Originally Posted by
RobbiesAngel:
“I saw an advert this morning for a 10 week old Akita bitch - change in circumstances so can't keep her anymore. I had to send a message suggesting return to breeder or contact breed rescue. An Akita in the wrong hands doesn't bear thinking about.
In the past few weeks I've also seen a young adult cat that 'needs gone today', 2 Alaskan Malamutes 'grab a bargain at £400 for both', a young rottie that the owner doesn't have time for 'as i have 4 kids and other dogs and it's not fair on her' (did the kids and dogs just appear overnight?!), a teacup chihuahua £695 without papers, £950 with papers (yup, cos it costs £255 to register a pup with the KC), oh the list goes on and on.
One I saw last week did make me laugh out loud though - a 3 year old gerbil for £20! A gerbil of that age does not have long for this world and they are asking for twice the price of a baby one! Yeah, good luck with that. Am so tempted to message and see if it's still available 
”
Aren't Akitas classed as a dangerous dog, which means you need some sort of special licence to own one? I may be getting it confused with another Japanese dog though.
As far as rehoming animals goes, I've noticed several sites on Facebook that try to do the same as Gumtree, but most of them seem to be for free (no payment, except for stuff like petrol if you need it delivered). No doubt they're set up by well meaning people, but get abused. I've heard some horror stories about people involved in dog fighting keeping an eye on these groups for dogs that may make good fighters or for dogs that would be a good animal to use for training their fighting dogs on.
A friend 'rescued' a 21-month, male Staffy through a group on Facebook (about 2 years ago) and the blurb it was advertised with was it was a good natured dog, great around kids,chipped and vaccinated, and all the usual stuff, but that it had been neutered, and was looking to be rehomed due to the previous owners having to move into a flat. Thankfully, it had been neutered which meant it was unattractive to BYBs or people looking to train dogs for fights, but as my friend was actually looking for a dog that had been neutered as she wasn't interested in breeding, finds the idea of two dogs fighting sickening, and when they're neutered they're also less aggressive (important when you have kids around a lot), she took an interest.
When the dog turned up everything 'seemed' normal. It was manic and excitable like Staffies are, was really adorable, and as I was actually staying at hers due to work at the time it didn't make me in the least bit nervous which is rare around dogs I don't know well. Within days the cracks began to show. If voices were raised (whether due to arguments or high spirits) the dog would actually find a corner and cower with it's tail between it's legs. If you tried to give it some fuss at random it just looked confused, even though it was all happy and waggy-tails when you came in. I've also never known a dog not to play "tug" with a bit of rope or dog toys. It also would wolf down any food you put in front of it in one go at a speed that meant it made itself sick, and we found out it was crawling with fleas. Add to that, the fact that it was needing to go to the loo every three hours, and if it couldn't when it wanted to it would make a mess (and look pretty pitiful afterwards) it looked like it hadn't even been house trained. This last point caused problems because myself and my friend had to take it in turns to have the dog sleep with us so we could let it out when it needed to go.
Getting rid of the fleas was relatively easy, but when it came to it getting it's jabs a few months in, my friend mentioned about the chip and the fact that any attempts to get the registered owner papers (or whatever they're called) from the original owners had failed, the vet ran a reader over the dog and found no chip. He guessed it hadn't even been jabbed and was possibly not as old as he was meant to be. From the looks of it, the dog had been mistreated and was probably passed on because of it's chewing (it would chew almost anything if it couldn't find it's toys), but Staffies generally chew simply because they can (yes, I know it's also a sign of boredom, but the dog was taken on walks three times a day) and they love mouthing things (I had a Staffy/Elkhound cross that wouldn't fall asleep unless he had my hand in his mouth and no, he never bit me by accident!).
It was not so much a retraining, but a rehabilitation. Even now the dog is still wary around raised voices although not to the point of cowering, and still occasionally gives in to easily when playing tug, but the house training was a breeze (took about 6 months before it was able to spend a full night). He will now let you give him belly rubs as long as he knows you, and has stopped eating a full bowl of food the second it's put in front of him. There has been some unexpected bonuses though. Due to his nature, you can take a bone from him without him snarling or trying to defend it, he's also quite obedient and not aggressive with other dogs, although will defend himself if he has to. He'd make a crap guard dog though, and would more likely just lick any intruders to death, although I will admit when I was playing rough and tumble with my mate's nephew, he did seem to be on alert and watching my intentions.
I suppose we should have picked up on the fact that within 2 minutes of the dog arriving the original owners asked whether my friend wanted him. The home check was basically just them trying to dump him on my friend. It was pretty sad really, because one thing we noticed was when they left he didn't even follow them to the door. He had plonked himself on the sofa, and when they went to pat him to say "goodbye" he seemed like he wasn't interested. We put that down to him realising what was happening and was just making his feelings known, although in hindsight he was probably just relieved. He's just been lucky that my friend had the patience and devotion she has, and that she's a nice person or I shudder to think where he could have ended up.
While I agree there should be some monitoring in place in regards to breeders and people looking to take in dogs, this would probably just drive it underground. I could also see people who have had animals that escaped and managed to mate just dumping the puppies or worse.
