[fabsroman]

I agree with DogYeller. If it doesn't work out, you might want to think about giving the dog to somebody with a lot of property that will keep him outside where he will not have too much contact with humans other than during training and hunting (i.e., he won't be able to maul a child).

We had an English Springer when we were all young and that dog growled at my little sister once when she was a couple of years old, and I thought my dad was going to kill him. He stayed outside most of the, but this night he was inside under the table eating a bone from dinner. My baby sister went to pet him and he growled at her. My dad's answer was to lift the table up and beat the crap out of the dog. That dog bit my hand once, but I still believe to this day that it was an accident. He was trying to eat a crab shell and I went to take it out of his mouth. Well, it slipped out of my hand and he went to catch it as I was trying to catch it and my hand and his mouth met. He did growl at me one other time, and that was when he had a pheasant in his mouth and didn't want to let go. My dad hit him with a broom so hard that I thought the dog was surely dead.

That very same dog ended up biting quite a few people, but there were some explanations for it. One girl got bitten, but she stepped on him while he was sleeping. A friend of my brother got bit, but that was right after the lit a pipe bomb in the back yard and started running toward the dog. The bomb went off and the dog bit one of them. In the end, the dog was a bad dog probably because of the way my dad trained it (i.e., lack of training). I was too young back then to know any better.

TSadler had this problem with her dog and it seems as though she was able to solve the problem. Problem is that I haven't seen her on the board lately.

If I can think of anything else that is helpful, I'll post about it, but you should really check out the threads by TSadler.