I’ve fostered over 90 animals for the local animal rescue and every so often we get one that’s unadoptable. I end up keeping them. One of them is a German Shepherd named Kurt. We don’t know his history, but he use to go nuts if he felt like he was being restrained. He had serious trust issues. We were at an adoption event with him once and a woman ran up and tried to hug him and he snapped at her.
We had a trainer come in and give us some advice on training him. My adult daughter started by giving him short hugs in the morning and rewarding him for not killing her. After a few months he got to the point where he runs up to us and wants a hug.
He’s only like that with family, though. When we go to the vet for blood work it takes four vet techs to restrain him. They tie him to a hook on the wall, put a muzzle on him, and three techs hold him down while one takes blood.
Aw.. When anyone hugs him he probably thinks they want to take blood.
My