Piper Is Gone, But Now What..., I have another hard decision to make... Options

[Kenchimato]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Jeff, and until Tuesday I had two very sweet dogs. The first, a Chihuahua mix named Piper, who was 3 1/2 years old and my best friend in the world. I had her for almost 2 years. The second, a Lab mix named Sammy that I saved after she was abandoned before she was weened. She is now a little over 1 year old.

Tuesday evening after dinner I filled their treat ball, (a plastic ball that dispenses treats as they roll it across the floor), and set it down for them to play with. They quickly emptied it and I decided to give them a second round of play. I refilled the ball and set it down. Piper nudged the ball with her little nose, a treat was dispensed, and both dogs went for it. With no warning, and with no real history of fights, (beside the occasional spat and an accident when the lab first came to live with us), Sammy grabbed my Pip and shook her hard. I practically fell in between then and pulled them apart. The whole scene played out in about 5 seconds...

Within 10 minutes we were on the freeway to the emergency animal hospital. It was the longest ride in my life. When Piper and I arrived they took her down the hall, but I could hear her crying from across the building. The vet came out and told me he was preparing to give her morphine to stop the pain while he examined her. The cries became less frequent, but were regular enough that I had to go outside. And wait...

Two hours later I was called into the examination room. The doctor showed me two x-rays, and explained that there was significant internal damage. He said that it might be possible to save her, but she would need surgery then and there, and more operations in the future. He asked me if I was on a budget, and explained how he could help discount everything he could, and refer me to vets that could help me further. Regardless of what he could do for me, it would cost several thousand dollars to save her that night, to be followed by a lengthy stay at a clinic closer to home, and that I was looking at boarding costs, and another few thousand dollars in procedures and medicine over the next few weeks. Her outlook would be very long term if she made it, with some pain that might not ever really go away. He told me that I knew the alternative, and that it was a decision that I would have to make.

I sat with a box of kleenex looking at my wallet and bank card, with all of 400 dollars between the two. I could hear her crying in fear and pain, and knew that it had to stop. I hurt so bad in that room. They gave her another shot and brought her out to me for a few minutes to say goodbye. I signed the papers and they took her into the next room, and I went to the lobby to pay the bill. The vet discounted everything and gave me a lot of the services for free so that I could afford the bill. I could still hear some crying in the background, and as I turned and walked to the door, in the last moment as I opened it, the crying stopped...

The first decision was done, but the second one was waiting for me at home. My Sammy. In an instant she turned into a killer, and in an instant it was gone again. The last few days, now totalling four between us, have been slow and hard. I have built a memorial case and hung it over Piper's favorite spot on the sofa--it's filled with all her favorite things and my favorite pictures of her. I can't even look at Sammy in the eyes, but occasionally I watch her from across the room, moving around the house. I have noticed that she stops every few hours or so, stands with her front paws against that wall, and smells the display, taking her time, and then slowly walks away.

That night I was ready to call animal welfare, but stopped myself knowing that it may be a decision I would regret later--losing one was bad enough. It is still so early on and I have to make sure that enough time has gone by that I can see past the emotions I have now and make the right decision. I have spoken with friends and family, consulted with several vets in my city, and also talked to a retired police officer who headed up the K-9 force and now oversees dog training and consults the city's animal welfare office.

Of all those I have spoken with, the officer has been the most informative. Even though I asked the big question in my initial e-mail to him, during the following phone conversation as he described what he could do to help me with Sam, the question of putting her down never came up again. He has told me that he can help me train her one-on-one, and then in a group starting in about 3 weeks. She will become extremely disciplined in a few months when we are finished--she will sit, lie down, heel, shake, roll over, and fetch. Most importantly, he told me that when we are finished she will freeze, drop everything in her mouth, come to attention and await further commands with one word, "NO".

All of this aside, he warned me that he cannot promise one thing--that when all the right pieces fall into place, 1, 2, or 5 years down the road, no matter how well disciplined, she may snap and it may happen again. It is rare that an accident like this occurs, and the size difference had a definite impact on what happened, but for some reason people will never understand, when all the right stresses are in place, some dogs can just break for a second, like turning a light switch on and then right back off, and become what they really are--wolves...

I don't know if I will end up keeping her or adopting her out after she has been trained. For now I have calmed down enough to have taken euthanasia off the table as an option at all. I am partly to blame for this, not having disciplined or properly trained Sammy, and she is so sweet and loves me so much.

I guess I am posting this rather long story here to ask everyone how I should feel about Sammy, and how I should act around her. I am a logical person and know that while I am understandibly angry at her, she will never fully understand why. Acting towards her based upon my anger now, (four days later), is something that she doesn't understand and I can see the hurt in the way she acts. But should I play with her, pay attention to her, and let her sleep in the bed with me? Everytime I look at her I am taken right back to the exam room on Tuesday night, hearing those cries...

Am I making the right decision for now--training her and putting off the decision to keep her or adopt her out until after she is trained?

Am I the only one who has been faced with something like this? How did anyone else handle the situation?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks,

Jeffrey (Kenchimato)
Galveston, Texas

[Kenchimato]

I want to thank everyone for responding. Regardless of whether or not I can find anyone with a similar experience to mine, what I have really needed was just to talk to people who understand the kind of pain this has caused. I appreciate all of you for taking time to read our story and especially those who have replied. It has already been a big help to me just to hear from you.

A few notes:

Cleo1, I actually have a cat as well as Sammy. His name is Hiroshi, and his brother was named Kenchi, (hence the name I used here). Hiroshi is my oldest pet--I adopted him when he was a baby in early 2002. I call him "old man", and after Pip I admit I have been closest to him. He usually keeps to himself, but when the dogs weren't around, and I fell asleep on the couch watching television at night, I would often awake to find him on the end of the cushion watching over me. I have been sleeping in the spare bedroom in my house since Pip usually shared the pillow next to me, and while I have kept the door closed between myself and Sam, I have made sure he is with me every night, and he has been there to support me. I appreciate your well wishes.

JOANNE, I am learning how hard it is to deal with an aggressive dog myself. I am sorry to hear of the recent loss of your Bichon, and understand that it seemed harder to lose the Poodle. I have had many pets over the years, and some have gone with age, sickness, or had to be given up because my family moved and they could not come. But, somehow Piper seems so much of a greater loss--partly because she was so young, and partly because we shared a very special bond that I somehow did not have with the others. You hit the nail on the head when you said that I will not be able to trust Sammy again. In a lot of ways, that is the hardest part of what I have to face now.

Kristine, after I read your reply I looked online for information on Springer Rage. I found a lot of good information, but many times the articles I read referred to something called Dominance Aggression, so I researched that as well. I found a lot of good information on both subjects, and as a result of this search, I have been led to believe that what has happened has most definitely been a result of Dominance Aggression. After reading about that, (something that I would not have done if you had not mentioned Springer Rage), I have been able to look back at the weeks proceeding this and picked up on the warning signs I could have noticed if I had known before. While it is true that this doesn't help me now, it has helped me understand what has happened here, and will help me deal with the future. Your reply has been very helpful. And your prayers are much appreciated.

RIT & Cleo, thank you for your support. I hope I am making the right decision, but also understand that my ideas can be clouded by the feelings that are so fresh in my mind. I will take your advice and follow my intuition, as well as any advice anyone else here can give, because I need to be as informed as possible in order to make the right decisions from here on out. And, you are right that this has been an important reminder of what our pets are. I am a big science buff, and I have always been particularly interested in dogs and cats, but this has really brought what I knew about them home to me. It is one thing to watch a program on the Discovery Channel telling me that dogs are really wolves under their skins, and quite another to see that in action. I love Sammy so much, and I am going to try as hard as I can to move past this and make it work if I can.

Daisy's Mommy, your response has echoed my own feelings exactly. At least for now, I cannot imagine a future with Sammy in my home. I have started to think about what her future will be, and a major idea has been that she would make a good companion for someone with no children, perhaps on a farm or ranch near here in Texas, where she can run free in the fields, smell everything, and be a good guard dog for someone. Regardless of where she lives in the future, I will complete the training process with her. I cannot keep or adopt her out until it is finished, and my hope is that this process will give me enough time to clear my head and make the right decision about her. Even though my anger made me originally consider putting her to sleep on that first night, I have felt very strongly since then that to do so would be incredibly immoral. Usually, my budget allows me to take good care of the pets, but unfortunately this happened right after replacing a car radiator, moving into a new home, etc. It has been a "perfect storm" so to speak. Knowing that the budget is usually better has made this even harder in a lot of ways--if things were as they usually are, could I have saved my Pip? I have to keep telling myself that the answer is "No", because a life with pain for her just to make me happy would be immoral as well.

Starry, I am not a religious person, but if I had one dream right now it would be that Piper is somewhere out there running on the beach in her own dreams, (like she loved to do with me), and that maybe someday she will be there running towards me again. This whole situation has made me question a lot of things. Part of what has made this so hard is that Pip did have such a short life...

And that makes me think that I spent so much time talking about Sammy and what I can do for her in my original post, that I haven't really talked about Piper...

Pip was a gift from my best friend, that knew I had wanted a Chihuahua for a long time. He surprised me with her one Saturday night, when I was on a date, and told me he would bring her over to me the next day. It was so sudden that I hardly had time to react. Sure enough, Sunday morning she was there, and when he left, I was left wondering if the responsibility of having a dog was too much for me to handle. It was hard to wrap my head around a new addition to the house that would need so much attention, as Hiroshi pretty much does his own thing.

That worry didn't last long. Before I knew it, Piper dug her way into my heart deeper than anyone or anything else really has. Oh, I walked around the house so many afternoons just talking to her and asking her advice about things as she sat on the couch looking at me like I was crazy, and all the while you would think that I expected her to chime in with a response in perfect English at any moment. We went through a hurricane together, and came out on top--best friends. She went from being a pet to being a little sister to me, and while I would brag about how great a dog Sammy was to friends, Pip was something different--she was a person, a human being--at least to me...

Oh, we watched our favorite shows together, and at night when I bumped into her she would occasionally snap at me, but if it was cold at night, the next morning she would always be curled up under my arm like she belonged there.

My father died in 1995, and I cried some a few months later, (we had differences), but this past week has been the worst in my life. My co-workers avoid me like the plague, and I go through periods of staying busy typing and answering phones and then lowering my head into my hands in agony, with tears streaming out of me like a waterfall.

This is going to be very hard for a very long time--that is obvious. I very much appreciate everyones support.

Thanks,

Jeffrey