<p>After reading the title of this thread, you probably think that we’re another family who’s gotten in too deep with a puppy and feels overwhelmed, and wants to rid themselves of their problem.</p>
<p>That’s not exactly correct.</p>
<p>My husband and I have wanted a dog for a really, really long time. My husband’s very much a dog person. Our modus operandi was: first cats, then marriage, then a house, then a dog, then kids. We’ve got the cats. We’ve got the marriage. We’ve got a beautiful house with a lovely backyard. My husband just defended his dissertation and receives his doctorate in May, and I just finished my exhausting drive towards taking my licensure exams. Clearly, it’s time for dog-shopping.</p>
<p>We’ve read books. We’ve read articles. We’ve talked to friends, and have scoped out all the local dog-friendly places, and we’ve puppy-proofed the house, and we’ve watched Dog Whisperer (even though we disagree on some things), and we’ve got the crate and the know-how. We’re all set.</p>
<p>There are three considerations towards figuring out who the right dog is, though…</p>
<p>1) The cats. We’ve got two cats, and they’re used to having the run of the roost. When they were kittens, and when I went home on medical leave from grad school, they stayed with my now-MIL and her dog for a month, and they actually did pretty well. By the end of the stay, one of the cats was perfectly happy to trot alongside the dog and play with it. The other cat, who is subtly manipulative and still yowls and hisses at my husband (but actually secretly adores him), would snooze next to the dog when she thought nobody was looking. We were as sure as we could be that with a good dog and some controlled interactions, they’d be just fine with a dog.</p>
<p>2) My last dog (the only dog I’ve ever had, actually) was quite literally a hellhound. She was a rescue dog with a moderately unknown history, flighty and skittish, an English Springer Spaniel, and she had rage syndrome. She’d periodically and without warning flip the arff out and attack whomever was closest. Veterinary professionals liken it to having a seizure-- she didn’t know she was doing it, and she’d be just fine afterwards, but we’d end up needing stitches just the same. My whole family has battle scars from dealing with this dog. We had her for close to eight years before her rage syndrome had progressed to the point that we were far past the point of being able to live safely with her, and we put her down. My brother and I still have some pretty significant trouble trusting dogs. I’m sure I exude tension like raw uranium exudes radiation, and dogs are like Geiger counters for that sort of thing, which leads me to my third point…</p>
<p>3) Anybody who’s kept tabs on my posts knows that I do not lead an uneventful life, and a side-effect of that much… excitement… has been that I’ve developed a pretty extreme anxiety disorder, for which I’m medicated and which is pretty difficult for me to control. I’m working on it, and I’m exploring some homeopathic and exercise-based options, but I’m physically unable to relax my muscles from a fight-or-flight state of readiness. This leaves me pretty whupped by the end of the day.</p>
<p>I insisted that we needed a superbly low-key dog, which was great, because my husband wants a BIG dog. Larger breeds are generally lower energy, so we kept our searches towards young puppies who were a larger breed mix.</p>
<p>We ran across a Lab-Newfoundland mix who we were told was 9 weeks old, sweet as can be, healthy, and was from an apparently reputable rescue organization. We made an appointment to go and meet her. We met at a local pet store, and she was just as calm and pliable as you could imagine. She had giant paws and big ears, sweet brown eyes, and was just kind of happy with the world. She was curious but not aggressive. She was happy to meet other dogs. She’d readily yield a toy given to her and didn’t show any signs of food aggression. She walked well on a lead, though the foster mom said that she hadn’t really used a lead before. She was smart, figuring out “heel” pretty quickly, and she took to us right away.</p>
<p>She had kennel cough when we met her last Wednesday. We were given some medicine to give to her, and were told, “Benadryl for Children is going to be your lifesaver here…”. We were also told that she’d had her first round of shots and had seen a vet, and that we’d bring her back when she was six months old, in about August, and they’d have her spayed. I noticed some bugs on her, and asked, “Wait, are those fleas?” and I picked one off to examine it. I showed it to the foster mom, who takes care of a number of dogs and who I figured would know about these things more than I would, and the foster mom got slightly shifty and said, “No, those aren’t fleas, because fleas jump. It’s not jumping.” Okay, I figured, but I hated to see the poor dog covered in bugs and mud, when she was clearly going to be OUR poor dog, and my husband was eager to get the dog as soon as possible, so we decided to go forward with the adoption that day, get her away from any other dogs with kennel cough, get her washed down with some gentle soap, and keep a close eye on her.</p>
<p>The coughing subsided, the bugs were fewer after the bath, and Chloe, as we named her, perked up. She wasn’t wild about her crate in our kitchen, but it had a nice warm blanket, we’d let her out whenever we were home (we set up two safe zones for the cats, using some door gates with cat-openings in them to keep those areas dog-free), and we’d go for frequent walks and outings in the backyard to tucker her out. She was about at the teething age, so we bought her plenty of things to gnaw on.</p>
<p>Her energy continued to increase as the kennel cough subsided and the medicine was tapered off, and the bugs came back with a vengeance. And they jumped. They were definitely fleas. My husband took Chloe to the vet on Friday, and the vet examined her.</p>
<p>Chloe had all her adult teeth, we were told. Chloe was not nine weeks old. She was probably more like nine MONTHS old. She had fleas, and worms, and she was underfed. She probably wouldn’t get much bigger. In fact, she probably wasn’t part Newfoundland at all, she was probably a lab-collie mix, and she was going to be hyper.</p>
<p>We’d already started to realize the “hyper” part… She was startlingly higher-energy than she’d been when we met her. We realize now that Chloe was flat-out high on Benadryl when we met her. She was smart, certainly, and she was capable of being inaggressive and submissive at times, but she was also drugged up so she wouldn’t cough as much, and that’s where her imperturbable calmness came from.</p>
<p>Then on Sunday, she attacked my cat.</p>
<p>I don’t really know what provoked it. I had Chloe sitting next to me on the floor, and she was happily gnawing on a Nylabone. Our subtly-manipulative cat was nearby in the same room as we were, sitting in her favorite spot and eyeing us cautiously, though she was starting to relax and view the dog as a non-danger. I was feeling pretty optimistic. The other cat, who was surprisingly not taking as kindly to the dog, was sitting in safety behind one of the gates, kind of watching. His food and water were in the other safe-haven we’d set up, though, and the dog was smack between him and his eats. I think it probably went like cat startled dog, dog yelped, cat smacked with claws out, dog launched towards cat, cat tried and failed to stuff himself through the cat door in the gate, dog chomps back half of cat as though it’s a rabbit it’s chasing, cat freaks out and tears down the stairs, dog chases, cat knows where the rugs are downstairs, dog loses traction on the tile floor, cat outruns dog and heads back upstairs, and I finally catch the dog… but I only saw from the “dog chomps back half of cat” on forward.</p>
<p>It could’ve been that the cat provoked the dog. It could’ve been that the dog was just startled and it snowballed. I have no idea. Meanwhile, we’ve taken to only having the dog on-leash or in the crate indoors, and we’ve upped the exercise even more. Lots of fetch in the backyard. Two walks a day. Outside time whenever we can be outside. She’s still very high-energy, and a very poor fit for our lives… Specifically, for my anxiety and for our cats’ sanity, and eventually, for small children. My husband is mildly devastated, heartbroken that this dog is upsetting the rest of his family so badly, and he’s pursuing every avenue to try to ‘train’ the dog out of being hyper and attacking cats and the like. I’m not sure that training is the answer.</p>
<p>I feel cheated by the rescue organization… We were misinformed about the dog’s health, age, and breed mix (how could she possibly have been examined by a competent vet, if they got her age so obviously wrong? how could she have gotten worms, fleas, AND kennel cough if she were really living in a good foster environment? what was really going on during the first nine months of her life?), and her temperament was masked with drugs.</p>
<p>How would you proceed? What would you do in this situation? I feel as though it’s nearly criminal to renege on a pet adoption… This is not something that I’d ever seen myself considering. But I really don’t have the energy for another spazz of a dog. Dealing with our last dog was a full-time job. I set out to keep myself from being in that position, and I feel like I was tricked.</p>
<p>What would you do?</p>