Well we are one month in - and I'm not sure we can keep him. We're having some problems... he attacks and bites all other dogs and animals, has bitten me and my boyfriend (though thankfully not badly - yet), and with young kids being in the house part of the time we're not sure that we want to risk the combination... We're also getting rather scared of walk time, he's very strong, so if you're not careful he can drag you about as far and hard as he wants - usually towards whatever he's planning on biting. We've taken to late night and very early morning walks just to avoid some of it until we can figure it out - he's bitten other dogs pretty badly, and even if he's not attacking he's so strong and so out of control if he sees anything it's not what you would call a walk. He's broken the metal rings of his lead once already.
And it's difficult, we really like Patch. We've been hanging in here for a month hoping it'll work out somehow, got lots of advice on training and tackling this behaviour, and obviously it's early days, so nothing's had much of an effect.
To me it just seems that he's been abused - poorly socialised, behaves like a very young puppy, constantly stealing food or drinks, destroying everything he can get at (and he can reach pretty high... we're running out of space to hide stuff). He eats foil, paper, cardboard, plastic and wood, which has also proved an issue... He is also terrified of Asian men which is unusual. TBH, it's quite embarrassing.
It's more like he's scared of other dogs than plain aggressive. We've had normal collars, a two handed Halti harness and plain choke chains... if there's another dog coming towards us I basically have to grab hold of a tree or something.
So I guess what I'm asking is if anyone has any more advice or ideas of where we can go to get some help, or a book or ANYTHING to help us all live in a little more harmony.