Tenant wants to keep a German Shephard dog

[Atul Mohlajee]

An existing tenant is asking for permission to include German Shephard dog while renewing lease.  Willing to pay $600 dog fee annually.  It is unit 1first floor of a 2-Flat in Forest Park.  The property has a small front yard.  There is parking pads in the rear of the house. New lease is proposed at $1625/ month plus $50 /month dog fee for a 2-Bedroom unit in a 2-Flat.  They are good tenants otherwise.  Please give your thoughts if you would allow or not.

[Nick Richards]

Quote from @Atul Mohlajee:

An existing tenant is asking for permission to include German Shephard dog while renewing lease.  Willing to pay $600 dog fee annually.  It is unit 1first floor of a 2-Flat in Forest Park.  The property has a small front yard.  There is parking pads in the rear of the house. New lease is proposed at $1625/ month plus $50 /month dog fee for a 2-Bedroom unit in a 2-Flat.  They are good tenants otherwise.  Please give your thoughts if you would allow or not.

I am extremely familiar with German Shepherds, I have hat 6 of them in my lifetime, they are really fantastic dogs, assuming they have had the proper time and attention put into them.

This is my most recent German Shepherd who lived to be 13 1/2 years old. He was extremely well behaved and I trusted him more than I would trust most people. Dexter was extremely sociable, so well trained I could walk him off leash, and you could leave him sitting in the truck with a grocery bag full of steak for half an hour, and come back and nothing would be touched.

However, this was because I put the time into him.

German Shepherds are large dogs, they are intelligent dogs, and so if they are not properly trained and socialized, you have a large, fast highly intelligent problem on your hands.

When it comes to this what I would say is that if it is an adult dog that is already ready to come home. Meet the dog, spend some time with it, you will know within 15 minutes how the dog is going to be, if it is friendly, well behaved, that is what you can expect, if it is rowdy and ill behaved, that is also what it will be.

Now mind you that for the first few minutes you meet the dog it is going to be excited, so do give it a bit to calm down.

If the Dog is a puppy, I would want to hear what their training program is, how they intend to keep it from chewing on the property and so on, and how they plan to handle ensuring that the puppy is not going to the bathroom inside and so on.

Specifically I would want to hear that the dog is going to be going to a training program from a well established dog trainer, and that they have real clear goals for what the dog is going to be trained to do and by when.

The other thing to consider is the age of the dog, a German Shepherd who is 4+ years old is going to be a lot calmer than a dog aged 1-3, those are essentially the Teenage years for the dog, and when most problems with a dog are going to occur, I would not disqualify or accept a dog solely on the age, however just keep this in mind.

You might find as well having the German Shepherd around mitigates or prevents a tragedy.

Buddy the German Shepherd is a great example.

The thing that makes a Shepherd so special is they are a dog you can literally take to war and fight with, then come home and set your newborn baby on the floor next to and know they will be safe.

It all boils down to the time someone puts into the dog training and socializing it.