Rehoming advice

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to rehome my 11 month Malinois puppy due to prey drive and aggressive behavior to my cats, and need to know I'm doing the right thing. Please tell me I’m not just giving up and abandoning her.  

When I got her, she was a 6 month traumatized pound puppy, and she showed high prey drive towards my cats, growling, snapping and lunging. I immediately contacted multiple breed rescues to try to take her, but was told they were either over capacity or weren't taking medical cases-- she had severe osteomyelitis and I made a gofundme to get her through treatment.  Daily desensitization work seemed to be working, until we had a major, scary backslide. Like I've read about, it also desensitized my cats and made them more brave and curious-- they're already dog savvy and loved my gentle elderly shepherd who died in February. That bravery and openness to a new dog friend lead a near miss when one of them tried to come into a space the puppy was in and I had to physically hold her back from attacking him, while she made the horrible, high pitched, clenched teeth prey drive scream, something I'd read about but never actually witnessed before. I've been doing a strict crate/rotate/separate but it's not fair to them to keep her in the house where she's a danger to them. She's never been in the same room as them without gates and a leash, but it's still not OK for me to put them through this.

I just don't want to be another person who gives up on her. She's had a rough history, I found her as a stray either lost or dumped at 4 months, with a badly broken arm. I surrendered her in the hopes that her family would find her, but no one ever came for her, and I pulled her because I couldn’t leave her there. When I got her back from the pound, with a serious infection they weren't treating, she was traumatized and so fearful and reactive to other dogs and people that I couldn't take her out of the house without a screaming meltdown and worrying about redirect bites. I worked her completely through that reactivity, and she now loves every new person she meets and has a group of dog park BFFs. I only kept her as long as I did rather than trying to rehome her immediately because of her medical issues— she now has a clean bill of health!— , and because I had such transformative results with her other reactivity issues. I love her and badly wanted it to work, but I just can’t keep doing this to my cats. My dog owner friends chide me that she’s just a puppy and I need to train her, like they’re training their puppies to not play too rough with their smaller dogs, but they don't know how much I have been training her and they’ve never seen her prey drive activation happen, they don't seem to understand that we're not talking about the same thing.  I’ve had rescue dogs who attacked me and I know what serious aggression looks like.  My gut tells me she will hurt or kill my cats if she’s ever allowed to access them.  Please tell me I'm doing the right thing in keeping my little guys safe and finding her a new home.