I now know that at that point I should have left.  Puppies, especially German Shepherds should never be taken away from their mothers until they are at least 8 weeks old.  Some breeders don’t let them go until they are 12 weeks old because they learn such a lot from their mothers and litter mates during this time.  King was 6 1/2 weeks old. 

From this point on I think I did some things right.  I enrolled him in Puppy Playgroup when he was 12 weeks old so that he could socialise with other dogs and people and followed it on with regular training classes with a very good dog trainer.   I read every book I could find about German Shepherds and their training, I took him to different places to get him used to all sorts of situations and he came away with us in the caravan.  We went for two long walks a day, on and off the lead and everything seemed to be going very well.

Then, when he was about 14 months old, things started to go wrong.  He would bark and bark at one of the dogs that we regularly walked with, not in an aggressive way, more “Pay attention to me”, but I couldn’t make him stop.  He was always friendly when we met people out on our walks, but he started barking at them more.  He began to sound more aggressive, although never actually coming close to biting anyone (at that point).  I wouldn’t be able to catch him, he would run round and round his hapless victim and eventually I would have to run off in the other direction, calling him and he would eventually follow.  I would say, in a jolly voice, “He just wants to play, he’s only a baby” but increasingly, we were being shouted at by the people he was barking at, sticks were waved and we began to avoid places where we might meet anybody.

Horses and bicycles were a big problem.  If I heard or saw them coming I could put him on his lead, and I would literally be hanging on for grim death whilst he was lunging and barking at them in a frenzy.  I have never been so grateful for being a big lady because I was able to plant my feet and lean back and he didn’t pull me over.  I couldn’t let my younger children take him out because they could not have held him. 

By October things were very bad.  He would lunge and bark at cars if we were walking along the road and when I didn’t hear a bicycle approaching he did bite the cyclist.  Well, he put his mouth around the man’s leg.  Luckily he didn’t puncture him, but he gave the man a dreadful fright.  He was swearing and shouting at us and I couldn’t get King back under control.  My daughter literally rugby tackled him and held on!  The man would have been entitled to call the police and I lived in fear for a few days that there would be a ring on my door, but luckily there wasn’t. 

Things were getting bad at home as well.  When visitors came round I couldn’t let King inside the house and he would bark and snarl and throw himself at the patio doors.  If he was in the car we couldn’t give anybody a lift because he would try to break down the dog guard and get at them.  He was never even mildly aggressive to his immediate family though, which made it very hard to accept that things had got so bad.  He was still very loving and affectionate and we could literally take food out of his mouth without even a curled lip.  He did jump up a lot though, and onto my lap, and onto the back of the armchair when I was sitting on it, and sometimes would bark for attention so much that I couldn’t sit with him in the kitchen.  The training classes had had to stop for a while because he had picked up Kennel Cough from one of the other dogs and when we went back he was barking and snarling and throwing himself at the other dogs.  The trainer was able to control him but as soon as I had him back he was doing it again.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was a caravan weekend at the end of October.  Walks were a nightmare because he was so aggressive to everyone, even people who he had met regularly since he was a puppy.  I was constantly frightened that we would meet people or horses when we were on our walks and I took to walking him in the middle of the night or very, very early in the morning.  Then he nearly attacked a child.  She wasn’t doing anything that should have frightened him, she wasn’t scared of dogs, she didn’t stare at him or make any sudden movements, we let King approach her at his own pace, and he attacked.  Luckily I had him on his head collar and was able to grab his collar as well and pull him away, but I truly believe he was going for her face. 

When we got home I phoned the dog trainer and he recommended an animal behaviourist.  She said she couldn’t help.  We were doing everything that she would have told us to do, she said, and King obviously wasn’t suited to being a family pet.  She gave me the name of the people who take dogs to train them for the army and said I should contact them and German Shepherd rescue.  With a heavy heart I filled out the form on the Defence Animal Centre website (which I was never to get a reply to) and typed German Shepherd Rescue into Google search. 

One of the sites that came up was Debbie’s.  She seemed to be saying that she could take problem dogs like King and turn them around.  When I phoned her I felt as if there was a tiny glimmer of hope.  She said she would take him and see what she could do, but there were no guarantees and she would be honest if she didn’t think I should keep him.  She told me to read two of the success stories on her website, Ollie’s and Nessa’s and to bring King up to her the next day.  When I read the stories, I cried and cried.  They were so similar to King’s and she had been able to help them, so maybe she could save him.

I cried all the way up to Newark and all the way home after leaving him there.  Debbie had looked at King’s pedigree and read it like a book.  She was able to tell that he didn’t have a strong working line, which was a good thing for a family pet, but there was quite a lot of in-breeding and one line was known for producing “sharp” natured dogs.  It wasn’t a hopeless case though and she thought she might be able to do something.  For the first week I mourned.  That is the only way to describe how I was feeling.  I felt as if King had died.  I read and re-read Ollie and Nessa’s stories and waited for Debbie’s almost daily e-mails with obsessional impatience.  In the second week things changed.  I began to realise how stressful having King had been.  Always looking over my shoulder in case somebody was coming, being shouted at for having a vicious dog.  I went out with other dogs and couldn’t believe how different it was, not having to worry. 

When Debbie phoned to say that I could come and get King I felt torn.  I was desperate to see him again, but I couldn’t believe that there could be any sort of significant improvement in his behaviour in only 2 weeks.  Having him back, only slightly better would be worse than not having him back at all.  I almost wished that she had said that there was no hope and she was sending him off to be a police dog.  My daughters and I drove up to get him in a state of trepidation.  When we got there, King was in a cage in the office.  We were not allowed to look at him or talk to him as he had to realise that he was now bottom of the pecking order.  He was hysterically excited to see us, but we couldn’t respond.  The girls found it very hard.  Debbie shook a little bottle of pebbles at him, which would immediately make him stop, and eventually he lay down and was quiet.  Then he was allowed out but again we weren’t allowed to talk to him and when he was sitting quietly and politely we could stroke him.  This humble King was a very different dog to the one I had left there.  Debbie talked us through it all for a couple of hours and then we were able to take him home.

I still didn’t believe that he would be much different once he was in his familiar environment, but I was completely and utterly wrong.  Back at home, he was perfect.  A shake of the bottle would immediately stop him barking and when we were allowed out on short walks he would walk along perfectly on the lead as if he had never had a problem.  Cars could go past, bicycles, or children and I would say “leave it” and he would!  Not even a hint of a lunge.  Visitors couldn’t believe the difference in him.  Was he drugged?  Had a lobotomy?  No, I would say, he’s been “Debbie'd”.

Four months on he’s still wonderful.  The bottle doesn’t have such an effect any more but I wouldn’t have to use it much if it did, because walking on the lead is a dream.  Even children on bicycles don’t get a reaction.  Visitors can come to the house and be introduced (if they aren’t frightened of big dogs in general) and we can take people in our car again.  Debbie is going to come here to give him a top up and make sure that we aren’t slipping in our training, but I have absolutely no doubt that he will be with us for ever now.

The best thing of all is that he is so much happier.  Debbie says that we had allowed him to be “top dog” and he didn’t like it.  He isn’t a naturally dominant dog, and he found it very stressful to have to be responsible for his pack’s safety.  He saw danger everywhere and totally over reacted out of fear.  Once the responsibility had been taken away from him he was able to relax.  The new leader of the pack, me, was now going to make sure that we would all be safe and he could just enjoy life, which he is.  Debbie also changed his diet, which we have kept up.  She feeds her dogs Vitalin, Lamb and Rice, which, very conveniently, you can have delivered.  I was feeding him a premium dry dog food, which should have been very good for him, but he often had diarrhoea.  Now he never does, his poos are a delight!  I never thought I would ever write that!

If you are reading this because you are in despair over your dog, please take hope from it.  Debbie can perform miracles. 

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