My high strung, anxious rescue dog attacked my 5 yo nephew. Feel like I set him up for failure and need to figure out next steps.

Hi everyone, I am looking for input with the disclaimer that I am also involving my vet and a certified behaviorist. I am heartbroken and feeling so guilty.

There are so many red flags in retrospect and it is painful to go over it all-please be gentle with me as I know many on this thread are long time pros at managing aggressive/reactive behavior and dog psychology. I always grew up with quirky rescue dogs but none with this kind of aggressive behavior and I truly was so ignorant to the early warning signs.

I adopted Bodi, a wiggly, beautiful brindle 40 lb pit/boxer mix six months ago. He had just turned two. He is very fast, skinny, strong, and can literally jump 6 feet straight up. His pre-adoption history from what I know: he was a stray from south carolina, was shipped up to a rescue in Vermont by the time he was 1.5. Lived in a foster home with a young woman and her two labs for about six months. Was adopted out and then returned (foster mom said the family had young kids and he was just "too much"). Foster mom moved back to MD and brought Bodi with her, hence how I found him. My girlfriend and I scheduled a meet and greet and Bodi emerged at the door, shoe in mouth (he always needs something in his mouth), wiggly waggy and friendly as ever. While we chatted with the foster mom, Bodi brought his "blankie" out and started blanket sucking (something I had never heard or seen before but the behaviorist recently told me it's often an anxious compulsion or can be pathological). We fell in love immediately and expressed our interest, and ultimately decided to move forward with his adoption.

The week before we were meant to pick him up, the foster mom texts me that she just had to break up a horrible fight between Bodi and one of her labs. She said Bodi tore up her dog's leg and he needed stitches, and Bodi had a knick on his head. She said she needed Bodi out ASAP and was very rattled by the experience, since they had gotten along for the last 6 months in the house (mostly unsupervised and free range inside). She assumed it was over a toy because he was speculated to have some resource guarding as a puppy, which she had never witnessed. After much deliberation we decided to move forward anyway- with the assumption that he had some RG tendencies and as a single pet, childless household we could manage.

I know this is getting wordy so going to give a chronological list of aggressive events, many of which we only recognized in retrospect while reviewing with the behaviorist.

-Fast forward to the first week we had Bodi in the house, and a couple friends came over for dinner (already our mistake, way too soon to introduce him to so many people). After he greets all of them with minimal issues (he did growl briefly at one man), about an hour later my friend crouches down to say hello to him and he immediately lunges at her and bites her on the arm -not breaking skin (we didn't even realize it was a bite until the behaviorist told us, we all thought it was just a scratch). We recognized the environment was way too stimulating and tried to just let him decompress, and for the following months he was a super sweet though high strung dog.

-A couple months later, finally take Bodi to meet my parents dogs (two sweet dogs). We introduce them very intentionally outside on leash, walk with them, take them off leash and they play well together, and we walk them back to the house. The night is going well and then my sisters come over for dinner, and we're eating on the patio. Bodi jumps on the couch next to me, while a coffee table in front of us has a leftover plate of food, and on the other side of the table my parents dog is sitting, just staring at the food. Bodi lets out a low growl and I immediately start to stand up to get him off the couch and redirect him, but at nearly the same time he's already flying through the air towards my parents dog. I intercept him and he bites me on the forearm-deep. My sub q was protruding out through the two puncture wounds. I ended up getting antibiotics and it healed ok, and although it was a human bite I was blind or in denial and we chalked it up to being "meant" for the dog, so still considered it dog-centric reactivity around food and maybe guarding me since it happened as soon as he jumped on the couch.

-Months pass uneventfully, at home in the city Bodi is great if not a little hyperactive and anxious. He does great with our dog walkers, we had a pet sitter stay the week with him and he was fine. We were very cautious about letting him interact with other dogs but on occasion he would play one on one in a fenced in area with other dogs that were his speed, and they always played well. He sleeps in our bed and is such a lover. We pick him up, flop him around, can do anything to him and he's so tolerant. He can be left alone in the house, very much house trained, picks up quick on commands and tricks, and is simply adorable. He loves getting new stuffed animals and flies around the house tossing them around and ripping out the stuffing. We are such a happy little family and he is an incredibly spoiled only child.

Then recently an incredibly disturbing event happened which brings me here. Over Christmas Bodi came home to visit my family with me. He did great, running around with the dogs, ignoring my many loud nephews who were all playing outside and inside and manically opening gifts. I was so proud of him. A week later, we returned to my parents house for a family dinner (my parents, my sisters, their young kids). Bodi ran in the house with the other dogs and as I was in another room, within ten minutes of being there I hear screams and chaos, and Bodi had attacked my 5 year old nephew. He had ran into the living room where my nephew was playing on the ground in a little pop-up tent, and I was told my nephew was rocking in and out of the tent. Bodi lunged and bit his face, and as the adults in the room rushed to pick up my nephew, Bodi bit several more times. He bit his arm, breaking skin and causing puncture wounds and a massive tear through the subcutaneous tissue along his forearm that required sutures. He also bit his torso several times, breaking skin and causing bruising though not as deep as the arm punctures (thank god).

It was absolutely horrifying. Thankfully it wasn't worse, my nephew went to the ED and was ruled out for internal bleeding and the connective tissue around his eye was unharmed from the cheek bite. He was so brave and the wounds are currently healing uncomplicated, and hopefully will have minimal scarring but he did have a semilunar slice/gash below his eye. Not sure if this would be considered a level 3.5 or level 4 bite bc the tear could have been from my nephew getting picked up by his mom as Bodi was biting. Also not sure if caring about the level of bite is splitting hairs.

I haven't stopped crying in days. I never thought he would be aggressive with humans, even after he bit me, and I will always live with the guilt of not implementing conservative management and behaviorist intervention after (or even before tbh) he bit me.

He is still within his 10 day quarantine and we are going to have an in person assessment with the behaviorist next week, but her initial consult with us after this event was fairly grim. I am cycling through so many stages of grief and it was all so traumatic. Not to mention two days later Bodi developed severe gastroenteritis and was hospitalized for two days in a row, not eating or drinking for nearly 4 days. We thought he had an obstruction he was so sick. The whole week has been surreal and traumatic.

I love Bodi so much and I am so heartbroken about his future. I know there's no "farm" for him to go live out his days on. My sister, who is so empathetic and kind, thinks the most humane thing to do is behavioral euthanasia. I know otherwise we will be managing him with medication, intensive training and muzzle training for the rest of his life and we could never trust him with anyone else because he is at this point a huge liability. I truly am horrified to think that he could have killed my nephew if adults weren't around. I know I can't think clearly from being utterly exhausted and heartbroken, but I also know I'm so biased because I love him and feel like he is such a good boy at home, in his normal routine, and I pushed him over the edge by putting an anxious high arousal dog into a chaotic environment. Looking for insight after this severe attack of a human (child) . Am I just too lost in grief to see the obvious, and is it delusional to think we could safely manage him and still give him a good quality of life. I feel like we haven't even given him a chance with medications and training, and we've only had him 6 months. But also would we just be biding our time for another bite with potentially massive consequences?

So many on this thread manage dogs that are consistently reactive or aggressive-I feel like Bodi is a confusing situation for me to wrap my head around because his baseline is hyper and sweet, and his issue seems more related to fear and anxiety and hyperarousal. Our behaviorist thinks he was abused as a puppy and is incredibly fearful. She says she expects he'll get worse with age, that his behavior is "rapidly escalating", and that with every bite the next one comes easier.

TL;DR: I've had my 2.5 yo pitbull mix for 6 months and this week he attacked my nephew, a multiple bite attack requiring sutures. This all escalated so quickly that it feels like BE is too rash, but the attack was so terrifying. Any thoughts appreciated.

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