Sorry, but the cold hard fact is that any dog that will growl at people has an increased tendancy to bite. It may not happen for a long time because I am sure you will be careful. The time will come and all of a sudden your kid, the neighbors or whoever, maybe your wife will be in the hospital or worse.

The cold hard fact is you can smack the stuffing out of the dog as much as you want, that threat will always be there. If it were me I would put the dog down and get another. It sounds very harsh but the reality is, it is a much better choice then getting someone seriously hurt.

You are going to spend the next 12 + years on the guard everytime you have this dog out of it's kennel. You can't possibly take it around people without being on edge that something is going to happen.

I have had to testify in several court cases now on dog bite issues. I haven't seen the situation come out good for the owner of the dog yet.

In a couple cases you wouldn't believe what it cost them. Your home owners insurance doesn't cover this kind of damage if someone gets hurt on your property.

There are too many good dogs in this world to worry about the bad ones.

I know this post will probably upset you and many that read it but it is reality and if you stop any think about it and use your mind and not your heart you will come to the same conclusion.

I am very sorry this is happening to you. Even at 8 months when the pup started doing this there really was nothing you could do. I know people say they can take aggression out of them but the fact is you can never do it and be totally confident and safe that the dog isn't going to demonstrate this at some point in it's life.

Now that the pup has shown these signs and you are aware of it, you are dead in the water if you have to go to court over a dog bite incident. Any prior knowledge and you automatically get rung up. That is what the outcome was in the cases I had to be involved in.

By the way, I didn't offer to be questioned in these cases, I had no choice. It is a big pain in the butt and all you do is make enemies without having any control over the situation.

I sincerely hope everything works out for you. If there is a way to break this I would love to know it. In 23 years I haven't found a sure fire way to do it yet. At least where I was 100% sure the dog would never be aggressive towards people again.

Aggression towards other dogs is one thing and I agree can probably be stopped in certain cases. But aggression towards people is an entirely differet situation.

Sorry.