Theresa: I understand how attached you are to this pup. I know the last thing you want to do is to get rid of him. I can hear your desire to work real hard with him to change his behavior. You may even be able to clicker train him to feel positive about the kids as they are around him (with lots of safety for them and control with your dog) However, while this bitting behavior has not created more horrible circumstances, I would consider the safety of your children first. With 7 kids it is hard to keep an eye on everyones activity. I would be concerned about the kids.
I would work hard with your dog as you are looking for a new home. You want this dog to not be passed around and end up with someone who may be cruel to him if he is aggressive. make sure the person you give him to is an experienced dog handler who understands his limitations.
I recommend, though I am not a professional, to be kind to your dog and find him a new home where he can excel at what he was born to excel at, and to protect your children from being severly injured by your pup.
It is horrible that the breeder was cruel to his dogs. This could have set the dog on a fear based aggressive behavior. Wow! what a lesson to learn. Look behind the scenes at the attitude of breeders before you bring a dog home. With the tract record of that breeder, I don't blame your dog for snarling when the breeder put his hand in his crate.
Just my opinion. I know how hard these decisions can be. Sharon

 Quote: Theresa Rutherford

Over all he is a great dog, calm when no movement is around, and with the children around he is calm as long as I am there, which I am ALL the time, now.

Truthfully, he would make an excellent pet for someone with no children, other pets, or farm animals.

Hmmm...last time I checked kids are prone to moving. Please consider rehoming this dog.

Okay, I have had a lot of time to process what everyone has said. I am still truthfully not sure what to do. He is an awesome dog that I feel with more training would be a great pet and maybe even protection for me (I run in a very rural area with some not so nice people around). He runs with me and he is completely obedient to my commands, even around other people and animals.

He is not a highly active dog although he has high fight drive, and prey drive...he sits or lies down most of the time. He runs with me, but other than that if I sit on the porch or let him out in the yard with me he just sits or lies down beside me. Some of the kids came outside with me to hang clothes on the line this morning and he just sat and watched contentedly.

Something I didn't think to add earlier is that David, my son, is very high functioning autistic. He has some annoyingly spastic movements at times, so maybe that is the reason he has been bitten 2 times and the other children haven't.

I brought Rocky in our house last night while we were eating supper as another form of distraction. He walked in very calmly, I told him "down" he went down and he stayed down amidst all the moving of the kids, my husband and myself (getting up to get seconds or more water...). I even got up to walk around (more distraction because it was me) and I told him to stay. He did. He stayed right there without moving until I told him to get up and then I took him outside for his evening run.

We played for a long time - racing back and forth to my husband. My husband would call him and he would stay with him until I took off running and called him. He was so exhausted by the time we got back he didn't even want to play in the water like he usually does.

I just really feel there is hope for keeping him. I don't want him put into a sport where he will be beat on (schutzhund) and I don't want other people training him for me. I would love to train him in protection for myself, but I don't know where to start.

My thoughts are this: 1) I can get a muzzle, get him used to it and then let him out with me everywhere I go, out of the yard, to town...(we have NO parks that allow animals). To help him get familiar with change.

2) I would step up his training in distractions to being closer toe the livestock and eventually in the midst of the livestock WITH a muzzle ON. Later when he is completely under control around them let him off leash with the muzzle on and then graduate to no leash, no muzzle.

3) I would love to train him in protection for ME. I am going to be opening a store on our property within a year and he could be a very big asset to me in protecting my store during off hours.

4) Muzzle training in the midst of the children playing is the other thought that I had. He doesn't jump on people or the children and doesn't plow into them, so I believe that would be safe. It would be supervised by me to make sure everything goes well.

What are your thoughts about this?

I'm posting not as a professional, (which I'm SO not), but as a mother.

Have any of your kids ever done something completely out of character and unpredictable? Mine do sometimes.

Example: Everyday for two years or more, my eight year old son followed every rule with our dogs, both those we owned and the occasional foster dog. I never left him unsupervised with the dogs, and fosters were left completely alone by him. THey are OFF LIMITS! We've gotten a little less diligent with Ollie, (our older dog). He's a sweet, loving family dog, and Sam is very respectful and loving with him. One morning, a couple of months ago, I get up at 5am to find that Sam had woke up in the middle of the night, let Ollie out of his crate and they were cuddled asleep on the couch!

My husband thought it was cute and that I was over reacting, but my son was grounded and we had a serious talk. Also, there were precautions taken to make sure he cannot open the crates.

Two different dogs and two totally different sets of circumstances. The common factor being children, who can be unpredictable and innocently decide to do something off the wall. It would concern me more that the kids love him and were sad to see him go. Children forgive quickly and trust easily.

I'm not telling you what to do in this situation, just asking that you consider it from this angle. In my house, sometimes the dogs are easier to control than the kids!!

I too understand your attachment to the dog - it's never easy to re-home them. But I just have to tell you that you are taking a HUGE gamble with your children's lives. A friend of mine had a dog that did the exact same thing. His kids were 5 and 7. One morning the dog was laying at the feet of his owner (who also worked very hard to train him), and his 5 year old son came over to hug his dad. The child brushed up against the head of this dog, and without warning, in seconds that dog had the side of this child's face in his mouth. There was a bite with bleeding only millimeters from his son's eye - he could easily have lost his vision instead of now having a scar.

The only way to prevent this from happening is to keep the dog completely isolated from your family - I just believe our first priority as moms has to be the safety of our kids. And that is just not a fair life for a dog IMO.

These friends of mine have successfully re-homed this dog and he is doing great.

Could I just throw this in, not to distract from the excellent points being made but (I hope) to remove it completely from the discussion?

This is a non-starter for a beginner (or anyone else) in a house with seven children, one of whom has now been bitten twice:

"I would love to train him in protection ..."

Please .... this is not worthy of consideration. I hope we can set it aside and focus on the excellent responses the O.P. is receiving.

Just a few quick notes- Schutzhund training does not require beating. Many, Many trainers use marker training in SchH. Bob Scott would be the person to talk to there.

As far as muzzling him and letting him out with your kids while they are playing, a large dog can do A LOT of damage, even with a muzzle on. If Rocky wants to use his mouth, and finds he cannot, he'll find another way to control the situation. (Go check out YouTube for Muzzle Fighting video's. It's brutal.)

Autistic children do well with animals, but they require a very very specific type of dog, that can deal with the sudden movements, and outbursts. I don't think it's fair to Rocky to expect him to deal with this, when he's already shown he's not comfortable with this child in certain situations.

You're admitting he has what you call fight drive. IMO, this can never be safe for children to be around. Muzzled or not.

I was thinking the same thing Connie. Big Dog = deterrent enough. Protection Training a dog, for anyone let alone a novice, is a lot of work and creates a dog that I would not want for a household of 7 kids with a novice owner, let alone for someone having issues with aggression. You are asking for a bad situation.

With 7 kids and a bite history, I would think you need to look at all situations. If your breeder is willing to take him back, I would take him up on that offer. I would not recommend rehoming him to another pet home that doesn't have experience working with the issues you mention as you are asking for trouble. I would look for a working home, or like I said, let the breeder take him and work with him. As Kelly said, Schutzhund training does not involve beating your dog. That would take the drive out of the dog, which you don't want to do.

Good luck, Theresa. I hope your kids don't suffer for your poor judgemnt.

You are going to do what you are going to do. You have already made many excuses why it would be great to keep this dog. Your dog, your call. More than likely the dog will pay the price down the road, as the next 'bite' may not be a nothing bite, since as I stated previously, this dog as learned that he can do this & get away with it twice already!

I won't even address the stupidity of teaching THIS dog that it is acceptable to bite under any circumstances while living under your roof. Very VERY foolish idea, indeed.

BTW...you don't teach a dog protection work alone.

And the couple of stick hits that the decoy gives the dog, during the protection phase of SchH, is NOT beating the dog. I guess that you know very little about this dog sport & it's training.

Shaking head....SIGH

 Quote: Anne Jones

Shaking head....SIGH

Me, too.