As a Dog trainer I see and interact with a lot of different dogs and I typically don't ask "Where did you get this dog from? A breeder or a shelter?" You'd think I should. Every time. But I don't unless I was hired due to a specific set of Behavior problems that mostly would come from either abuse or backyard breeding / accidental pregnancy which led to a shelter surrender. The problem manifest itself later in life where the dog cannot relate to another dawn of its approximate same age or even sex.
So that brings me to a point. There's a huge difference between an adult dog being surrendered to a shelter with no profound neglect or abuse and a 7 mth old puppy who was separated from his mother and litter at only a few weeks old and dumped at some shelter. Thrown out like trash. On a longer timeline the bag of crazy that will become from the puppy that was separated. That dog to a trainer like me is a dream, for a lot of reasons. One, some of these dogs take months if not years to rehabilitate and if I'm inclined to be greedy it's a license to print money. Two, I'm not that guy. I guess it makes me less competitive since the dogs parents typically don't have the money to sustain weeks of several hundred dollars per session with little to no progress. Personally I love the challenge and I don't quit they do and I get it. It's hard and I get it. Both of my Aunts Elanie and Linda had at least 3 behavior problem dogs between them. My aunts like most people, made their commitment and had already fallen in love with their "problem" children they just found some way to coexist. All 3 of the dogs were adopted. My aunt's went through many episodes of aggression, iratic Behavior and unexpected fear.
My situation is we adopted a Belgian "Shepherd' Boxer mix which turned out to be what I believe is at least 90% Belgian Malinois. If you're on this site you know dogs more than the average person. A female Malinois, are very smart, have high prey drive, very high bite drive and they can be defiant and have endless amount of energy which is true for all four dogs regardless of breed given drive and or neglect or abuse. Now I am not an active person and I've never seen that combination of energy + drive + abuse = a disaster waiting to happen that you didn't sign up for. Most people will give up on the dog and return the dog to the shelter. Thrown away like trash without Training or Behavior modifications.
We named her Allie and my experience with a dog trainer friend I figured that we had it covered. We didn't. She was timid, scared easily and had a massive serving of Separation anxiety. Put that all together and you not only have a inconvenient situation you have a potentially dangerous situation of a dog that has high prey drive, high bite drive separation anxiety do two most likely and dog that was tied to a tree and not being fed for on and off for days when. When The Rescuers arrived they found her at 38 lbs today she's 60 lbs. One of the most compelling and scary parts of her development was the separation anxiety a lot of Destruction I won't go into all the details, nor will I post the picture of her and 38 lb looking like 7 month old puppy when she was in reality 2 years old. however there's a lot of garbage cans pulled apart and garbage all over the house so we got some more Behaviorlist . We gave the dog medication prescribed and she became slightly better It wasn't until we actually Googled and read tons and tons of articles on how to beat separation anxiety and I'm happy to say we did she only turned out to be probably the best dog that me and my wife have ever had or even seen so there is hope this dog was considered absolute trash probably because of her separation anxiety maybe because of some of her High drives which is basically been driven out of her but she really realize she was home and she was in her forever home so what I'm trying to say here no matter what dog you got one man's trash is another man's treasure all you need to do is put in the work and you will have the dog of your dreams it just takes a ton of work and patience and time do those things and you will have a wonderful dog. I'm confident that a throw away dog (trash) that becomes treasure... One man's trash is another man's treasure (with training, Behavior modification, patience and time)