27 February 2013
Roughly three months ago, we decided to adopt a young dog, a year old Jack Russell cross for my daughter..... My daughter suffers from depression and the therapist thought having a dog would help her . We brought home this lovely boy who had been homed six times before, so he had been through a lot already. We did know that he had some issues but we were determined to give it a good try. We took my King Charles Spaniel with us when we fetched him and all was well to begin with. So we had an adoption fee, then we were told that he was crate trained, was not house trained and ate out of a gong . We were also told that we should not leave him alone as he might chew things. So we bought a crate, a glass bowl for his food and a tiny gong for treats. When we got home, we put down a bowl of food and he loved it. He hated the crate and slept on a big dog cushion, he was definitely house trained and the work that we do required us to be away from home for approximately 2 hours at a time. He loved the treats hidden in his gong. Two days in and sure enough he started to perform and luck the floors and his paws, he would sort of shriek which was telling on the ears. The clicker that we bought because they said would work did not, so in desperation I blew the training whistle that I used to train Harry with..... Wow it worked and for about a month peace rained in the house. Then Christmas came and we had my eldest daughter and my two grandchildren to stay for a few days, well all hell broke loose, the new pup loved the children but he was back to step 0 never mind step 1. He constantly shrieked while washing the floor, and when I say washing the floor, I mean the floor was just covered in saliva, if we had left him he would have washed the entire house.....not an option, the more I washed the floor the more he licked and shrieked. He also started showing signs of trying to dominate my Harry, would rush up to him and bump him out if the way or go under his legs and try to turn him over, this if we showed Harry any kind if attention. Where Harry urinated he would urinate right over it, so they would go out separately, the new kid on the block would be absolutely frantic by the time he got out. If the new dog was playing and Harry wanted to play , the pup would jump up and grab the toys.......so my Harry turned into a snarling , growling angry dog, forever having to prove that he was in charge. Beginning February Harry would really try to attack Pip, but if truth be known he is not a fighter and I would have it no other way, love my boy just the way he is, loves everyone and is a very balanced dog. If he senses that another dog is not safe he would give it a miss. Anyway by beginning February, we knew it was not working, my daughter thought that we should make the decision as to what our options were, but we thought it was up to her, and roughly two and a half weeks ago she made the decision to take him back to the centre which is part of the adoption, if it did not work then we could not re home him.
So we made the call, and after the re - homing trying to convince us that they did not think it was a good idea to take him back as we had him for almost three months , we did explain that we had to think of our daughter, Harry and Pip but they asked us to think it through and discuss it amongst ourselves ..... After much deliberation, we managed to convince them that we could not keep him and two weeks ago Pip went back. It came to the day , we all got I to the car, all except Harry....the drive was done in silence, none of us wanting to make small talk. Almost as if each one was thinking about the past three months. We arrived at our destination and took Pip I to the drop off room, Pip was looking at each of us in turn, I remember the carer asking me something , I started to answer and found that I was close to tears. We went through all the questions that we were required to answer, my daughter and I were already fighting back the tears, so my man ended up answering most questions, and all too soon it was time for Pip to leave us, I asked them just to wait for my fiancé to day goodbye and the three of us just broke down and cried, this little boy had touched us all in different ways. As they lead him away, part of me wanted to stop them and just take him home and try again, I'm sure we all did. So two weeks have passed, we have heard that the Monday afternoon we dropped Pip, he was fostered out that night by a behavioural guy and that they were hoping he would keep Pip. I really pray he does. We are resting easy knowing that he is not still in the centre, and perhaps this is exactly what Pip needs.
So a happy ending for Pip.
RE-HOMED • Opuss № I