Hello all,
It has been a while since I posted here. I have been with my pure breed Basenji "Marvel" for 5 years. Plenty of ups and downs that make life interesting and fun. This page has helped us a lot during his upbringing, so I decided to come back for more guidance.
My wife and I are planning to try having kids soon, but we are extremely concerned with how our basenji will behave with our child and vice versa. The three of us operate in a tight pack and we all love each other dearly. We recently bought a house with a big backyard just for him, and it has helped a lot, but he is pretty stubborn and his attitude has up and downs. He's not friendly with strangers, including kids, and it's a hit or miss with other dogs. He is sometimes "okay" to be touched by a stranger IF they let Marvel approach them. He is also not neutered. His behavior changes during mating season - mounting, more aggression, possesive, etc. I'm extremely concerned about the possibility of Marvel biting our future child.
Today, he surprisingly bit my wife really hard while protecting his food when we were trying to give him meds; he recently had a GI issue that we are addressing with medication. Drew blood and bruise on her hand. This triggered us to really talk future plans and impacts to bringing a child in with Marvel.
We decided to get him into training courses asap, something we never considered before. I dont care how much is costs, we are going all in with training. I only hope that he is not set in his ways... We are also probably going to consider neutering him.
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Peter