I gave my Puppy Away :(

Today was one of the worst experiences I have ever had to endue.

Today we gave away our puppy, Kodi. It was horrific to do and when I wrote this on 6/19/2019 I didn’t and I still don’t feel confident that it was the absolute right thing to do. Because he was my puppy. And I loved him.

But I feel like that’s more emotion than anything else.

Over the past 6 months, raising a puppy has taught me so much about myself, my family, and well, of course dogs. Working with Kodi, and training him, I have grown and developed myself, he has taught me to work on patience, consistency, structure, and non verbal communication. I had to learn how to understand what he wanted without him talking. I had to feel out his triggers, and gauge his stress levels. And know when to back down because nothing I do will work, and then lure him back in with love and kindness. I had to learn how he is a dog. He is a dog with emotions, but also with the memory and distraction levels of a fly, literally a fly would distract him. And when he screwed up, I needed to know how to properly correct him, in a timely fashion, and then move on immediately from that. Because as much as I am dwelling on it, he has long forgotten and is just ready to love again.

So why the hell would you get rid of a dog that has taught you so much and you have clearly grown affectionate for?

Someone told me that in the dating world, he refers to this as a breakup of logic.

Kodi bit someone.

I always said this was my red line, and yet this decision was dragged on for 2 weeks because I was the one that messed up. I take responsibility for putting him in a situation he was not prepared for. I 100% screwed up. And I feel immense guilt over it.

But before everyone loses their shit on me, there is more to the story.

Kodi is amazing… with me. He listens to me and respects me. He is playful with me and knows how to behave, with me.

The key word is “me”. He never really became trustworthy with the family. He is near 9 months, so still a puppy, yet despite the intensive training, Ariella can not get through to him. He is edgy and protective of his vicinity. As a tiny puppy, that’s fine and even “cute”, but he is now a big puppy, and this becomes more dangerous. My arms and legs are all cut up from accidental teeth scratches during intense playing with him. This is my doing and I am ok with it… But imagine the damage he could do with an intentional bite. This becomes especially challenging when you have little kids, and they have friends coming in and out of the house. If he bit an adult, I’d blame the adult for being an idiot. But kids are impulsive. Kids don’t think and make quick irrational movements. OMG A DOG! and kodi does not react well to this.

When those situations came up he had some scary reactions, some I was ready for and others I was not. We, as a family, can’t live like that for the next 10 -15 years. We can’t live in fear that one of my kids friends will run in the door, and he will be spooked and attack them or get a little too close to him when he has food, or a toy, or something that he is protecting. Hell, my wife is about to have a baby, and imagine for a minute that baby crawling around on the floor in 6 or 7 months  and reaching for the toy Kodi is playing with and…

Why is he like this? Is this how he was born? Is this part of the way he was raised before we adopted him? Is this something you can train out of him? Did we screw up in the training? Some people will say yes. That’s fine. I have heard it all by now, some more hurtful than others.Different people will give you different answers. And agree or disagree with them, it really doesn’t matter, because he is not only my dog. He has to be a family dog and I don’t know if he is or can be. Or at what cost are we willing to test if he is… and I am not talking about money.

Zero regrets about the whole experience, even the shelter that mislead me every step of the way and made us believe wild back stories about him that ended up being complete lies. This actually happened. They told us he was part border collie, then fed us some crazy story about how his mother was found hurt in a field, and they saved her and she had 10 puppies and were raised in a private home, and he was one of them…

Which really turned out to be, “we got him from a kill shelter and know nothing about him, good luck” oops.

At the time, I didn’t understand the repercussions of this kind of thing. Because after all, we have him, he’s ours, and you don’t just get rid of him because he isn’t the breed you thought he was… that is a ridiculous reason, and I would NEVER have done that. But you do for other reasons, which we didn’t know about at the time.

And in a weird sick twisted way, I am glad they lied to us because I wouldn’t have taken him had they been more straight forward. He would have just been another cute puppy that it wouldn’t have been time for yet.

I have learned so much, am stronger because of it, and smarter for the next time… And there will be a next time in the near future. I will probably just me quieter about it 😛

We will have a dog in our family, just Kodi was not the right one for us, unfortunately. He is a sweet puppy, with a lot to offer, and I won’t forget Kodi and can only hope his new family will give him a happy life.