Monday, June 05, 2006

I'm sorry, Brady Bear


Last Monday the wife and I adopted an 18-month old male miniature poodle to be a companion to our nearly 4-year old female miniature poodle. Yesterday, we returned him to his breeder. He was basically still a puppy, albeit one with a few bad habits already. However, he was settling in to our house and was a furry love bug. The problem turned out to be our existing poodle. She got more agressive with him as the days went by. We had to keep them separated inside and if either one was loose in the house we had to supervise them to keep them away from each other's crates. We also had to closely supervise their time together outside. We had our trainer in on Saturday and she got to see a dog fight. She gave us some techniques and recommended a book called "On talking terms with dogs: Calming signals". The whole process was absolutely exhausting and we were keeping both dogs crated far more than we were comfortable with. Finally yesterday we made the decision that for the well-being of the household, we should return the fuzzy boy to his breeder. She accepted him gracefully and said that if our female had not accepted him already she probably wasn't going to. I feel like such a failure. I feel like I should have been able to make it work and create a "peaceable kingdom". I feel like we failed in training our first dog and made it so she couldn't accept another dog but she is otherwise a good dog. Spastic in her greetings (according to our trainer she was just born that way, not that we can't make it more socially acceptable) but otherwise a good dog.

I want to save every dog that doesn't have a good home but I can't do that. The whole situation just makes me cry.

Bear, I hope you find a forever family all of your own who can give you all the love, treats, and training you deserve.

2 comments:

Archi said...

You did all you could... and the breeder who took him back sounds like a good person who will find him another good home!

RB said...

Smart move, you cared enough to do the right thing