Life hasn’t been kind to Jenson – he’s only two but he’s already had several homes.

His previous owners undoubtedly liked his stunning good looks and loving personality, but they didn’t give him stability and routine.

This means he’s now insecure, immature and lacking in social skills with other dogs. But he’s eminently ‘fixable’ and just needs a suitable home environment and a training plan.

We’re sometimes criticized for being overly cautious when looking for new homes for our dogs, and for stipulating that many of them can’t be placed in households with children or other pets.

But if we have limited information on a dog’s history, or we know they have a strong prey drive, we simply can’t take the risk that they will be safe in anything other than an adult-only home.

And this is the case with Jenson. It’s highly likely that he will turn out to be a sociable dog, but his introduction to ‘normal pet life’ needs to be taken slowly and carefully.

Jenson loves people and so he is very unhappy when he’s left alone, which means his new owners will need to be with him for most of the time initially while he learns to cope with separation.

Jenson is a fine example of his breed – the Weimaraner. Sometimes described as a ‘flashy field dog’, the breed dates back to the early 1800s when noblemen of the court of Weimar in central Germany prized them for their hunting skills and character.

The noblemen required their dogs to have exceptional tracking ability, speed, courage and hardiness, and their breeding programmes developed these specific traits.

However, it’s believed that the Weimaraner’s distinctive steel grey coat – the hallmark of the breed – was not deliberately engineered. The breeding and ownership of Weimaraners was strictly controlled and restricted for many decades with a maximum of 1,500 registered at any one time.

Few people outside of Weimar knew much about them, and mythological-like legends developed about the ‘great grey hunting dog’ or ‘grey ghost’. But when dog ownership in Germany became more difficult after the First and Second World Wars, Weimaraners were exported and bred around the world and their popularity boomed in the 1950s and 60s.

The Weimaraner’s strong gene pool means that the breed’s traits are very well defined. These include:

Intelligence: Weimaraners are clever, inquisitive dogs (sometimes referred to as ‘the dog with a human brain’) and this energy needs to be channeled with appropriate mental and physical stimulation.

Given they were bred to hunt all day they need to be well exercised and kept active to prevent them becoming restless and mischievous – they are infamous for being able to open doors and turn on taps – and they are the perfect example of the phrase ‘a tired dog is a good dog’.

Eyes: as puppies Weimaraners have light blue eyes, but as they mature their eyes become either amber (like Jenson’s) or a grey-blue colour.

Sense of smell: these dogs are close relatives of the bloodhound and pointer breeds, and as dogs designed to hunt they have powerful senses of smell, able to track down wild boar and deer. In more recent times their tracking skills have been used for search and rescue purposes.

Coat: the breed’s sleek, short hair is low maintenance and smooth to the touch, and ranges from charcoal-blue to mousey-, silver- or blue-grey. Where the coat is thin or non-existent, such as around the eyes or on the lips, the skin should be pink. The Weimaraner does not have an undercoat and so needs to be kept warm on wintery days.

Jenson needs a new owner who has some fairly specific requirements – they need to be active, able to spend time at home, and confident with basic training. In return, Jenson will prove to be a loyal companion, and live up to his breed’s reputation for being ‘an aristocratic gentleman of great presence’.