Before Fudge and Vern...there were others!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Several posts about disposable pets, got me thinking about our rescue dog. They say the right dog finds you, but in our case we have had the right dog find us "Four" times. First, our family dog, Hershey, who we got when our children were young. We did almost everything wrong with her and she blossomed into the absolute best dog. Hershey will be forever the standard for all of our other dogs. The last few years of her life were very hard. She had the audacity to get old. She had trouble seeing, hearing, leaking, walking, but if you opened the refrigerator for any reason, she forgot all of her aches and pains and rushed to see what you were getting. She taught my kids that the love of a dog is very special and constant. One day, I am going to write a longer blog about just our Hershey girl. I had been her primary caregiver for a long time, and I thought I would be ready to be dog free when she died. No more worrying about what to do with her when we went away, or having to be home to let her out by a certain time, and each night before being able to go to bed waiting in any weather while she took forever to go to the bathroom. I said all the time, "No more dogs when Hershey goes!" However, when it happened, I was unprepared for the grief and terrible loss I felt. It was so lonely in the house without a dog and within months was searching again.

 

My DH kept saying we needed to wait one year before I did anything because I was not thinking clearly and maybe even a little emotionally unstable. I told him he had said the same thing right after we had our oldest daughter and that didn't stop us from having another daughter rather quickly. It didn't help my argument that our youngest daughter chose that moment to announce she loved living with us and didn't think she would ever want to leave. Her timing has never been all that great. Anyway, he could see it was a lost cause and so we decided this time we would adopt an older dog from a  rescue.

 

Adopting a dog is a lot of work. We had a home interview, filled out mountains of paperwork, and had to be approved. Meanwhile, I was checking out their website daily to find us the perfect dog. Any dog with separation anxiety, severe training issues, or on major medications, I knew immediately was not the dog for us. Sometimes, I think my mother put a curse on me when she used to say "what goes around, comes around" whenever I did anything naughty growing up (and as she likes to tell everyone, that was pretty often), because I think this might be one of those comes around time. We settled on an older, yellow dog named Honey Bun. (seemed like a sign for those of us who like the food names) On paper, she seemed perfect!

 

We brought her home on a Saturday and by Monday, we noticed she leaked when she stood up and she had to go on incontinence medication. We were told she walked 3 miles a day and we quickly determined that if she did walk that far someone was either carrying her or poking her forward with an electric cattle prod. She had no hip problems that they knew of, but when she would get into our van, she kept getting stuck and we had to hoist her until we decided we valued our backs and bought a dog ramp. We thought about getting her a Seeing Eye dog because her vision seemed impaired on several occasions. She got scared in the middle of the night and barked at nothing, so we slept with a light on. Two days after we got her, I found a tick in her ear and when I went to take it out, I heard a funny noise and looked to see Honey baring her teeth at me and growling. It took me a long time to be able to handle her ears and I never forgot that growl. Resource guarding was a term I quickly learned and she swallowed a sock one day before I could act quickly enough. She was deathly afraid of thunderstorms and barked all night when we were having one. The biggest surprise came when we found out she did indeed have the dreaded SEPARATION ANXIETY.  We are not animal behavior experts, but we were able to deduce this when we went out for two hours one evening and came home to find our beautiful, huge, custom door scratched to smithereens. Despite a trainer and medication, she never got over her anxiety and since she was fine in the car, weather permitting she went with us everywhere. We were never afraid anyone would steal her, because we knew in a few short hours they would return her to us and probably give US a reward for taking her back. At this point, we also elevated Hershey to sainthood.

 

We bought a bike carrier and I would pull her 70 pound body in a 35 pound cart behind my bike, so we didn't have to leave her at home. When I came up with the idea, I swore to my DH I would do the pulling (he thought it was a dumb idea), but it was hard. I quickly figured out if we were a good ways away from our starting point, I would say something like, "I like going so slowly, if gives us time to talk" and he would almost always ask to switch and pull her the rest of the way to the car. We tried doggie daycare and she spent the whole time barking at the gate and would come home wet from panting and slobbering. After that, we found the most wonderful pet sitter to come and get her and take her to her own house, in case we had to leave for the day.

 

Did we want to give her back at first...oh yeah, but as the agency suggested we needed to give it more time. My DH said, "we are in our 50's now, we don't have that kind of time," but we kept at it and fell in love with a damaged, fun, quirky dog. Was she easy? Nope. When I left the house, she waited at the door and would bark for hours. She wanted to go out and wait in the driveway for my car. When we went away for a week, we left her with our dog sitter, and she said Honey spent the entire time trying to get down to the spot I parked my car and wait for me. The sitter looked exhausted when we picked her up. In Honey's defense, she was fostered with several dogs and probably felt secure in that pack and maybe exhibited none of these behaviors. At our house, I think I was her pack and it was a lot of pressure. I told my DH that nobody had ever loved me that much and he agreed, which I did not like.

 

What is the point of this LONG story, you might ask. Well, the point is you might not get the dog you were looking for, but you almost always get the dog that was meant to be yours. Our $100 rescue dog, turned into our million dollar baby, but I loved that dog like nobody's business. If you give up too quickly when things get tough, you are never going to get to the good stuff. Honey taught us that lesson!

 

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

:)