All dogs are worth saving. Yes, it's bitten. Yes it's sad. But there are trainers out there who can help this dog and have helped dogs just like this. Jeff Gellman and Sean O'Shea are two that come to mind. They take dogs that other "trainers" say need to be put down and rehabilitate them. It can be done.
I agree with this, all dogs are worth saving. This is why I myself have taken on four very large severely resource aggressive, dog aggressive, human aggressive and child aggressive dogs. They are "rehabbed" in that they are all able to live under one roof, they haven't had a fight in years and I haven't been bitten since breaking up a fight several years back. But it's not fun work. You can never consider a dog truly "rehabbed", in my opinion. It's much like alcoholism - I was an alcoholic in my early 20s, and I don't drink that much anymore, but I still am and always will be a recovering alcoholic. Odin is and will always need to be considered a child aggressive dog.
So, all dogs are worth saving with a caveat - in an idealistic world in which these very few trainers who are willing to take on these cases are free to rehabilitate as many dogs as possible. But they simply aren't.
Time is a currency in the shelter and foster world. They don't have enough of it, between overwhelmed volunteers with real families and real lives and too many dogs in the system. Specialty trainers who deal with HA dogs are also swamped with cases.
*IF* OP can get Odin homed with a trainer who has no children and who has dealt with child aggression before and will KEEP Odin for the rest of his life, then that would be wonderful and I would feel like that would be responsible re-homing.
Two weeks of intense training and then being back in an environment with kids is an unacceptable risk, in my opinion. We recently had this discussion in another community I am involved in, and someone's family member had a GSD who nipped their child, they sent the GSD to a strict training camp, they worked with the trainer and then the dog came back home. Several months later, the boy was in the hospital needing over 30 stitches and reconstructive surgery on his face. They put the dog to sleep shortly after.
I feel horribly for OP and her family. I also feel horribly for Odin. Right now, he is an unstable dog in a traumatic and unstable situation, he has no idea where his people are or why he's not at home. If it was 3-4 years ago, I'd be offering to take him and work with him, honestly. But I think people like me, with the willingness and experience to take on a child aggressive dog, are not easy to find. And even if you find one, their homes are usually full (like mine is right now) with dogs who have similar stories to Odin.
Again, OP, these are just my opinions and experiences. You should make the choice that is right for you, while considering the safety and health of anyone Odin will come in contact with in the future when he is no longer under your watch.
