I recently decided to adopt a dog from NKLA that appeared to be very adorable and loving. A male…read moreterrier, a dog that I thought would do well in my home with my girlfriend and our 2-year-old super-loving-bubbly-firecracker of a submissive little female pug mix. Everything went so well during the meet and greet of our dog! We were in love with our complete family right away! We were all SO happy, or so we thought. On day 1 following the adoption, our new dog was very affectionate, but seemed to get irritated with our pug when playing and bared his teeth. We told our pug to leave him alone. Over the next few days my girlfriend looked after the dogs as she works from home and everything appeared to be wonderful. He would give us kisses, allow us to pick him up, sit on our laps, play, show affection, make us laugh, lie in bed with us. All of the things you hope for in a fun-loving dog. On day 2, my girlfriend went to pick him up and who we thought was a loving boy with a great personality bared his teeth and immediately bit my girlfriend on the hand, but did not break skin. The bruise lasted for several days. We were in shock to say the least and blamed the incident on our behavior, thinking we had done something to provoke the bite. Moving forward to Friday of the first week together we were all sitting on the couch as a family. The two pups started to play together when suddenly our new dog snarled at our other dog. He then lunged at my girlfriend's face snapping his jaws closed. A near miss. At that moment we were beginning to have apprehensions about our newly adopted dog. We tried to remain optimistic. That Saturday we visit a dog beach. We kept our adopted dog on leash. Not to long after arriving at this dog beach this adopted dog was growling at other dogs and nearly bit a German Shepard in passing, but then redirected his aggression toward me, biting me on the elbow breaking skin and then proceeded to bite my left hand as I tried to pack up and leave the beach as this clearly was not going well. Our vet met our adopted dog who immediately suggested we return him as he was clearly aggressive and had other behavioral issues. We decided not to give up and see how it goes. The following weekend while working in the yard, our landlord who was visiting unlocked a gate allowing our dog to escape. After catching up to our adopted dog who was marking flowers and watching me in calm state, allowed me to kneel down to his level without running off. As I went to pick him up, he bit my right hand, leaving a puncture and drawing blood. He ran off again. As I finally was able to catch up to him once again, he remained calm once again. But in this case I grabbed him by the collar from the back of his neck. He squirmed vigorously and let out a cry and began hissing trying with everything he had to bite me again and again. This lasted for 20 seconds or so before he calmed down.
We decided that evening that we wanted to return our adopted animal as he was clearly aggressive. Adorable, but highly aggressive. The next day we ended up in the emergency vet first thing Sunday morning around 7 or 8 am, learning that he sustained a strain to his leg likely from his having run off. We contacted Addie Daddio of Love That Dog Hollywood, a coalition partner of NKLA, as our vet guided us, stating that the injury was unfortunate, but that we had made the decision to return him due to his excessive aggression before learning of any strain to his leg. Addie became very accusatory stating that this was not the dog that she knew, that we must have done something to provoke this behavior from him, that we were just trying to get out of medical bills, that we are "pieces of garbage and she hopes karma finds us." We are loving people with good hearts. We would have never had considered adopting an animal if we were not good-hearted people. We wanted to do the right thing and Adopt, Not Shop. Addie is kind when things are going well, but she like our adopted dog are both of similar behaviors and very nasty at the flip a switch. We received several unsavory texts from Addie over the last couple days. Addie Daddio of Love That Dog Hollywood is the most unprofessional, unsavory, and outright nasty human beings we have ever encountered and it reflects poorly on NKLA. She called our vet with 40 years of experience and harassed him as well. She insisted to meet him in person. I would highly encourage NKLA to sever ties with this individual who shames good-hearted people with good intentions when a dog adoption does not work out. We feel that our pet adoption was a failure and we are broken hearted. Because of this experience with Addie Daddio, we will NEVER feel comfortable adopting from NKLA again.
