Once there was a girl who made an uncharacteristically hasty home-life-changing decision.
She bought a dog.
And the girl who sold her the dog wasn't telling the truth, I am sure.
She told the girl who bought the dog that this little beagle was house trained, or all but. She'd just go to the door, howl, and you'd know she had to go out. This girl bought the dog (for what reason I honestly couldn't tell you now) because she wanted (Why, again? Why?) a house dog that was potty trained, calm, already through all the puppy stuff because she thought the idea of a dog would be great, but she didn't want all the training/babysitting/feeling like you have another child that a puppy would bring. Because she honestly couldn't handle that right now.
Well, you can imagine the rest.
The dog was peeing in the house. Put in the kennel because of the peeing. Let out because that is mean to keep a dog in the kennel all the time. Successfully peeing at times outside, but it was always a guessing game. Running off down the street with husband chasing dog in dead sprint to catch up and bring her back. And when inside and out of the kennel, going bonkers from being inside the kennel. And the girl was constantly stressed, trying to follow and watch this dog to prevent her from peeing in the house and take care of three small children and taking out the stress on her kids. What to do? Keep her in the kennel so she won't pee and be so mean to the poor dog (no dog should be confined like that)? Or let her out and deal with chaos in the house, messes, a quick puke up on the floor, and feeling stressed? The dog was obviously not house trained. The dog definitely knew where the door was after being in the house for a few days and being taken in and out several times a day.
The dog got posted for FREE on craigslist and the local newspaper's online free ad posting. Also texted the girl she bought the dog from to see if she had the phone numbers of, of course, all the people who had been calling on the dog the day before. And the reply was that she had erased all the numbers.
(REALLY? Doesn't work anymore, sweetheart, with the advent of cell phones -- and especially with that being the contact number you had listed on the ad. Pretty sure you could scroll back through your calls.)
No one called.
And the girl didn't know what to do because keeping the dog wasn't an option. The stress was too much and the girl had bought her thinking this wouldn't be an issue.
So what did the girl do?
I took the dog to the humane society and felt horrible about it.
I decided I could look at it and feel like a horrible person because the poor dog would be kenneled, or I could view it from the lens that it wasn't working at my house and at least this would open the door for her to get all of her immunizations and be adopted by a family that could train her and handle that -- because, if you took the potty issue out of it -- the dog was really cute and rather obedient.
(As a sidenote, the girl told me that the dog was up to date on all shots, but then couldn't surrender any paperwork to show that and handed me a rabies shot verification tag that wasn't even on the dog. So now after the whole experience I find myself wondering if she was feeding me a line about that. Why wasn't that already on the dog? It looks like it could have been an old tag. And then I think back now and think, "You're such an idiot...Hello! RED flag!!")
But that aside, I got there and walked back out to the car to get the dog and called Scott on my cell and started crying, feeling horrible and responsible for the dog being put innocently in a bad situation, and wondering if I was shifting responsibility from myself when it was my fault. The only way I felt even somewhat better was to know that their adoptive rate for small dogs was very high.
I still felt horrible. And still kind of do. I'm feeling a bit haunted by it.
But I came home and actually felt free in my own house -- I felt SO relieved. And felt sorry for the stress I had put my family through because I had been so stressed out.
And this is what I learned from the experience.
First...I will never do that again.
And second, I don't think I'm a pets person. Really. I like the idea in theory, I like the idea of a dog snoozing by the fire and all that jazz, but really...I don't think it's my thing.
This is how I became a complete (as opposed to partial much of the rest of the time) idiot for almost 72 hours.
$75 bucks of my saved birthday cash (now lost) taught me that over the weekend.
(And, if any of you live by me and want a big FREE bag of dog food, it's yours. Call me.)
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