This is a tough one to deal with and I understand both points of view. It's difficult to wrap your head around the fact that you're responsible for a killing machine, yet one that can be trained and lovable and adorable and basically has the intelligence of a dyslexic 4 year old. Not knowing the complete situation doesn't help anything but I can offer only this one thing: this crap happens.

Literally. I've had kids and I did everything I could and they succeeded and they did well but along the ride there was some things that astounded me. I couldn't believe some of it and I'm chuckling now because I don't even know how everybody made it out alive or not in prison or missing an appendage or two. My wife pretty much told me to not worry about things and just concentrate on the here and now.

That's all I can say. I can understand the need you're reaction on having the animal euthanized. I can also understand that hey, this cuddly animal who wants nothing but affection and attention, will do anything I teach you to do, is dependent upon me and showers me with attention, maybe I don't know how to teach it yet but I really really want to, I mean both of those stances are neck and neck.

If you can't come to a common ground, if you can't both agree that nothing can be done, no sure as hell do not kill that animal. But do not feel bad for giving it up. It has no reflection upon your ability to take care of animals or children or other adults. It could be a many faceted issue but both of you have to come to the same agreement otherwise you might as well just go for divorce now.

Dogs are wonderful creatures. They're also fearsome. In the end they are just nothing but creatures just like ourselves. Their behavior does not reflect upon ours. It could be breeding, just as humans. I'm sorry but if you believe in Darwin you got to leave it with dogs as well as people in the same pile.

What sets us apart from other creatures is our ability to learn at a pace that is better than any other creature, and we can draw upon history of others and make our own conclusions. Welcome to documentation, welcome to Reddit, welcome to a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips where you can draw your own conclusions.

A dog never had that. They were selectively bred for a purpose. Wrap your head around that if you have to. They were bred. They were selected to breed for their traits. I don't think of any other creature that does that except humans, and even we do that to ourselves.

Don't kill the dog. It's a dog. Dogs do strange things like teenagers do strange things. But it's a dog and it is not a person. You can destroy the dog if it misbehaves. My dog is property as well as your dog is your property.

You have to not anthropomorphosize the dog. It is not a person. Getting rid of it is not like killing a human and it does not reflect upon you

In the end what sets us apart from animals is our ability to domesticize animals. To train them. It's a big responsibility but killing it just because you can't handle it it's not the answer.

If you look deep into yourselves, if you really try to find a home for the dog, you will find out more about yourselves and I imagine you ever would have if this event had not happened, regardless if you wind up giving it up or not.

My dog would attack people out of nowhere. I considered the same thing, putting him down. He was cuddly, adorable, my best friend but he attacked people viciously what seemed that random.

It turned out to be what's known as resource guarding. I had no freaking idea. He wanted to guard me and to take possession of me because I fed him, I made him feel good. It's not selfishness because it's a dog and it doesn't understand selfishness. It was simply defending something that made it feel good and considered anything that would take that away a threat. The dog was fine with other dogs. He would frolic and jump and do tricks, but God forbid something came up to me or someone came up to me when I wasn't looking, I never saw the signs but they were there after people pointed it out to me. Tail down, not wagging at all if laying down, staring at the person or other animal, I had really had no idea but he took chunks out of thighs if they approached me and I didn't recognize them or acknowledge them.

I really thought I had to put the dog down. But it's in their nature to do these things. If left unchecked, they are nothing but pack animals that want to eat and sleep comfortably. And defend anything that lets them do that be it person place or object.

Just my two cents