One Dog Less – an update

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 4:47 pm by Rebecca Frech

One Dog Less – an update 2015-05-30T16:47:00-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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When I put up my last post about the Great Dog Fight and how we expected to lose my husband’s dog, Grace, I was a bit naive in how I wrote it. I didn’t anticipate the outpouring of condemnation that has filled my email’s inbox. So, before I write an update, please allow me to add an addendum to what I had previously written:

We picked up Gus from the rescue on Saturday afternoon and brought him home to our usually-friendly-to-other-dogs Grace. She bristled when she saw him and was less than her usually welcoming self. At that point, we called a friend of ours who is a dog-trainer. She recommended a slow introduction from that point – which we followed. On Wednesday night, the two dogs had progressed to the point that they spent the evening in the same room pointedly ignoring, tolerating but not fighting with, each other. That’s why the unprovoked viciousness by Grace the next m0rning was such a surprise.

We did not just throw two dogs together willy-nilly and hope for the best. We’re experienced pet owners who know better than to expect that to be okay.

Friday morning, I took Grace to the vet after she’d spent the evening in her crate refusing to eat, drink, or leave her bed even to pee. We were certain that she was dying, and it was with a heavy heart that I took her to the vet. I was certain that she was going to have to be put down.

That’s not what happened.

Her bite wounds were not life-threatening, just ugly and painful. I had a long talk with the vet about her sudden violence, and the fact that it took place with my children all around. We discussed whether or not we could still trust her with them after she had knocked down the 3-year-old to continue attacking Gus.

The vet seemed to think that it was just a personality clash, and not that she had suddenly turned into a violent half-crazy psycho dog. He cleaned and cared for her wounds, and sent her home on pain medication and anti-biotics with a recommendation that we re-home Gus. Our dog-trainer friend agreed that re-homing him was probably our only option as getting them to tolerate each other after such an ugly fight is extremely hard to accomplish.

He went to his new family yesterday.

It’s been difficult explaining to the kids who had instantly loved him why he had to leave. There’s been a lot of discussion about how “not fair” it is that she was bad and he lost his home. I have done the best I can, but none of us are happy with the outcome of this whole fiasco.

It has ended as well as it could, I guess. Gus has moved on to a very lovely family who are already spoiling him, and Grace has gone back to adoring my husband and tolerating the rest of us. It’s not what we were hoping for last Saturday, but I guess that it will have to do.

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