Hello all!! I adopted my dog 4 months ago as of July 9!! They told me he was a basenji/mix and he is about a year and a half. He growled when i first met him and they said he has never done that before and I was so in love with him since I came across his picture that i drove an hour and a half to meet him. I brought him back home with me that day. I thought I'd found my perfect companion after 3 years of my heart healing from the loss of my last dog due to sudden kidney failure.
However, I gathered that he must have been through abuse/abandonment in his young 1 1/2 years here on this earth. I have fallen in love with him and he's so sweet and cuddly and looks at me with love in his eyes. But, to step outside he becomes a completely different dog. He will growl/howl, bark, lunge at people bicycles, other dogs, kids... he goes into his own other world and I have not found a way to break through to him to stop this reaction. He came too close to biting a girl on the beach this past weekend, even though he was on a leash and I thought I had him controlled. I would like any advice on what i can do to help stop this from happening because i can't imagine life without him, but i also don't want to feel like we are trapped inside forever either. I want him and me to have the life together that we should have.