My (F27) dog attacked my husband(F30) and now I don’t know what to do?

I have a 3 year old female German Shepherd as a pet. Recently my husband and I bought a house and we were finally able to let her outside without being a problem. She was super happy and did great in the adaptation.<br><br>A week ago, me and my husband were at home when to our surprise we found a stray cat on our backyard. It was a very scrawny and sick cat and didn’t seem to be in good health. My husband immediately suggested we let her in and give her food and after I checked her for fleas, we did. But we had to do it without our dog seeing it because she has attacked other dogs before and we know she wouldn’t see the cat as anything else than “prey”.<br><br>We kept the cat inside with us and away from our dog. We put the cat in my husband’s office (with a litter box, food and water) and we would go check on her and give her attention. Everytime we would do it, it was just one of us at a time so that our dog wouldn’t get suspicious. We did this for 2 days and the cat seemed to be doing better. We were planning to take her to the vet and maybe keep her as a pet (our dog downstairs and the cat upstairs)<br><br>Yesterday, it was my husband’s turn to go check on the cat. By this point the cat has stopped hissing at us and the hissing was mainly for our dog. He was with the cat for about 5 minutes when I start hearing the cat hissing and my husband talking to her(I thought he was just petting the cat and she was scared). I go to check on them and then I see that the cat is biting my husband’s face. I shoo the cat away and she runs outside the room. My husband had several bites and scratches on his face and the cat bit his ear. The cat didn’t want to come back inside the office, she was hiding and we didn’t want to touch her again so we called a local animal shelter to come and pick her up. We were told that the cat would be put down to be tested for rabies.<br><br>I’m a little conflicted about this because I wanted to keep the cat. I know it was an awful decision to let a stray cat that was sick into our house and that the outcome would be terrible. But I’m hurt by the fact that they didn’t let us take the cat to a vet to see if she had rabies or not. I could understand their decision if my husband was more severely injured but he wasn’t, I’m just grateful that our dog didn’t find the cat and most likely would have killed her.<br><br>I know this is not the shelter’s fault, it’s ours. We did something stupid and ended up with the worse outcome. I’m just hurt because I fell in love with the cat and I couldn’t help her and she’s going to be killed. I feel awful.<br><br>Anyways, I need advice on what to do with my dog. Originally we wanted to have two dogs in the future but with the whole “attacking other dogs” issue we thought we would be better with one and that training the dog we already have would be more difficult if we have another. But I would love to have the cat and our current dog. I know I can train the dog to be okay with the cat but after this incident I don’t know what to do. My husband is afraid of our dog and he wants to either train her or sell her. He didn’t want to sell her before this incident, he loves our dog. <br><br>In my opinion the dog didn’t do anything wrong, she was downstairs and she didn’t even know the cat was there. But I’m conflicted on how to handle this. We will probably take our dog to training and see what we can do but I don’t want to take any chances.<br><br>I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound like a terrible pet owner who blame her pet for attacking, that’s why I’m here asking what I should do. Should we sell our dog to a family with no pets? Should we train her? I don’t want to give her away but I don’t want to have to fear that the dog will attack to death another animal. What should I do?<br><br>Pd. After the incident I kept our dog outside. I went with my husband to the ER and we stayed there for 5 hours until they could see him. The cat was hiding and our dog didn’t see her. By the time we came back home the cat was gone so I let our dog back in and she was calm and didn’t seem to be looking for the cat. The people who picked up the cat said she was scared but calm too.