German Shepherd Lunged at a child

[jzapata]

We have a 4 year old German Shepherd. We resued him when he was 6 months old and had him kennel trained immediately upon adoption. We are a family of 5 which also includes 3 children ages 3, 6 & 8. He has always been a wonderful part of our family and very social with other animals as well as people.

This weekend while taking him to the lake with our family a father and daughter approach us asking us if they could pet him. As we have never had issue before I consented and they pet him for about 1 minute. Then without warning or provocation he lunged at the girl in an attempt to bite her in the face. Never in the past has he shown any signs of aggression such as this. I had him on a short leash and on a prong collar so i was able to retract him before anything serious could happen. He did scratch the childs cheek with his teeth but she was fine(luckily). After I restrained him he went right back into his normal disposition as if nothing had even happened.

I now find myself concerned for the safety of my children and their friends and am not sure how or what to do about the situation.

We did recently lose our other dog which was a Golden Doodle who passed away from bloat(sp) and rescued a new dog(Yorki mix) which he has bonded with fine.

Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.