I apologize if this gets a little lengthy.
I have an american white shepherd (I think that's what they're calling the white german shepherds now) named Whisper, he's not my first one, I had a female before him before she got on in age. She was an angel and a great companion.
A quick background on Whisper who I'm concerned with. I got him from a breeder at 6 weeks of age. (I wasn't aware that it would have been better to wait another 2 weeks before we got him. However what's done is done, we have him.)
He was very well behaved early on, listened idealy and a very fast learner. He understood his place and we were doing reward training with him. He loved it and was always socialized with people and kids. Well when he was around 11-12 weeks, a friend of ours and her husband came over and wanted to see Whisper.
Her husband started going on about male dominance and alpha challenges, which I'm familiar but I explained to him that Whisper's place in our family is being established and we were doing fine. Anyway our friend who swears he knows everything about dogs (yet ironically hasn't own any) started talking about the "old school" training methods of alpha submission and pretty much bully-training to be superior over him.
I told him again that is not how we are training our pup. The reward training is working perfectly and that's also how we trained Daisy. I got up for a moment to the kitchen to get my guests something to drink and then I heard a whining and came back into the livingroom to see my friend's husband pinning Whisper to the ground and holding his muzzle shut!!
I don't really honestly know what I was thinking when I saw that, but he let Whisper go and said "I wasn't hurting him, I was just showing him that he wasn't dominant over me." I was so angry, told him that he had absolutely no right to do that, it was not his place and told them to leave.
Unfortunately ever since then Whisper has been very uncomfortable around people, barks at everyone, and it took a very long time for him to let me even touch his head. Every time I tried to correct any wrong behavior, which wasn't often thank goodness, he would litteraly protest and challenge me. I had no idea that what our friend had done would be so traumatizing. I mean I can only imagine but I was trying everything I can for the next while to bring Whisper's trust about.
I took him to the vet and explained what happened. The vet told me to take him to training classes to help Whisper out. I did all that and he graduated. The only thing that we got out of it as that he listens to the commands, but he's still fearful of people and very challenging when it's time for an misbehavior. Working with him for the past months has become very stressful and the worst has happened. Today when he snatched a piece of apple off of the table, I went to correct him with "no" and wanted to guide him out of the dining room. But when I reached for his collar, he actually snapped at me and bit me. I was so shocked, I never had that happen to me before. He didn't cause me to bleed thank goodness but my hand does hurt and it's bruised. I didn't know what to do other than to command him into his kennel and shut the door.
I have no idea what to do. I'm very heart broken right now because I feel like I lost him. I feel like I failed. I've been trying to work with him since that incident I guess I haven't been doing that good of a job like I thought.
Now I'm worried he might do it again. I really don't know what to do.....
Okay, not really but it's fun to think about. Keep posting updates on how it's going wtih Whisper.
