In 2015 my family bought a male Akita puppy from Royalty Akitas and his name was Harley. He was born on March 6, 2015. We have had two Akitas before from different places and they were amazing, gentle, and good-natured. Immediately when Harley was a puppy, we noticed he didn’t like being picked up or held, and was sensitive about his back end being touched.
Our vet figured it could be early signs of hip dysplasia or just growing pains. As time went on it worsened so we tried an at-home trainer who was wonderful, but we didn’t see improvements so we went back to our vet and she suggested we try Benadryl or Zyrtec to calm him down because at this point he was 1 year old, 90 pounds, and growling at people who touched him and walked near him while he was laying down. Eventually, a year had gone by, he had attempted to bite multiple family members even though he was unprovoked and on his stronger medication, Clomicalm, which was not working either. We tried a second trainer who was also wonderful but again no improvements. Harley had lots of walks, about 3 miles a day, he was socialized as a puppy until he posed a danger to others. Still, in June 2017, he bit a family member to the point where they needed stitches and we knew it was time and that we had tried everything. With our vet and trainer recommending it we made the decision to put him down. It took three times the normal sedative for a 90-pound dog to get him calm and he was still attempting to bite the vet when they were putting the catheter in, our vet made a guess that it was more than likely a neurological problem, i.e. a result from bad breeding. We didn’t bother reaching out to Don because we didn’t want another lemon puppy and we knew that no money would fill the hole of Harley. Considering that we never received A.K.C papers and almost all of Harley’s litter has passed at around the same age, we’ve come to the conclusion that Don is running an upscale puppy mill with interbreeding and it hurts that we were some of his victims and wish nothing more than to shut him down.
