prob wouldn't of been as careful as you will be finding her a forever home xxxx Goodluck.