Hello
i had some bad new on friday, my doby had a litter earlier this year and i homed the last puppy to a lovely family and have kept in touch with them, they have sent pics over the internet and told me how wonderful the pup was,  how she was settling in etc....
I received an e mail on friday, basically to cut a long story short and because i find it hard to think about, they had the puppy fostered out in the last 2 weeks to their dog trainer because the puppy had crossed the line and nipped two people. She wrote in her e mail that the puppy was coming home that afternoon for a couple of hours and then they were taking her to the vet for the unthinkable. The puppy was just over 7 months old, would a vet put a healthy pup to sleep. I cannot believe that the owner did not get in touch with me, she had it done before i managed to get the e mail as having trouble with the internet.
I am so unhappy. I cannot bring myself to telephone this woman and speak to her about it.I am furious. I understand that she had to take this seriously, a dog biting is serious but surely at 7 months she could have been rehabilitated.Had something happened to make the puppy nervous , had it been socialised with people.
Just to say i wont be able to reply to this topic until late tonight as my internet wont work until after 11pm.

If they sought professional help, and the professional counselled this course of action they and now you will have to trust it was the correct course.

I have a lot of dobes as personal friends, but even at that age they are pretty big and powerful.  I cannot imagine having to have one put to sleep as young as that, but a friend had to have one of hers PTS due to unreliability toward her very well behaved and supervised 2 year old.  She had owned five previous dobes and is very experienced.

The dog had an unfortunate tendency to not accept leadership and would question authority in being a little off with some visitors etc, and this particular day he decided to put the child in it's place by knocking him to the ground and menacing him.  Fortunately the baby froze and owner was able to get the dog off (he fought her all the way).  She had been right there the whole time and the child simply walked past the dog as he had 100's of times before on his way to go into another room.

I also remember a while back now a breeder having a pup back that was so bad that it savaged/tried to savage them whilst at a show and they took the decisions to PTS at once.

Sometimes there is no other safe or responsible option.

Even with the best breeding we cannot control everything and the occasional dog is so damaged, wired wrongly or whatever that it cannot safely be rehabilitated.

It must be very hard. I am about to home my first litter and I am fully aware that what the new owners do will affect how the pups will turn out. Hopefully, as they are an easy, sociable breed, each owner will be given a very comprehensive pupyp pack, plus a copy of 'The Perfect puppy' by Gwen Bailey and ongoing support and advice from me, there is as small a chance as possible of things going wrong, but it could still happpen. I think sometimes people forget that any breed can bite given the right (or wrong!) circumstances.

My heart goes out to you, as this must be absolutely devastating for you. It does sound liek they have tried to do everything possible to help their dog though. Maybe you could ring them and chat about it? It may help.

This is why selection for the very best in temperament is paramount.  Even then the wrong set of associations and a weak temperament can end in heartache.

This is also why it is so important that the names on a pedigree are not just names but dogs who you know or know someone that knew them well, as traits can skip generations.  This is important in any breed, but doubly so with big powerful guarding/working breeds.

No excuses should be made when a potential brood or stud shows weak character as it could be in their nature, not environmental.

I'm SO sorry. I too would wonder if things really were that serious at just 7 months of age and the sad thing is now you'll never know. Whether they were or not though, they should have got in touch with you first and offered you the dog back -then you could have looked into it all for yourself.

A puppy at 7 months that still nips is NOT unusual.  Is there any way that you can take the puppy back and see for yourself if there is a real problem or is this a case of owners now knowing how to handle a puppy that might be a bit more strong willed than usual?

The pups was being assessed by a trainer, and has already been put down from what the OP has written.

We do have to trust that the owners did their best by getting help from a professional for their pup.  I am sure that they didn't take this course of action lightly, and feel badly enough about it already.

I can only assume that the trainer that was used was qualified in some way, who is to say that this was a professional.I hope that it was.
However my worry is that when i spoke to the owner of the puppy in Sept everything was going well, no trouble and this would make the puppy 5months old, how can the puppy go from fine to being put to sleep in 2 months. Apparently the pup showed no aggression to towards the family only to strangers.Perfectly ok with her 3 boys, aged 8,9 and 14.
I understand that all precautions have to be taken but I really dont agree with the situation,
Anyway its is all too late now.
just thought i would share this with people who would know how sad i feel.
And this was the puppy that would have been the one that I had hoped to keep, but those who may have read one of my previous post will know due to health reasons I couldnt keep her and the decision was made to let her go this family.

Why don't you send a reply to the woman via email and ask her if she would be willing to pass the details of the dog trainer onto you so you can contact them directly and discuss the reasons behind the decision that was made.
The owner of the pup obviously hasn't taken the decision lightly and has passed the dog into the hands of a possible expert to assess over the period of a fortnight.  She has then had the puppy back for a couple of hours to say goodbye.  This doesn't sound like the actions of someone who doesn't care.  I think she'll be sad too.
I have homed an aggressive dog at 7 months who is a wonderful friendly placid dog to anyone he knows and a liability with strangers and other dogs. 
It's very difficult situation to manage and rehabilitation will be a long hard slog.
Anyone who has a dog like this has a huge duty of care for anyone else in the vicinity.  I wouldn't have taken him on if I had had children.  Households with children usually have other children visiting at some stage and when children are young that's an accident waiting to happen.

Also you really need to contact them to let them know you got their email so they know you CARE about what has happened.
The amount of times people on here say their breeder has never got back to them about important things like this. And the general concensus is they dont care about what happens to the pups :(
Sorry to hear it came to that.
Lea.

I did actually e mail her back, obvioulsy saying how horrified I was at this outcome. By saying that, I meant that she had been forced to make this decision, and not that i blamed her.
I can understand as I myself had to have a dog of mine PTS 23 years ago but this was an aggressive GSD of a few years old.She had bitten people and had attacked a smaller GSD puppy we had.I was pregnant at the time with my first child and the decision was not taken lightly but this particular dog would not have been happy with another owner, i feel.
I really am not saying that the owner of the puppy did not care for her, as she stated in her e mail she misses her like crazy as she was her shadow.
I would not have let my puppy go without the owner answering all the right questions.

To be perfectly honest with you I cannot bring myself to speak with her personally, I dont see that this would help anyone now after the fact, I will not be having another litter as my bitch had to be spayed after the birth.
I just hope that perhaps in the future they would look at a more suitable breed of dog for their family.

hi would just like to say im soo sorry, i think its absolutely disgusting what those people have done i have an 11 month old pup she nips but it doesnt hurt i wouldnt dream of having her put to sleep. that has really shocked me why on earth would someone do that.

thinking of you at this sad time, hayley.

thanks hayley123, to be quite honest although i understand her actions,to a certain extent, people must be kept safe, I am really shocked at this outcome and the fact that she never contacted me to let me know what was going on.
Maybe I could have helped in some way.

Hi,
We owned and adored a Dobe bitch like this too (Daisy) and with the same outcome unfortunatly, which still easily makes me cry. Even now as I write this I'm sobbing like a babe!:rolleyes:

There are plenty of my posts on CD which I posted during that terrible time, when we were so desperate for an answer or even a miracle. I am now certain that Daisy had a real problem with her eyes which was becoming worse as she got older. She was so wonderful at home and a happy pup, but was really afraid to the point of terror of the outside world and didn't seem to like going out at all, which is strange in itself for such a high energy breed?

When I read the posts in reflection and remember certain incidents that happened to her and us, I'm convinced that although as terrible as it was, we made the right decision. We didn't really have a choice, she was becoming a real danger to others and could be a real Jeckle and Hyde character.

We have another young, brown Dobe bitch thank God,who we rushed out and brought home just 3 days after Daisy was PTS and it's her behaviour and happy attitude to life which has really highlighted to us, the big problems Daisy really had. They are as chalk and cheese to be honest.
Even so we always loved Daisy and I know for sure that she knew that and waits for me at the bridge.
So talk to your owner please, I know she'll need to talk to you.

I remember your litter Bettyboo :-) I can also remember that your bitch was a nervous type, sorry to say so, but were the best temperaments bred together, were the parents and grandparents, great grandparents of excellent temperament and from good bloodlines.

This can happen when pet dogs are bred with someone elses pet dog, (not saying yours were) but this is how dodgy temperaments can be brought out.

How are the rest of the litter, have you had any reports back of any other bad temperaments coming through?  It is something I think you need to check into and if there are other siblings the same, then please make sure if you can that these dogs too are not bred from as much as you are able.

Of course the above may not be significant to you, it may just possibly be that the people who had this pup, were completely inept to cope with a very boisterous youngster and handled him completely wrong, causing this behaviour and the trainer may also have misdiagnosed the situation and due to the breed made a wrong call.  It may be something you never get to the bottom of.

Make yourself availabe to your puppy owners with lots of information and strategies in how to cope with and train your breed, infact e-mail and ask them if they need any help ;-) with training information to avoid this from happening again.

I know like youself I would be devastated. :-( What a terrible shame.

I dont recall saying my bitch was the nervous type only that she doesnt get on with other dogs. The stud dog was chosen carefully, definately not a pet but from reputable breeders of Dobes for 30 years.
I have not had any negative feedback from the other puppy owners. I put an endorsement on each puppy as I feel that obvious health checks need to be done on the breeds before you go ahead with breeding. i.e Von Willebrands disease etc.. in Dobes.
I agree with you when you say that the people who had this pup may have been inept to cope with a boisterous pup, especailly as the wife has apparently been in and out of hospital over the last few months with back problems!!!
I had no worries regarding how to train,as we discussed before the puppy left the fact that they would be employing a trainer to train their puppy.
As you say what a terrible shame.

Unfortunately I have known for a number of my breed go to "behaviourists" and for them to deal with them totally and utterly incorrectly turning them into dogs that seem "aggressive" and stating that they were so.  When these dogs were rehomed by our rescue centre to homes where the owners used their brains and didn't have them sat doing nothing for the most of the day they turned into dogs that adore people.

It actually worries me what some of these behaviourists are doing to some dogs.  I'm not grouping them all together and I know there are many good ones out there.