I don't know why the layout of this page changes so much between the pictures. I tried to fix it, but it appears to have a mind of it's own. I hate it. Technology should not tell me what I want to. I should tell it what I want it to do, and that should be the end of the discussion. So I give up, and please excuse the random alignment changes. I tried. I failed.
We had to surrender Joey. It was a long time coming. And it's not like we didn't try either. Lord knows we tried for two years with that dog, but there was this innate part of her that was absolutely feral. The older she got, the more she seemed to transform into her mother. And if you don't remember the problems we experienced with Mams, she was absolutely horrific. My dad thought that perhaps she even had some coyote in her, which honestly, wouldn't surprise me.
If you don't remember the story of how we ended up with Joey, here goes....
Titus had unexpectedly died at the end of January. My parents also had to have their beloved golden retriever, Jade, put to sleep. Both incidents were traumatic and we were definitely not in the mindset of wanting another dog anytime soon. We were visiting Peppy's dad and stepmom in February and my dad texts me a picture of two dogs and asked if I had seen them before. I hadn't. So we get back home and a few days later those two dogs roam into our yard and they decided to stick around because I guess we were the one house that actually had people around during the day. I could tell the female dog was pregnant. We called EVERYWHERE for a place to drop these strays off. Literally every single place basically told us there was no room in the inn for a pregnant dog and begged us to please foster the litter and then bring them in when they were old enough to be weaned. Keep in mind we were living in an RV at the time and had no clue where we were going to keep a litter of puppies. We had no fence or crate, so we cleared out a space in the shed.
I think maybe Peppy didn't realize just how bad it had gotten until he started working from home. He finally understood just how often we were having to retrieve her. It usually ended with one of us cut up or covered in cow manure.
About six weeks ago she ran through and almost caused a wreck. One day she ran through and got into a fight with the neighbor's dog. Another day she got clipped by a car. She was becoming a liability and I worried daily that she would bite someone and we would get sued. She even bit Peppy a few times when he tried to catch her. I prayed and prayed about what to do with Joey. I love dogs. I love all animals. I didn't want to give up on her, but I couldn't see this getting any better. Maybe you're asking why we didn't just put up a fence. Well, she was a digger. It was one of her favorite hobbies. We basically have a handful of hottub sized holes in our yard. A real fence wouldn't have done any good either. We really did try to brainstorm a multitude of different solutions. And I certainly wasn't going to put her on a chain. That is cruel in my opinion. What is even the point of a pet if they are constantly locked up to a 20 foot chain? That is no life.
About a month ago I was making waffles one morning when I hear this ear piercing scream outside followed by horrible crying and screeching. I look out the window and Peppy is laying on the ground. Joey had run through her perimeter and when they tried to catch her, she scratched Owsley all down his back and bit him on the arm. She bit Peppy five or six times on his palm right at a vein and there was blood everywhere. I'm sure he needed stitches, but I couldn't convince him to go to the doctor. Owsley was in a panic, flipping out about Peppy, and Peppy was as white as a ghost and afraid of tetanus and nerve damage. Seriously, the amount of blood dripping everywhere was alarming. And while I was tending to the wounds of my family members, Joey was outside, happily destroying our lettuce box.
That was when we both knew. That was the breaking point. I knew then that we had to get rid of her before she did something even worse. It was bad enough that she bit and terrified Owsley and really hurt Peppy. What if she did it to someone else? I wouldn't have been able to live with the guilt of knowing I had a reactive dog that had hurt someone else. There was our sign, loud and clear.
So we surrendered her and she's already been adopted. I hope that she has some huge, rural farmland to run her little heart's content on. That is what that particular dog needed. I know Peppy feels a lot of guilt, because he thinks we could have trained her better, but I've spent a lifetime around dogs and I've never, ever experienced one with her particular personality. Neither of the kids were overly concerned with having to get rid of her either. She had become a burden and a terror. None of us could imagine 10+ more years with her. We don't have any plans of getting another dog anytime soon either.
I know some people might not understand and might jump to some judgements. I expect and accept that. However, I only respond that you don't judge anyone until you've walked in their shoes. We were only doing what we thought was the best decision for our family. I love animals, but I love my family more. It is interesting to me that out of the five puppies, three of them turned out to be friendly, family pets, but Joey and her only other brindle sibling turned out differently. Her brother was almost euthanized, but ending up getting rehomed (although now he constantly wears a muzzle) because he began to bite and snap at his families' toddler daughter.
To end this post, here is the most traumatizing picture on my camera roll. Sometimes I send it to people just ot be a jerk.
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