Hi guys,
I just wanted to feed back to you the completely wonderful(and mostly unexpected!!) news that teddy is still with us and mostly doing brilliantly. This dog has taken my soul, all my energy and every ounce of patience, experience and knowledge I have, along with large chunks of money with behaviourists and vets. He still resource guards, but we have worked so hard as a family and have management techniques for every scenario we have faced so far. He is a delight in so many ways and we adore him, which is one of the reasons he is still here. He is now ten months, and matures every week, such a sociable, happy, joyous ball of craziness. There are periods when I have doubts we can make it work, when he has hormonal surges and his unpredictability surges, but mostly he is a dude and a thug whom we adore. I've never owned such a challenging dog, but the rewards are also great. We have adapted our home and lives to adjust to teddy-we live with stair gates on every room so we can control where he has access to, but these are small things. He and our older dog play for hours, live mostly happily side by side (except the moments teddy guards food, space or me), and he is an absolutely pleasure with animals, dogs, children, in fact anything we meet out walking. His recall is practically perfect, he is a delight in almost all the ways. I'm very aware that with different handling, both of him and the whole situation, teddy could have become a very different dog with a very different future. I'm blessed to have had the support of people who, like me, believe gentle us always the way, and I'm so happy to be able to update you all that he is here for good, unless he does something REALLY bad!!!!! I love this dog, in a very visceral and robust way, and our relationship is so different from any I've had with an animal before, but he fits, we love him and I'm so grateful for all the supportive comments I had here in what was genuinely one of the darkest times in my life. Thank you, everyone 💗