I have dug a hole and buried five dogs in my life time.
None of them was easy.
I know I will cry like a baby when Nick barks his final bark.
I know how you feel.
I’m sorry you had to do that, Scylla. I hope it’s some comfort that you know it was the right thing to do.
My condolences to you and your family.
You found yourself in a situation where on the one hand you could do the wrong thing, but on the other hand, you could do the other wrong thing. There was no right thing to do, and that sucks. I’m sorry.
Could you not have sent him back to the farm?
God, that made me cry.
Sorry about Bear, Scylla.
You’re a brave man, Scylla.
I wish that we didn’t have to do these things.
Damn
I’m sorry, Scylla. I hurt for you. Doing the right thing is really, really hard sometimes.
Adding myself to the list of dopers feeling sad about Bear and Scylla, but confident that you did the right thing in a crappy situation.
Scylla, I’m very sorry about Bear. You did the right thing. I know it hurts very much to lose a pet.
Am I the only one appalled by this?!
A dog was put down for being unhappy in his new home. I read the OP carefully and no where do I see an attempt was made to find the dog another home where he could be happy and live out his natural life before the decision that killing the poor thing was the only option.
I’m sorry to hear about Bear too, and I don’t think he did the right thing. I’ll be over there waiting to be flamed to ashes for daring to speak against Scylla.
Scylla, you’ve got me bawling like a baby. How hard for you and your family. You did do the right thing.
Sometimes, friend, there are really no good answers.
You couldn’t bring him into your new life, and you couldn’t leave him where he was. In theory, I suppose, you could have stayed on the farm until Bear was so old that even he recognized he wasn’t alpha dog anymore. But that’s going a bit above and beyond, for almost all of us.
And remember, he adopted you, not the other way around. You could have called the Animal Control people, or shot him yourself, when he first showed up. But you didn’t. And you and he both got nine good years out of the deal - nine years that he probably wouldn’t have had at all if you hadn’t let him stay in the first place.
It’s still a very sad thing, having to put him down. But sometimes life forces us into corners where there are no happy choices, and this was one of them. You made the closest thing to a right choice that there was to make, and sometimes that’s the best any of us can do.
Mauvaise, your heart is in the right place, but that’s not an easy task. How precisely do you find a good home for an animal that has threatened you, barks all night even with a correction collar on, is trying to kill a neighbor’s dog, and has to be kept constantly kenneled/tied up and tranquilized? How exactly do you write a “free to a good home - that’s far away from most people and other animals, and keep an eye on him because he might not be able to cope with new owners, either” ad? Scylla had to deal with having a family pet that had turned dangerous, and probably a limited amount of time to work in before something went wrong - maybe the medication wouldn’t work next dose, maybe the neighbor dog would get loose and come into his yard, maybe his daughter would make the wrong move and get mauled.
No. I’m pretty appalled by the whole thing, as well, and I’m the one that did it.
I thought about that option. I wasn’t going to dump him off at the human society, as I’m sure he wouldn’t make a favorable impression on anybody in a cage. He’d have maybe ten days of suffering and confusion before they put him down.
The new owners of the farm weren’t interested in him.
I decided, perhaps wrongly against trying to find another home for him. He was, after all, my problem, and it felt irrepsonsible to foist him off on anybody else.
He wasn’t reacting well to change, and I didn’t feel comfortable trying to give him another new home in a new environment. I was trying to give him the best home I could. He had a large fenced in yard. He had the other dog and tons of attention from me and my family, and he was miserable. I honestly couldn’t see anybody giving him a better environment short of being allowed to roam completely loose which is just not practical in most areas.
So, I don’t regret that part of the decision.
I do wish I’d given him more time, though, in spite of what the vet said. It just seemed like we were heading for a train wreck real fast with that other dog, and I was personally afraid of him as he was throwing fits. He’d be himself one minute, and then snap real quickly and be a 75 pound wild animal.
Maybe I could have tried to work with him some more. Maybe he would have settled down with some love and patience.
I weighed his nine years of love and loyalty against the inconvenience and the danger, and also my knowledge of the dog and what I thought the chances of success were, and I made what was nothing more than a selfish decision. I couldn’t guarrantee that he wouldn’t get loose and kill this other dog, and I couldn’t guarrantee that he wouldn’t throw one of his fits near my daughter, and I couldn’t watch him 24/7.
That’s why it felt like murder. I had him killed for a crime he hadn’t committed and maybe wouldn’t have.
From the OP:
If the vet was right, then putting the dog into any new situation would have been quite risky.
{{{Scylla}}}
That sucks Scylla. Condolences to you and your family.
Selfish? Absolutely not, Scylla. If it had been just you, I believe you would have given the situation more time.
But you have a daughter, and as you said, you couldn’t protect her from the dog 24/7. You knew your first responsibility, and acted on it. Maybe Bear wouldn’t have attacked her, but that was a chance you knew you had no right to take.
I’ve said it already, but sometimes life just hands you no good choices.
I agree with DeniseV - as difficult as it is, any dog that poses a threat to humans must be put down. Is it even legal for Scylla to find a home for a dog that both he and the Vet knew was a potential threat to humans? What if Scylla had given the dog away to someone who wasn’t aware of the dog’s personality, and the dog ended up hurting or killing a small child?
Scylla did the right thing. Be appalled all you want, Mauvaise, but a dangerous dog is NOT something to play around with. I like dogs as much as the next person - my own lil’ Grommy is right here at my feet - but the minute I feel my dog is a threat to me or another human, the dog is euthanized. I do NOT play around with human life or health like that.
::gives Scylla a bear hug::
I wish you had asked the board for help, one of us may have been able to come to the rescue. I know an animal-loving couple who live in rural Maryland and if it was possible to get Bear there I’m sure they would have given him a new home. He would have been able to do his hunting in the field across from their house.