About Levi |
- Status: Adopted!
- Adoption Fee: 250.00
- Species: Dog
- Rescue ID: 2013-081
- Color: Black and tan
- Ear Type: Erect
- Tail Type: Long
- Current Age: 18 Years 2 Months (best estimate)
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- Housetrained: Yes
- Owner Experience Needed: Breed
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Levi Requires a Special Pre-Questionaire. Please fill out this questionnaire first. We will contact potential adopters after a decision has been made.
Levi Questionnaire
Levi ~7 years old. Good with older considerate children and large female dogs. Not good with small dogs or cats.
GSRA is looking for a very special home for a very special dog named Levi. You may already be aware of Levi’s story, but if not, here’s a recap: Levi is a large, 7-year-old, classically handsome male German shepherd who was surrendered to a small rural shelter in Virginia by his former owner, who had “become afraid of him.” Up until that point he had lived his entire life in a small pen in the yard, with minimal human interaction and NO interaction with other animals. Needless to say, the shelter environment was a shocking, stressful change for him. This shelter has a low adoption rate to begin with and the volunteers there quickly realized that Levi needed the extra support a breed-savvy rescue could provide, so reached out to several local GSD rescues, including GSRA.
We were touched by his plight and wanted to help him, so we made the trip to the shelter to assess him in person and see what he would need to become adoptable. What we encountered at the shelter was a gorgeous, very large, confident dog with NO social skills and NO reason to think that humans might mean him anything but harm. Furthermore, since he had never had the benefit of a strong and kind human leader to follow, he was very much used to being in charge himself—to the extent that he could be in charge of anything, that is. But being the confident dog he was, he was certainly going to try, and he had the brawn and sharp teeth to give “being in charge” a good go. This was completely understandable given his life experiences, but it also posed a serious challenge to transitioning him into foster care and, eventually, a loving adoptive home. We left that day wanting to help him even more than ever, but sadly realizing we didn’t have the skills within the rescue to give him what he needed. Still, we didn’t want to completely write him off, as one of the shelter volunteers had made a LOT of progress in gaining his trust, to the point where she could handle him with ease, groom him, etc.
To backtrack a little: while GSRA was making plans to go assess Levi and wracking our brains to figure out a way to help him, our sister rescue, Virginia German Shepherd Rescue (VGSR), was going through very much the same process. Although neither of us had the solution on our own, once we partnered the plan came together in a hurry: GSRA reached out to our network of trainers and lined up an excellent trainer willing to work with Levi intensively for a few months, and VGSR put together an impressive (and successful!) fundraising effort to make the training possible.
Looking back on the experience, a LOT of people saw something worth saving in Levi—from the seasoned Animal Control Officers at the shelter, to the shelter volunteers, to the leadership of several experienced GSD rescues, to the MANY individuals who gave so generously during VGSR’s fundraiser. What was it that made so many people want to go the extra mile to save Levi? We can’t say exactly, but there was SOMETHING that inspired an extraordinary effort from a lot of dedicated people. Which brings us to today.
Levi has now been living in the trainer’s home with his family for five months, and has made incredible progress. When handled by people he knows and trusts, Levi now seeks out human touch and enjoys a good butt-scratching as much as any dog. More importantly, Levi shows JOY, grinning like a fool as he runs through training exercises and approaches new experiences that his trusted humans have assured him are going to be FUN. This transformation is exactly what everyone hoped might happen but dared not truly expect. We are now helping Levi become more comfortable with other dogs. He’s made huge strides here, too, and gets better with each interaction, but it is a slow process. Imagine trying to learn completely new social skills in middle age; you’d probably need a little correcting, too. :-) He is very good with our trainer’s female GSD puppy and mighty interested in the adult female dogs he’s met. We think he could live happily with (dare I say be bossed around by???) a well-mannered, confident female dog. Interacting well with male dogs is still a work in progress, but he desperately WANTS to figure this out, and we are helping him. We think he’ll get there, given time.
Our trainer believes, and we agree, that Levi has progressed almost as far as he can in his current situation. What he needs to get him the rest of the way to being the happy, well-adjusted dog we now know he can be is to meet and bond with his forever owner. But, that owner will need to be up to the task of truly being the leader that Levi needs. All of our adopters bring sincerity and good intentions to the table when deciding to adopt from a rescue, and we truly appreciate and value that. But sincerity and good intentions by themselves are not ALL that is needed to ensure that Levi succeeds—we also need experience in handling and gaining the trust of a confident dog who had a rough start in life. Therefore, we are looking for a very particular kind of adopter for Levi, ideally with the following characteristics:
• Can provide a child-free home. Levi currently lives with our trainer’s young children and is fine in that highly structured environment. However, children, and especially the visiting friends of children, represent a risk factor that we prefer to avoid. Therefore, we will place Levi only into a home that has no one under the age of 17.
• Previous experience with one or more large, confident dogs
• Previous rescue experience
• No current dogs or cats in the home, or only a large-breed female dog. Levi is improving in his socialization with other animals, but at the moment is still somewhat reactive to other dogs and not trustworthy with cats. His reactivity to other dogs continues to improve (we are actively working on this, as noted above), but he most likely will NOT become nonreactive to cats and other small animals.
• A commitment to ongoing training. Levi’s current trainer is in the Charlotte area and we’d love to place him in or around Charlotte so our trainer could provide post-adoption support. However, we are completely open to an adopter from another geographic area IF you have access to a local trainer who has experience and skills with a challenging dog like Levi and will provide post-adoption support. We would want to get to know this individual during the screening/adoption process, so please identify him/her when you contact us.
Because we are looking for such a specific type of adopter for Levi, we are going outside of our usual process to find him or her. If you think you are that person, or MIGHT be that person, please fill out and submit an adoption pre-application (see link at the top of the page), describing how you meet each of the criteria we’ve identified as important in Levi’s ideal forever home. We will then contact you via email about next steps. But whether you are interested in adopting Levi or not, thank you for caring enough about him to take the time to read this.
