I Had To Give My Dog Away

This was an original post for LA Moms Blog on November 28, 2008.   SV Moms Group was acquired by Technorati so I post my archives here on Fridays.  This post was titled “A Year Without a Dog.”

March, 2003.  Three weeks after my new husband and I adopted a puppy, I sat in the living room sobbing on the phone to my father, scared to death that I was unfit to ever have children.  If I couldn’t handle house training a dog, who was I to procreate?

Frida quickly grew into a 75-pound tangle of muscle and drool and stinky dog breath.  She was poised at every moment to jump on humans and lick them as much as possible to indicate her joy.  She also barked, pooped, vomited, and chewed in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.  To make matters worse, we also adopted a cat, Molly.  Less obnoxious than the dog, she still needed a trough to crap in, which required me to clean it out.

Stewart and I loved those animals, despite the challenges that came from having them live with us.  We took the dog hiking and camping.  We snuggled with the cat, and encouraged her to boss the dog around.  When our first child, Kyle, came, we acclimated them to his presence and enjoyed his reaction to them as he got older.  We even took Frida for a second round of obedience training to try and improve her behavior before our second child was born.

But with Brady’s birth came the absence of much of my patience.  With one child, caring for animals was too much.  With one toddler and a baby, the animals pushed me over the edge.  When I lost it, which was often, they were the ones in the house who suffered.  Banishment to the garage, captivity in a crate, verbal tirades, and lack of attention.

A friend noted how much I complained about the dog and cat and suggested we find new homes for them.  At first I rejected that idea soundly – they had been part of our family for four years!  But the more I thought about it, the more the idea made me feel free inside.  I could have people over for playdates without a hysterical barking hound trying to jump over the side fence and flatten the children!  I could avoid the shame of hair-covered furniture.  I could once again invite those allergic friends to visit, and when we traveled, I wouldn’t have to arrange for costly boarding services or ask my neighbor for yet another favor.  And I won’t even start calculating those veterinarian bills…

I cried for weeks.  I felt like a failure.  Every time I watched Kyle play with what was to be his dog, I felt like a terrible person, that one person in the world who could not give a dog to her boy.  But my needs won out.  After all, if mama ain’t happy…

Once we made the decision, it actually wasn’t long before we found a woman who places animals in adopted homes.  She guided us through the “re-homing” process and matched the animals with an older couple who live on acres of land with barns and gardens and endless loops to run.  They already had one dog and one cat.  Their house is an animal haven, where everyone, humans and animals, sleep on the same bed and the woman makes homemade food for them.  They adopted both Frida and Molly, and kept an open door policy for us if we ever wanted to visit them.  We did that once, about a month later, and found the animals happy and looking very well-fed.

It’s been over a year since we sent them away.  Sometimes Kyle says “I miss Frida” or “Remember our gray cat?” and my heart twists a little bit.  I think about them too.  When I look at pictures of them, or think about the day we found Frida at the pound, and the tiny little gray kitten I found in the adoption cage at the pet store, I get all choked up.  But I don’t regret the decision.  After all, someone wise once said that discovering who you are includes discovering who you are not.  I’m not a pet-lover after all, at least not at this stage of my life.

Over a year later, I still lose it.  Often.  Now there’s no dog or cat to take it out on.  It seems I have to do things like “cope” and “find more appropriate reactions to stress,” because I’m not going to re-home my husband or children.  And I certainly don’t want them to re-home me.