We adopted a dog from Five Acres just over one wee...

We adopted a dog from Five Acres just over one week ago. It was a beautiful 2 year old Great Pyrenees. The staff did warn us that the dog had originally been given up due to nipping the hand of a child. That being said, my wife and 11 year old son fell in love with he dog and we adopted him. When he was brought home he immediately took to everyone and was incredibly well behaved. After a couple days we noticed that if he managed to get something we didn t want him to have he would growl if we tried to take it away. Eventually he would drop it with enough coaxing. Once he did snap at me but it seemed like something that could be trained out of him. Unfortunately we never got that chance.

Three days ago the dog grabbed something from our trash can. My wife repeatedly told him drop it and he eventually did. I was standing about three feet away from the dog. After he dropped the piece of trash he started growling. I backed away and at that point he lunged at me and jumped on me. This is a 100 pound dog that has his paws on my shoulders and biting my back and side. I got loose and went to the other end of our living room. The dog then came at me again but my wife was able to calm him down and get him on his leash. I have deep puncture wounds and scratches on my back and side from the attack. That day we brought the dog back to Five Acres and they did nothing but make my wife feel guilty for returning the dog. She explained that this was not something we wanted to do but we could not trust that the dog wouldn t do that again. We have an 11 year old and that same attack would have been face level for him. We felt terrible for the dog and were still wanting to adopt another one but we were told that they will not adopt to people that surrender a dog. And to add insult to injury we had to pay them to take the dog back. We did everything we though appropriate with the care of this dog. He was walked multiple times per day, was played with, we did not yell and used positive reinforcement with his training.

I have come to believe that the people at Five Acres weren t exactly 100% forthcoming about the aggressivenesss of the dog. We believe that the dog had been abused previously. He was extremely afraid of stairs and would not walk up a staircase. He did not react the same way towards me as he did my wife. I think that he suffered abuse by a male before he was initially given away. Unfortunately the people my wife spoke to when she returned the dog were not interested in hearing anything about the circumstances of the return. They treated my wife poorly and made her feel guilty for what happened. We were just as concerned about the welfare of the dog as we were about my injuries. I did not get them treated because I didn t want to have the dog taken by animal control. I wanted to bring it back to Five Acres. We didn t ask for our money back, all we wanted was to get a different dog.

The shame of it all is that the dog is beautiful, smart and more often than not, very friendly. I hope that they are able to work with him to help with whatever problem is causing his aggression. No one can guarantee the behavior of an animal. But that mindset has to be shared by everyone. We were treated as though this was our fault and there was no possible way the dog could have attacked me without being provoked.

I could not in good conscience adopt another dog from Five Acres. Not only did they not seem to care about the situation, they did not seem overly concerned about the dog either. We understand that these things happen but based on this experience and how they reacted I just would not trust them.