Experienced home for 14 month old rottweiller?
I adopted a beautiful pure bred australian Rottweiller in February this year. The poor boy had been kept in a cage his whole life (8months) and so when I first took him for walks the pads on paws would bleed. He didn't have much front of back muscle, I suppose due to lack of exercise. Other than this, we know very little about his history. As soon as we got him out of the cage at the rescue centre, he dropped his heads into our lap for a cuddle and that was the end of it, we were in love. We called him Ted.
Around 6 weeks into adopting him we fostered an much older very poorly treated rottie. He had been a guard dog on a boat his whole life, was completely emaciated, had 12 teeth removed due to rot, terrible cherry eye and so could barely see and he also wasn't strong enough to stand or walk for longer then a minute or so. Long story short(er) the old rottie decided he wanted a bone that Ted was eating and a fight ensued. It was the first aggression we had ever seen from Ted, and frankly we were shocked at the strength of the old rottie. After a few weeks of anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories, the vet x-rayed to find that Ted had suffered a large bite to his nose breaking several fragments of bone off and causing a severe infection. He had an operation to remove to bone and was left with a number of drains and lots of stitches to his nose and face. We also gave back the old rottie to a dog free home.
Since then, we have moved house with Ted (to a quiet tiny village, he didnt like the buses in the noisy city, they scared him) who is a big marshmellow of a dog - until someone tries to touch his head or face. He is now very scared of people going near his face and unfortunately his only response to it is now to bite. Its his way of warning people off but being a large dog, it leaves a mark. He has never bitten me or my partner and is incredibly loyal and loving, making this all the more hard. But we live in a very small village in Hong Kong where locals patience and knowledge of dogs is minimal at best and we just dont have the space for him to be left alone. There are always people coming by who insist on ignoring our pleas to leave him be. If you leave him alone, he comes to you in his own time and loves to give you a good lick, but the second he sees a hand coming to his face, he panics. Dont get me wrong, he has had many pats on head by strangers at the beach that he has not reacted to, but he has snapped at people a handful of times now...