If he's younger than 12wks old, he's still in the fear stage.

My dog Tiny, came home with us at 6 or 7 weeks. Waaaaay too young! We had no idea what the fear stage was until after poor Tiny got traumatized by the nasty neighbor down the street slamming his beat up car door and screaming swear words at us as we were walking past his house one day. From that day on, Tiny was terrified of people who yelled or swore. He really did not like a certain word that starts with the letter "F" if you said it with a certain inflection. (poor TinyMonsters!)

Hopefully you wont end up with a traumatized puppy like I did.

TinyMonsters was a bouvier des flandres, a cattle herding breed from Belgium. (these dogs did all sorts of jobs. They were also ambulance dogs for the Allies in WWI. Germans had standing orders to shoot them on sight. Nearly wiped out the breed) Tiny required a LOT of walking, but he was also lazy as hell. (bouviers are easy going and will be lazy bums if you let them) If we didnt take him for a walk, he was a happy guy and slept at our feet. As soon as you mentioned "walk" tho, you HAD to take him or suffer the very serious consequences. (he'd sit and stare at you, and bark and then grab your hand or the side of your pants and drag you to the door)

You can see the aussie in your pictures of Riley. He's got the face and eyes. He looks a little devious too. Like he's just waiting for you to leave him alone with the furniture so he can chew it up. Hope your daughter has the energy to handle him.

Her boyfriend should have let her do what she wanted with the new dog food. Sounds like she was trying to get Riley acclimated to the new food the right way.