The dog I took out was named Sosa; he's a biiiiiiiggg German Shepherd/Rottie mix of some sort. He has a cute face, where it always looks like he's smiling at you.
He definietly lived up to his size as he pulled a lot on his leash, and if there was something ahead that he wanted to get to, i.e food or a bird/bunny, he'd get these huge jolts of energy and lunge towards whatever got his attention. More than once he almost yanked me off my feet trying to get to someone who had bread treats, and in his eagerness to get to the wooded trail he pulled me so hard I slipped on some grass and fell into the mud.
Sosa seemed like a very nice dog; he responded well to food (of course) and was quite obedient when it came to doing things for them (sit, down). He waited to be released from the command before moving, and when it came to other dogs he didn't appeared not to be fazed by them: while in the pens another dog came up to the fence and they both had a sniff of each other, but the other dog growled and bared its teeth...Sosa merely looked politely puzzled.
I tried training him not to pull so hard on his leash, but I can safely say my attempts failed...miserably. The times when he'd pull, I would stop in my tracks, waiting for the leash to slacken a little so I could praise him at the right time and start walking again. It never happened. I would stop and become a tree, and Sosa would sniff around and look at the other dogs and try to lunge forward when he realized we weren't moving. When nothing happened, he would just sit down and wait, which is NOT what I wanted!
On the SPCA page, it says his owners gave him up because they didn't have enough space and fencing for him at their home. If that's the case, why would you adopt a dog that's a German Shepherd/Rottie mix then? Surely you can't expect a dog to be, at full grown size the size of a poodle? Another example of people who don't do their research before getting a pet!
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