Parker (bite history)

Parker is 2.5yrs old and was saved from the Wildomar shelter (Animal Friends of the Valley) at the end of July 2020, at 10mos old. He was “rescue only" for being human aggressive and having bitten. He’s our youngest sanctuary dog to date and cannot be safely adopted out due to the severity of his aggression and bite history. In the time that he’s been with us, we’ve learned just how challenging of a dog he is due to an unsound temperament, and that he’s a dog that takes a long time to build a trusting relationship with. He can be playful and really wants to please his person. He thrives on direction and needs someone that is his rock and foundation in life. Without the necessary guidance, his insecurities bring out the worst in him.  As challenging as he may be, his life serves a purpose and he’s here to teach us and the world some valuable lessons in life.  His story is complicated and truth be told, mind boggling and infuriating, but there’s a lot to be learned from his entire ordeal - not just about the necessities of training, but about irresponsible breeding and shady breeders who only care about profit, not the dogs’ wellbeing or the wellbeing of the families they go to. After Parker came to QBSDR, we later met one of his litter-mates, who also displayed aggression and eventually bit his senior owner. As for Parker, this is his story. In late July 2020, we received an email from a breeder in Temecula about a 10mo old aggressive corgi. Let’s call her, DubJ. DubJ wanted to surrender him to QBSDR after he was returned to her by his family. We had a conversation by phone and requested that she start with the basics of crate training him to give him a head start before we took him in, and asked that surrender forms be filled out. This boy was 10mos old and had bitten all four members of his family, with his aggression having started at 5mos old. He chased family members out of rooms, charged at them in the yard, guarded his crate, and actively challenged. At one point, he sent dad to the ER after taking off the top of his knuckle.  DubJ said she would crate train him, fill out the forms, and had refunded his family the $2000 they paid for Parker. Not long after, we found Parker posted on RescueMe.org for $25 - his breeder’s attempt to quickly get him off her hands. Several days passed and we still had not received the forms, so we reached out asking whether he still needed rescue as we were saving a spot at QBSDR for him and hadn’t seen the forms come through. DubJ said that he would no longer be coming to QBSDR, that she sent him off to a trainer that day. One hr later, we received another msg from a woman who had been to DubJ’s house and met Parker. She informed us that he was in fact at the shelter - that DubJ had called animal control on him the night before, and animal control picked him up. She said DubJ opted to not fill out the forms because she “didn’t have the time.” We immediately reached back out to DubJ and asked if she called animal control to pick up Parker, the night before. DubJ gave a roundabout answer saying the “trainer” couldn’t get a collar on him, that he couldn’t be crated, and that she had for him 5 days and gave him “a lot" of a sedative called acepromazine (Parker was given 6x’s the normal dose), that she just wanted to “save his life” and that she gave him the love he wanted, only for him to bite her for no reason. The next day the shelter reached out to us about Parker, asking if we could take him since we’d previously taken bite cases from their shelter. We learned that not only did DubJ lie to us about sending him to a trainer, she lied to animal control claiming that she “found an aggressive corgi” and they needed to come get him. When animal control got to her place, the officer asked how she got an aggressive corgi into her house. Thats when DubJ broke down crying and confessed that she was actually his breeder, that he was returned after biting his family, and that she couldn’t keep him. Two days later, the shelter released Parker from bite quarantine and into our care. We posted on our social media page that Parker was safe and out of the shelter. The next day, his family reached out saying thank you for rescuing him, and explained their whole situation. As it turns out, Parker was the entire family’s very first dog, ever. They were not given any guidance on what to do as first time dog owners of a corgi puppy. Parker began displaying aggression at 5mos old. They eventually sought help from a veterinary behaviorist, had Parker on multiple medications, and ultimately were given two options by the vet behaviorist - to euthanize Parker or return him to their breeder. They returned him to DubJ and were told that she’d be sending him to QBSDR for training to get him the help he needed, giving his family the impression that DubJ had some type of personal relationship with QBSDR. They were infuriated and had no idea she would instead send him to the shelter, where he could have easily been euthanized. They were also appalled that DubJ posted him for $25, knowing full well the damage he had inflicted on the family, potentially putting others in harms way, just to try to get him off her hands. As it turned out, they were also never refunded the $2k that DubJ claimed she returned. The lesson in this convoluted story is that Parker was not bred to be temperamentally sound, raising concern about the rest of the dogs bred by this person.  His breeder only cared about profit and was willing to sell her dogs to anyone that could pay the price, no matter how unprepared or inexperienced they may be. The point of sharing this is so people are informed about the unethical practices of irresponsible breeders. Please do as much research as possible before bringing a living 15yr commitment into your home, and don’t get bamboozled by greedy for-profit breeders that only care about lining their pockets, not the lives they bring into this world, or the households those lives go to. Millions of animals needlessly lose their lives, every day. Help save a life by choosing to adopt an animal in need.