When we were kids I had allergies, but my sister and I loved dogs, so we always acquired a stray by feeding it secretly. When my parents would find out, my mother would call a rescue, and we’d foster the dog until a family was found. (I had terrible allergies- if the animal was in the house over winter I’d get pneumonia w/in 2 weeks of the windows being closed. I have had pneumonia like 15 times- no joke), so when we gave up animals it was because of allergies.
As an adult, I’ve grown out of my allergies, thank OG, and my wife and I have added three rescues to our family. The first, Maguire (Yellow Lab) was seized from a collector (30+ animals in a single bedroom apartment)> Maggie, our chiweenie was given up by her owner because “I can’t keep her, my husband drop-kicks her like a football.” We could still see the footprint-bruise on her when we took her. There’s a special place in hell for people who do that to any dog, let alone one that weighs 7#. Rocco the Chihuahua, our last (six weeks with us now!) was part of a cruelty complaint. When the investigators showed up at the elderly person’s home to check it out, they immediately signed him over because they couldn’t physically take care of him- he had been a gift (I’m guessing to help get them up and about. Please, don’t give puppies as gifts).
Other: I had three dogs I had to rehome when my youngest was diagnosed with leukemia. With him often in a neutropenic state, the docs said that he should not be exposed to dogs, who, much as we loved them, are great carriers of germs. Plus, my ex (who has primary custody) made it clear that she would do everything she could to deny me visitation if I still had dogs in the house.
One dog, our English Springer spaniel, went to my mother. She has been doing great there, and has been great for mom, who needed someone to care for once my step-father passed away. Since taking the spaniel, my mom has become a lot livelier and active in general, so this one was a definite win-win.
Dog #2 was my Sharpei/Lab mix (a rescue dog), whom I dearly loved. He went to a friend from work, who is a huge animal lover. He is also doing fantastic, and her kids adore him. He sleeps every night in her son’s room, a boy who has a lot of stranger anxiety…but with good ole guard dog Oz, has been doing a lot better about not being scared at night. Win-win #2!
The third dog was my wife’s cocker spaniel puppy. We gave him to a family we know that recently lost their own beloved spaniel to old age. He too is doing great, and they love the heck out of him…so win-win #3.
The only regret I have is that my step-son, who is autistic, desperately misses the dogs. Thankfully, all three of the homes we sent them to let us visit and he gets play dates with them.
I got my dog from an ad in a small college newspaper. The father of a family with several kids had been hurt on the job and had to retrain. He was on a much more limited income, and the family had to move to an apartment. The dog was a large dog and needed to be with someone with a yard. It was a purebred, but I got her for free because he just wanted her to go to a good home.
We had neighbors who had a series of scruffy, whitish, poodle-ish dogs, always an unspayed bitch. She’d pop a litter… and they would get rid of her and all but one puppy, a female of course. They must have repeated this cycle, with the dogs getting muttier and muttier (and typically being the nasty neighborhood cat- and car-chaser) a half dozen times that I know of.
My mother once asked about this cycle - they were not neighbors we were close to - and got a vague “Oh, the kids and the miracle of life blah blah” sort of answer. Her black comment (in family) was that they should take the kids to the pound and let them watch the miracle of death.
I’ve never given away a pet. Of the pets I currently have, 1 cat was born in a co-workers back yard and the husband insisted the kittens go THAT DAY when they kittens were 8 weeks old. I took one. I recently adopted asemi-feral cat with behavior issues from a Doper. One cat came from the pound - given up because of a baby. One dog (english setter) found nearly starved to death by the pound. Apparently dumped by hunters - he has shown little inclination to hunt since I’ve had him. The doberman that just died was given up by his previous owner because they were moving and only wanted to take one dog. The new dobie was given up because they had a baby and only wanted to keep two dogs. The standard poodle was given up by a co-worker because “she follows me around all the time!”. The giant schnauzer mix was part of an accidental litter when some mutt got in with a breeders G. schnauzer bitch. The two german shepherds were given up to the high-kill pound with no reason given.
I got my dog when one of my son’s friends (they were probably barely twenty at the time) couldn’t keep up with the puppy he had gotten. He lived with his mother and had brought the puppy home with the stipulation that it was his and she wasn’t going to get involved.
Unfortunately, Kayla is a chewer. His mom threatened and upgraded as Kayla got different shoes, but pronounced the ultimatum when her best boots were shredded.
Kayla was three before I could go to work without crating her. Oddly, she was six before I could let her sleep on the bed. The couch was safe while I was at work, but the quilt was toast while I slept.
I even bought a furniture moving pad, at one point. She went through it a little slower, but it obviously wasn’t going to work. All I could do was wait a few months and try again. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that any more. She’s good heat in the winter.
So she wasn’t totally unmanagable, but when she was 3 to 6 months, nothing was safe if she was alone. She ate a wooden chair at one point. Not completely, but she got it into pieces and it was seriously gnawed. Once, while I was watching, she found a spot on the wooden floor that smelled interesting. She licked it a few times, then tilted her head and started gnawing. You can still see the gouges she made before I got to her.
The only other annoyance was that she would never ask to go out. That became a question of me remembering to let her out often enough. I finally learned. There’s another dog in the house, now, and he doesn’t just ask to go out; he goes into full drama mode. He’ll come look straight at you and whine and cry and writhe as if he’s about to die.
I voted “other”. Our neighbors are incapable of properly taking care of pets, yet they continue to bring more into the house. At least part of the family finally moved out, after one cat was hit by a car, two kittens were taken by strangers, and one cat and one dog died of old age.
In the midst of all that, the younger daughter and mother of two kids thought it would be a good idea to buy a young collie. They named it Riley. Riley was a nice, friendly puppy who would run up to the fence surrounding their tiny yard to be petted and fussed over by passersby. But the kids rarely played with the dog and the owner never walked him, and Riley, growing more and more frustrated in his confined space, began to bark. First he barked at dogs being walked by owners, and then he began barking at people without dogs. I began complaining to the owners about the animal, as the barking made it impossible to have the windows open in our house.
The dog began rushing at the picket fence, barking and snarling at pedestrians, nearly frantic to get out of the yard. The owner made a few half-assed attempts to walk the dog, but without proper training it was just a pointless exercise. By now Riley was frightening passing children with his antics, and people would cross the street to avoid walking near the fence. At long last, after a year of this sort of neglect, they gave the dog away. I can only hope that the new owner had the patience and compassion to rehabilitate poor Riley and that the dog is now living a happier life.
I voted “other.” The situation was a colleague who was getting transferred to the UK. At the time, pets brought in had to spend several months in quarantine - at the owners expense - to prevent the spread of rabies. She did not want to do this so I “fostered” her dog for a couple of years. It was good arraignment - I had the company of a sweet Basset Hound and the owner could visit as often as possible. I must admit, it was quite hard to return Ashley to her owner when they repatriated.
My friend gave back the young dog she and her husband got their kids for Christmas b/c no one could be arsed to house train it and she was tired of mopping up after it. This is the 3rd time she’s gotten rid of a ‘bothersome’ pet in 7 years.
I see shelters combat that sort of thing by offering free or reduced cost obedience and training classes to owners.
I have given up one pet in my life and I honestly believe it was for her own good. She was a lab mix, and very sweet. She just would not stay in the fenced back yard. There is 1/2 acre to run around in, so it wasn’t so much a space issue, and there were other dogs with her. My kids played with her every day. She was just an escape artist. She didn’t dig, but mastered other ways to get out. She started by sqeezing through the small gaps where the fence met the garage, house, etc., so I sealed them all up. She then started climbing out using the fence corners, so I put wire over each one to keep her in. She then learned to climb the fence at any given place, so I constructed a run that gave her unimpeded access to about half the yard. Did I mention she was a chewer as well? She chewed through or broke every chain I tried, incluing plastic coated braided strand and swing set chain rated at 600 lbs (she probably weighed 50 lbs). I even tried an invisible fence, but she blew through it like it was nothing.
It eventually became a choice of taking her to the Humane Society or scaping her off the road dead one day. I have no formal training in canine behaviour, but I have had dogs all my life. I still don’t know what I could have done differently to train her.
Well, with all due respect, you could have tried actually training her. Sounds snarky, but I’m sincere. You don’t describe a single attempt to train her at all, you describe the many ways you tried to prevent her from escaping. Those are completely unrelated things. Did you simply expect that your persistent attempts to create a dog-proof container was going to somehow lead to her spontaneous comprehension of your desire that she stop, which would be followed by her compliance? Because that’s a fool’s errand, Doctor.
If you or anyone else reading this ever has that problem again, stop focusing on the mechanical ways you can contain her and focus instead on figuring out what her motives are (different dogs have different reasons), then addressing the problem directly and appropriately by meeting the need she is trying to meet herself (stimulation, exercise, curiosity, alleviate anxiety…), coupled with training her to understand that the best thing in life is staying in the yard… because all the best things in life are whatever you teach her they are by making what you want more rewarding than whatever she wants.
That is the core formula for dog training, and pretty much any and every dog will respond. Of course, each dog is rewarded by different things at different rates, so you may have to pay very close attention, try different things, be patient, consistent, and I promise you that if you are, you will find yourself the proud companion of a marvelous animal who will be the friend you always hoped for.
And it makes your work very much easier if you are vigilant about preventing your dog from getting too much reward from things you don’t like in the first place, so just plan on doing a lot of work at first. But that early work will make your life incredibly easy and pleasant for years afterwards. Crating will save you and your dog a whole lot of grief.
My aunt divorced and had to sell the house. They found a rental that allowed dogs, but the fence was flimsy and that was a nearly vertical, 10 metre river bank.
She realized that wasn’t a safe situation, so she went to give it up. My grandfather (who I live with) decided he’d take the dog in.
This sounds like my dog. We did not use a chain or an invisible fence, but we built higher additions to the fence so he couldn’t climb it (it was 6’ already, we added 2 more feet), placed stone all along the bottom of the fence when he started digging under. None of this worked, and he escaped day after day, hurting himself in the process (nose, chest, sides of his face where he’d squeezed through). At first it was just running around the neighborhood. Then he went 4 miles and was found the next day at a high school because we’d put up fliers. We tried to patch the weaknesses in the fence, and failed. He got out again, in December, and was gone for 8 days, through 2 thunderstorms, before someone saw a flyer, heard whining in the woods behind her house and called me. He was 5 miles from home.
We tried to train him on his separation anxiety. I would leave, wait a random period, and come back inside. Over and over. This freaked him out even more. For separation anxiety, we tried Xanax; we tried Clomipramine. Nothing worked. We were told by the breeder specifically that he can’t be crated or he will freak out. We’d had a dog of the same breed previously and he couldn’t be crated either; absolute panic, defecating in the crate, etc. We didn’t want a repeat of that.
My dog’s motives are rather unusual. When no one is home, every internal door in the house must be open. When my brother lived with us for a time, he’d close the guest bedroom door for privacy when he left for work. My dog ripped up the carpet and chewed almost all the way through the door, even though no one was inside. The same was done to my husband’s door when I shut it before going to work. There are bloody claw marks under my bathroom window. Every door in the house has scratch marks and/or holes, and there are at least 5 places where the carpet has been ripped up (despite also putting blocks of stone on top of them). He’s missing teeth now.
Our solution: we are keeping him. We lock both dogs in (previously they had a doggie door leading to the fenced in back yard) while we’re gone, let him do his damage, clean any messes, open up the doggie door, and go about the rest of the day. Because I’d rather clean up poop in the house than go through another agonizing 8 days in the middle of winter with a missing dog.
Friend got a divorce; the way their work times overlapped, there was generally someone home to care for the dog, but apart, neither had the time to take care of a dog (or, in their case, dogs).
Friend was in and out of mental hospitals, and her family couldn’t keep dog-sitting. When she was finally sent off to an out-of-state hospital for the better part of the year, the dogs were given new homes.
Friend’s life situation seriously changed (parents died, broke up with the boyfriend who she moved in with, siblings moved out of state, etc.), and she ended up having to couch-hop. Dog (and cats) had to be adopted out.
We adopted our dog two years ago, and frankly never should have kept him. He wasn’t really housebroken and was never good with the kids. We muddled through for a couple of years until he bit our eldest son. I’m due with baby #3 in mid-May and we agreed that he just wasn’t safe around the kids. He already had to be crated during the day while we were gone AND at night. If left unattended behind closed doors, he’d pee or poop on things. Not much of a life. We contacted a few local rescues until we found one who was willing to take him for rehoming with full knowledge of his issues. He was picked up yesterday and is being transported to his new foster home as we speak. We made sure he was up to date on vaccines and heartworm tested before sending him, and made sure he had plenty of his own food to make the transition, plus his leash, collar, harness, shampoo, and tennis balls.
I’ve never given away a pet (my only pet was a stray cat that gradually adopted me, and she eventually disappeared because I figured she was so used to being outdoors that she would be bored alone in my house all day when I was at work.)
My mom’s given away three dogs: one because she was downgrading from a farm to an apartment. She gave it away to an old lady on another farm and they hit it off. She really did give it away to a farm, that time: I saw the lady and the dog playing together. (She also then gave away her cat “to a farm” when we then moved down south to Florida because her then-boyfriend was allergic to cats, but I have my doubts about that farm adoption.)
Then she got a couple more dogs when she moved to a house with a big back yard. Then, she downgraded again to a very small apartment but planned on keeping the dogs. When they wouldn’t shut up all night barking in the new location, she gave them away to a shelter the very next day.