We dropped off our dog at the animal shelter yesterday

Before you drag me by my hair off to the Pit, it’s a NO-KILL shelter.

Some of you may remember that the Ivy family capped off that wonderful month, Sept 2001, by having to put our German shepherd to sleep.

In December, Ivylad finally wore me down to get another dog. So I go to the no-kill shelter and see a beautiful dog, grey and white and black, with a curlique for a tail. Turns out she’s an unspayed Norwegian Elkhund with papers. Three years old.

We bring her home and name her Storm. She’s a beautiful, intelligent dog, very good with the kids.

Except.

She barked. And whined. And barked and howled and whined and barked. Every time we let her outside it was bark and whine and howl incessantly.

Thunderstorms…she could not handle them. Bark and whine and whine and bark.

So, I go to Petsmart and get a bark collar, the kind that administers a mild static electricity charge when she barks. It doesn’t hurt her, just gets her attention.

It doesn’t work.

Ivylad, recovering from major surgery and still on heavy duty pain pills, finds it difficult to sleep at night. He would lay down for a nap in the middle of the afternoon, it would rain, Storm barks and howls and whines and barks.

We try a muzzle.

She pulls it off.

I manage to hook the muzzle around the bark collar so she can’t pull it off. Poor thing is pretty miserable, but that doesn’t stop her barking and whining.

We can’t leave her outside because the neighbors complain. Consequently, she messes in the house.

We tried for nine months, but it wasn’t a good fit.

So we take her back to the no-kill shelter and drop her off. I know she doesn’t have emotions the way I do, but it still hurt to abandon her like that. Ivylad and the Ivy kidlets wanted to look at other dogs, but I had to run back to the car, crying.

After a bit I agree to look at other dogs, and we end up picking up a red chow/shepherd pup about five months old.

She doesn’t have a barking problem.

The shelter believes Storm will be adopted quickly because a)she’s purebred b)she’s unspayed c)she has papers. In any event, she will not be put down.

I feel guilty about having to return her, but it was too stressful having her around. Does that make me a bad pet owner? I can say we tried, and short of cutting her vocal cords (I never considered that for a second) we treated her well. She was loved and cared for.

Good bye Storm. I hope you fit in better with your next family.

Hello, Ember.

Nah, doesn’t make you a bad pet owner. Picking an animal up from a shelter is a great thing to do - unfortunately, sometimes the animal has had a troublesome past, and it can’t fit in.

Not your fault. Maybe a new owner will have better luck, and she’ll fit in there.

But, uhm… those bark collars. Is that a common thing over there?
I’m sure it’s at least somewhat uncomfortable for the dog, when all it does is something completely natural: bark.

Anyways, good luck with Ember. She’s younger, so your odds are better now.

We moved to Florida, and wanted a friend for Max, our Black Cat, so we go to the No-kill shelter, they were full up.

A family was getting rid of a really pretty, but small Grey Cat named Carol Ann (Poltergeist), she was being given up cause they had a Boxer and a Persian and Carol was getting for lack of better term, “beat up”, so we took her.

She was great, but unfortunately, she was getting “beat up” too. We move from FL a townhouse, to Delaware an apartment, and we still have Max and two other cats, Shadow and Tuxedo, too many cats for the living space.

We give up Carol to a real nice older lady, no pets, a Vet put pets together with older people, kind of therapy. Both are happy.

Why is un-spayed considered desirable?

Insert standard rant about how people should have their animals spayed or neutered from the veterinarian’s son here.

Regards,
Shodan

Because the dog is a specific breed, and has all the papers. Unspayed means she can still be used for breeding purposes.

Coldfire (I’ve always meant to ask you…did you pick your user name from a Dean Koontz novel?)

In any event, bark collars don’t hurt the dog, and they are designed to shut off if the dog barks more than ten times within a specified period. It was a minor static electricity charge that is designed to distract them from barking.

They had other ones, ones that emitted a sound and ones that emitted a citronella scent, but I thought a little zap would be the most effective.

No, not the novel - the Rush song, Cold Fire.

I personally prefer the bark collars that shoot Citronella scent, they electric bark collars (I think) are illegal to buy here.

Well, I got the electronic bark collar at Petsmart, so it wasn’t illegal. Where do you live, Poysyn?

I live in Winnipeg, Canada. I should be specific, I am not sure if the collars are illegal but using one will get you a visit from Animal Services.

So the dog quit barking because . . . the collar didn’t hurt when it barked?

Shock bark collars work because they hurt. Used wisely and as a last resort, they are OK. But don’t BS yourself or us that the collars work because they don’t hurt.

Good on you for going to a no-kill shelter. Sometimes dogs don’t work out.

I know precisely how you feel, ivylass. Sometimes things just don’t work out.

About a year ago I had to return a cat to the no kill shelter here in Chicago because she, like your dog, just didn’t fit. Initially everything was okay with her and the other cats. Then it seemed like she became an altogether different animal. She became increasingly aggressive to the other cats (I have 5 others) -she would attack them out of nowhere. Two of the others ended up having to have abcesses lanced and sutured because of her doing this. The others then turned on her. She ended up with three abcesses that required the same treatment.

Then she started urinating everywhere BUT in the litterboxes. Pillows on the bed, clothing etc. I took her to the vet to be evaluated for any organic illness but none was detected. From there I went to trying to train her out of the urinary problems and aggressive behaviour. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she went to the litterbox, did NOTHING and wandered out to the living room to urinate on the couch. I had to buy a new couch.

I worked with Mocha for about 14 months before the last incident occured and when I took her back to the shelter I felt like I had failed her in a big way. The vets and staff there reassured me that I had done more and tolerated more than most would have. My head knows that. My heart still hasn’t figured it out. :frowning:

As the others have said, at least you did bring Storm to a no kill shelter. Hang in there, you know you did the best you could.

'catz