Need Advice: My Brother In Law Is Talking About Taking Back A ‘service’ Dog He Left With Us

Location: California. TLDR at the bottom.

My brother in law used to live with us (my husband, myself and our three kids) and owned a show dog (I’ll call her Jenny) which we have known since she was a puppy. He previously lived with my in laws and they did most of the puppy care. He did the dog shows and such. When he moved in, he brought Jenny (2 years old) instead of leaving it with our parents against their will who moved out of state.

He then proceeded to get straight to breeding. He was 20 at the time and had no idea what he was getting into except on making sure the male was a champion as well so he could sell the puppies for big $’s. We ended up doing a lot of the care of Jenny once they moved in, feeding her, cleaning up poop, taking her on walks. She even started sleeping in our bed. Then we even had to take her to the hospital to have her puppies because she started labor but then stopped. My BIL showed up (he was never around) and started getting mad at the vet tech because Jenny was cleaning the puppies and he thought Jenny was going to ‘bite their toes off’ (which I realize can be a legitimate concern but he was FREAKING out at the vet tech).

As you could guess, we reared the puppies while BIL went partying and such which required a lot because Jenny stopped caring for them after 2 weeks. Then BIL sold the puppies around 10 weeks of age ($5k a pup) and then tried to pocket all of the money. For life lessons sake, we made confronted him about it and he finally gave us some of the money (which we didn’t really care about, it was just gross that he would do none of the work and try to keep all of it).

Then he wanted to visit parents out of town with Jenny but didn’t want to put Jenny under the plane so he got Jenny ’trained’ to be a service dog for his anxiety. (The service is circling the owner to create space in crowded areas). She is technically certified, but it’s because BIL knows people through dog shows. Jenny is not an ideal service dog, she is stubborn and will refuse to do a lot of things.

Also, Jenny doesn’t like our BIL. His version of ‘training’ involves yelling and borderline abuse which is why we have always been fine with taking care of her ourselves. Whenever BIL is around, Jenny will say hi and then avoid him even when he calls her (which makes for a terrible service dog).

Eventually BIL moved out and left Jenny because he does realize she likes us more. He ended up getting another show dog (calling her Gabby) who he takes care of very poorly. Gabby isn’t potty trained and just pees/poops on absorbent training pads. They take Gaby everywhere in a bubble backpack (she’s small) and she doesn’t get any real exercise. She barks constantly and smells.

BIL talks with my oldest on social media and has been telling him that he wants to come take back Jenny for his anxiety services (which it sucks he has anxiety and that Jenny helps but is it fair that it’s at the cost of Jenny’s happiness?).

I‘ve been telling my husband ever since BIL moved out that we should get some paperwork done to transfer ownership but my husband is super nonchalant about it and can’t imagine his brother actually trying to take Jenny from us (we’ve had her for 4 years now, two years without BIL).

I believe her rabies vaccine is going to be coming up soon and we will need to do some paperwork anyways to renew our registration so maybe we will be able to get her registered to us then?

In the case that BIL does try to take Jenny, is there anything we can do? Does being an AKC certified champion make this more complicated? Does being a service dog make this more complicated? We have the vet bill (which is in my name) from when we took her but besides that we don’t have much of a paper trail besides buying dog food, toys, care items etc.

TLDR; my brother in law had an AKC champion service dog that he didn’t take care of while living with us so we cared for her. He moved out two years ago and left the dog but is now talking about coming back and taking her. The dog does not like him, is there anything we can do if he does try to take her?