They failed to understand breed traits of the dog before they got it (y’know, since it was an impulse buy) and when you have a family with 6 kids and have strangers often over at the house due to that, having a dog that’s bred to be wary of and sometimes aggressive toward strangers is a FUNDAMENTALLY SHITTY IDEA.
Their dog even considered us strangers, even though she saw us every day, because we didn’t live in the house with them and would react with extreme aggression whenever she could see us out in our yard (which she considered ‘too close’ to her territory).
She reacted the same way to our dogs.
They have a 5′ fence, which she could easily clear, and did on multiple occasions, to chase people walking by–by chase, I mean she would have seriously injured them if she’d caught them, because everything she could see was ‘her territory’ and anyone even walking by their house was too close.
This was WITH professional training and extensive socialization. They at least knew they had to do that much because they have another large breed dog.
By the time she was a full sized adult, she was straight up a dangerous dog to have, especially since she could clear their fence, so they started tying her in the back yard when she had to go out instead of leaving her loose. She’d still bark excessively at anyone she could see and would try her hardest to bust the chain to get at anyone she could see walking past the house.
We started actually being afraid to be outside, not knowing when they were going to let her out, because she was so aggressively defensive and had charged at us in the past.
She also barked ALL THE TIME, because that’s what Tibetan Mastiffs do: Their primary ‘job’ in guarding their territory and flock is to bark until your ass comes out there to drive the threat off or the threat leaves on its own. Problem is, in a busy suburb, there’s always a ‘threat’ nearby in the dog’s mind, so she barked. Constantly. She even barked near constantly in the house. They tried a bark collar, but she just straight up didn’t give a shit (bonus: they’re also a stubborn breed and a breed with exceptionally high pain tolerance) and kept barking anyway.
They asked us what to do about a month ago after the first time she got out, attacked someone’s on leash dog, AND bit the owner of that dog (who said they didn’t want to press charges because the bite wound didn’t require stitches) because our dogs are well behaved and I was just, “You never should have bought that dog in the first place; that’s a dog that’s bred to be aggressively defensive about strange anything coming anywhere near its ‘territory’, which is anything even remotely close to your house. There isn’t anything you can do here, that dog is going to severely injure or kill someone or their dog at some point or injure or kill one of you or your kids or their friends in the process if you try to stop it.”
“…oh.”
“Seriously, read up on that breed a bit then tell me if you still feel confident you can safely keep her.”
She was gone 3 days after that conversation; they had her put down because, at this point, she wasn’t safe to really have anyone keep and had a bite history which made her a legal liability for anyone to keep (and would open them up to being sued if they failed to disclose the bite and behavior history and the dog ended up biting or killing someone or something else).
Our neighbor mentioned that, even on the way there, she nearly got away to lunge and chase after someone walking by or to go after people in the parking lot at the vet. It took them, the vet, and three assistants to get a muzzle on her and two of the assistants were bitten in the process.
This was not a ‘vicious’ dog, however, and her behavior–despite how it escalated–wasn’t atypical for the breed.
It was probably made a little worse as they didn’t know how to properly teach her the boundaries of their property or effectively curb her high guardian drive (which means she never should have been a ‘city dog’ in the first place). Some blame also lies with the breeder who was breeding and selling high drive working dogs for selling a high drive working dog to people who were looking for a laid back, large breed family dog.
Either way, because they impulse bought a ‘cute fuzzy’ dog, they ended up with a liability nightmare and the dog ended up dying because of it.
TL;DR: Don’t get a breed of dog because it’s “so fluffy!” or “so cute” or “looks like an adorable fuzzball”, actually research the traits of the breed of dog it is or is mixed with to make sure you can actually handle the animal properly and, if you can’t, stick to just looking at pictures instead.
These are Tibetan Mastiffs. The first photo is a dog that looks more like the AKC standard, whereas the bottom one appears to be more country-of-origin dog. They’re the huge fluffy animals that tumblr falls in love with (and yes, they’re the dog breed that being passed off in a Chinese zoo as a lion). They’re gorgeous animals, but they are not easy or good matches for ‘pet’ homes – @calleo‘s story is a prime example of why it’s so important to really research the breed of dog you’re getting before you commit.
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