Barnmaven

When to let go - and when to hang on

When Roscoe was fairly young still, about four years old, he began limping slightly on his back legs.  Because of the way he lays down, on his belly with his legs out to either side, I assumed he had dysplastic hips.  I don't know why I simply decided this was the case, but I distinctly remember being told by someone who had a dog with hip dysplasia that this was a common way of laying down for dogs with that condition.  I figured Roscoe would eventually need surgery, just not yet, and that was good because it would give me time to save money.

A couple of years ago it became apparent that he was in a worsening state of pain.  I thought maybe I could afford a surgery by then, so off to the vet we went.  The vet noted the beginnings of atrophy on the leg he uses the least and took X-Rays.

The news was not so great:  Spondylosis.

Spondylosis is a chronic and degenerative condition in which bone spurs begin to form in the spine.  Over time these spurs grow in size and begin to bridge betwen the vertebrae.  At first the dog begins to lose flexibility, but as the condition worsens it becomes quite painful and can have a serious impact on quality of life.  There is no surgical cure that has been shown to successfully relieve the condition.

Standard treatment, and where we started with Roscoe, is a pain reliever.  We were given Rimadyl for him.  Mostly we gave it on the days he seemed in pain.  He would typically be stiff and painful a couple of days out of the week, nothing too bad and nothing the pills didn't seem to help him with.  I was told, however, that eventually the medication would no longer be enough to control his pain, and at that point we would have to consider putting him on injectable steroids.  This would relieve his pain, but also seriously shorten his life because of the other side effects, so it would only be a last resort.

The last week or two, despite his regular medication, Roscoe began showing signs of getting worse.  It started with him soiling his crate, a typically rare event.  We thought maybe he'd gotten a bug or eaten something that disagreed with him.  I didn't piece it together until I got home Tuesday night and he was lying on the floor of my bedroom, crying, and he had made a very large mess right in front of my closet.  He couldn't walk at all, and the pain had made him incontinent.

We went to the vet.  I was terrified that I was going to be told there was nothing they could do for him, and girded my loings for the worst.  I was so relieved when the vet assured me that we could definitely get him feeling better.  She increased his dose for the pain reliever, added an opiate, and told me that if the additional pain relief didn't help with the incontinence issues she could prescribe a hormone therapy.

As soon as we got home I gave him both of his meds and within a half an hour he was playing with T-Bone like nothing had ever been wrong the day before. 

I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye to Roscoe.  When Hercules passed, there was no decision to be made -- his heart was seriously enlarged, he couldn't breathe, and the many medications they gave him to try and help weren't doing anything.  He was so afraid and so sick, letting him go was the kindest thing I could do.  But with Roscoe's condition, his health comes and goes.  When he's in pain he is obviously miserable, but he can seem almost miraculously better in a matter of hours if he gets meds or a massage or just rests long enough.  If you'd asked me about his long term prognosis on Tuesday night I would have replied that he was near the end of his capacity to cope. That night I spent much of the evening curled up with him on the floor, crying and whispering stories in his ear.   Wednesday morning, after he'd spent the night on my bed snoring gently into my ear, he was walking on all four legs.  He was limping, of course, but nowhere near the crippled puppy he'd been the night before.

We've been through so much together, Roscoe and this family.  I fell in love with him through a picture in an email. He moved from North Carolina to New Jersey and then he moved all the way from New Jersey to Washington State with us, and of the three dogs that made that move, he is the only one still alive.  He survived being shot.  He has gently welcomed every new member into our household.  He's seen me through divorce, through dating, through remarriage and through the lonely times when SG is on the road.  He and I have a lot of history between us.  With a good vet, the right medications and a lot of love, I hope we have a lot more.

Its just what I do

S asked me the other day why it is that I like having so many animals.

I had a really hard time answering that question.

They certainly complicate life, and fostering (especially fostering highly energetic puppies) makes even the standard daily routine a lot more difficult.  Its not as if I don't have enough on my plate to begin with.

 

I've always loved animals.  We had a dog growing up, a german shephard mix my folks adopted from the Humane Society.   Queenie was a big furry baby sitter to me.  When the big kids were playing too rough, she would pen me in the corner of the yard and not let me out, despite my rather vigorous protests.  If my mom's hands were full with groceries, she would herd me from the car to the porch to the slider door.  She tolerated my attempts to treat her like a horse without ever once losing her temper.  She was my father's dog, loving him the best of all, but she was my other mother.  She was always there, for 15 years, and I can still feel the tug on my heart when I think of how much I miss her. 

When we moved from the city to the country, my parents set the bar for me when it comes to farm life.  We went from being a one-dog city family to a one dog, three cat, five duck, one (and at times two) horse, ten chicken and occasionally a donkey and a steer or two country family.

Rescue and having a large contingent of animals was never something I planned to do, but for whatever reason they just kept showing up.  With one exception, all of the animals who found their way into my life were either strays, adopted from a shelter, or adopted through a rescue.  Its not that I need to have them all - its that I can, and that the need on their part is so great. Each and every one of them is an individual, with unique personality and traits.  Hercules wiggles, Roscoe can be counted on to tolerate the loving abuse of children with equanimity, Juliet rules the house like the little princess she is. 

 

T-Bone, his job is just to follow me and make sure I don't get lost.

I see no reason why people should be irresponsible with the lives of animals.  With dominion comes great responsibility, and it is my fixed opinion that a great number of people have been terribly lacking in their duty to properly care for our planet and the animals who inhabit it.  The best leaders are the people who understand that leadership is not power at all, but a terrible burden.  In the same way, being at the top of the food chain doesn't mean that we ought to be sitting on our front porch having target practice with the neighborhood squirrels or killing animals simply for a trophy set of horns.  We are stewards, and we ought to be mindful of that.  I'm not against hunting and I'm not against eating meat.  What I'm against is the irresponsible decimation of animals for no other reason than sport.  Killing for the sake of killing.

We have, over thousands of years, formed a partnership with dogs and with cats.  We have bred them to be loyal, loving members of our household.  All recognized breeds have a purpose for which they were created, and there are a number of breeds whose only job was to be human companions.

I've seen dogs treated horribly by people, abused, neglected, starved.   They come in to rescue with no reason whatsoever to retain any loyalty to the human race and still they trust us to care for them.  Back in New Jersey we'd get dogs surrendered by the puppy mills in Pennsylvania (there are Amish farmers in PA who use those great big barns as breeding facilities) who had never in their life been out of a crate.  They'd never been OUTSIDE.  Or seen a vet.  Or played with a toy.  Elderly dogs, sick, taken to shelters by owners who couldn't be bothered to care for them in the last days of their life.  Abandoned dogs, starving, barely alive.

I've never been able to see an animal or a child suffer abuse without feeling all the way into the center of my being that I should do something about it.  Now, my therapist has told me that is an emotion I should be on the watch for, as it apparently connotates something unhealthy.  Frankly, I beg to differ.

My mom said in passing a while back, "You know, you really need more acreage for all these animals."  Then she looked at me and laughed and said, "I take it back.  If you had more room you'd just have more animals."  She's right.  I'd run a horse rescue in a heartbeat if I had the acreage and resources.

While browsing one of my favorite horse blogs, I clicked on a link that led me to this story.  I'll warn you that if you click through, you'll see some graphic photos of a horse that was terribly abused and near death.  The person who responded to the craigs list ad for her realized how poor her condition was and convinced the owner to let him take her away for a decent burial.  She couldn't even stand up, and had to be loaded onto his trailer by being carried on a plywood board.

Miracle's story has a happy ending, she has made a remarkable recovery and just last week made the trip to her new adoptive home.  Sadly, for many animals who are abused or neglected, there IS no happy ending.  The people who volunteer for the rescues, who donate food and supplies, who foster, who give us air time and feature our adoptable animals on the news or who write articles about us in the paper, they are the ones standing in the gap. 

I stand with them.  I can't explain to you why - nor should I have to.  Its just something I do.

Sunday Scatology

**Don't say you haven't been warned.  If you're put off by discussions of poop, don't read another word.**

We sort of skipped church today.  Little Man coughed all the way there, so I just sat in on my confirmation class, then we headed home before he could cough all over the rest of the congregation and their children.

It has been a beautiful day, sunny, started off slightly chill but has warmed up throughout the day.  Perfect day to catch up on yard work. 

Every parent, at the arrival of their first child, is thrust (often reluctantly) into the role of scatologist.  Poop is a fact of life for everyone, but it plays a monumental role for parents of babies and not-yet-potty-trained toddlers.  If you've got animals, you deal with it constantly as well.  If you're me?  Your life is pretty much full of shit all the time.  Litter boxes here are cleaned daily, stalls weekly, back yard poop-scooped every couple of days.  Thank God the kids know how to handle their own bodily functions now.  (I was so relieved to see the end of diapers.  Both of my children were late bloomers in the potty-training department.  In fact, I had to tell Little Man that little boys aren't allowed to turn four until they can use the potty, so if he wanted to celebrate his fourth birthday he'd better get with the program.  Changing babies never bothered me, but changing toddlers...blech.  When things start resembling something that might come out of an adult, its time to either get them out of the pull-ups or start making them clean up their own mess.)

You can tell a lot about a person or an animal by what they excrete.  You can tell if they're eating too much or too little, if they're eating the right things.  You can tell if they're adequately hydrated.  With  horses you can even tell if they might have dental issues based on how well and evenly the hay or grass is ground by their molars.  Its rather fascinating when you get right down to it.  At the winery we have lots of coyotes and foxes around, as well as badgers and deer.  You can tell when the rodent population gets scarce, because when we're on our vineyard walks at lunchtime we can see the grapes start showing up in the coyote piles.

With the dogs, I can tell what non-food items they've been into when I scoop the yard.  Today was no exception.  I saw crayons, ribbon, bits of plastic toys (Roscoe destroys about ninety percent of the toys that come in the Happy Meals), some (ahem) feminine products (the boxer goes after feminine hygiene products like a junkie chases the needle), and even what appeared to be some blue painter's tape.   Nothing too out of the ordinary for this household.  (Once I had a lab mix with an underwear fetish.  She would get into the laundry and dig out panties, then chew them up.  One time on a walk in the local park, she actually crapped out a pair of green lace thong panties, right in front of several people.  Yeah.  Totally NOT EMBARRASSING.  I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THOSE BELONGED TO.  >.>  That same dog also survived chowing down a Gillette disposable razor.  When I realized she'd eaten it, I called the vet, who advised feeding her heavily to put lots of other product in the system that might help to surround the edges of the blade.  I still have the xray he took of her intestines.  You can see the razor blade clear and stark as the day.  I shudder to think about what could have happened, but eventually she passed it.  It was a relief to have it out of her, plus I was glad to be able to stop rummaging through piles of feces in search of it.)

Cleaning the yard today wasn't as bad as it has been in the past.  I recently started giving the dogs a diet of half raw and half dry food.  The amount they're pooping has been cut nearly in half.  The amount of poop a dog (or anyone, for that matter) creates is directly proportional to the amount of waste products in their diet.  Low-end dog food, which are mostly fillers, give you dogs that create a large amount of poo.  We had a neighbor back in NJ who had a big rottweiler.  Occasionally he would poop in my front yard, and from the looks of it, that dog must have been eating 10 square meals a day.  I've seen smaller piles come out of HORSES for heaven's sake. 

The higher quality food you feed, the less the animal produces in waste matter.  For dry dog foods, I look for anything that has actual meat products as the first ingredient.  The ingredients are listed in order of largest percentage to smallest percentage contained in the food.  Even some of the so-called "premium" dog foods have corn meal or corn fillers as the FIRST ingredient on the ingredients list. Corn is not a natural food for a carnivorous animal to eat, and some vets and researchers attribute the high incidence of renal failure in otherwise healthy dogs and cats to an excess of grains in the diet.  The really high-grade food is also high-dollar, though, and out of my budget.  I look for dog food in the middle price range that lists its primary ingredient as meat or meat by-products.  Recently at the Fred Meyer grocery store (they're a Kroger chain) I was happily surprised to also find a reasonably priced raw food.  By feeding my guys half raw I can afford to incorporate it in their diet for about $8 a week.  The biggest benefit, of course, is that I know I'm helping them to stay healthy longer by feeding them what their system is designed to eat.  I'm not going to complain about the OTHER side benefit either -- smaller poop.  It makes it easier to spot the underwear.

On the nightstand

I'm a huge fan of Temple Grandin.  I can't even remember how many years ago I heard her on NPR being interviewed about her research into animal behavior and how she was consulting with slaughter yards across the U.S., helping them to evaluate their environments and practices in order to create a fear-free environment for our food animals.  The interview itself was interesting, and without knowing her story I could tell by the way she spoke that there was something a little different about her.  As it turns out, Grandin is autistic.  I suppose its not suprising that there are highly functioning persons with autism in our world, I have family and friends with kids on the autism spectrum who function so well that people don't understand they have the disorder.  What is remarkable, to me at least, is just how high-functioning she is.  She holds a Ph.D. in animals sciences, is a tenured professor at Colorado State University, and has authored four books. This in addition to her consulting work.    She is passionate and articulate, and she was influential enough to convince the CEO's of five of the biggest fast-food chains to visit their own slaughter vendors, which had (and will continue to have) enormous and lasting changes on how these companies produce meat. 

Its an interesting discussion for me, this question of animal happiness and quality of life.  And no, its not just because I'm an animal lover (NO, you say?  REALLY?  YOU LOVE ANIMALS?  I hadn't a CLUE!), its the awakening somewhere in my cerebral cortex in recent years that there really are people who fall in between "HUNTS TO KILL SHIT" and "PETA" on the spectrum.   I've at times in my life gone vegetarian, was a member of PETA for about three seconds when I was in my 20's and still naive and impetuous.   Eventually, as happens to many people, my craving for steak overrode my desire to see animals die for my consumption.   I understand intellectually that meat comes from animals; I can see the plastic-wrapped packages of beef in the grocery coolers and I know the process whereby that meat is derived - I've lived in the country for long enough and seen my dad butcher enough deer, elk and other game to not have the need to mentally separate the end result from its origins.  I mean, when we bought two yearling steers from our black-angus-raising neighbor, we named them "Chuck" and "Strip."  I know where meat comes from and I'm no longer ashamed to admit I eat it.  AND ENJOY IT.

So anyway, big fan of Temple Grandin's. And I'm two chapters into her newest book, Animals Make us Human.  The book delves into available research and Grandin's own hypotheses around what emotions animals actually feel, how they are similar to the reactions of humans to similar stimuli, and what various kinds of animals in our lives require in order to be "happy."  I've just finished the chapter on dogs.  God, I love my dogs.  Grandin has some interesting and potentially controversial things to say about how dogs interact with one another in various situations - she talks a lot about Cesar Milan (also a huge fan of his) and his theories on dog behavior.  I guess I was surprised when she parted company in her interpretation of the necessity of dominance structure.  She agrees that with a pack like Cesar's, where he has 40-50 dogs in his center at any given time, that like captive wolves, who are often put in groups far larger than they comprise in the wild, a dominant leader is necessary to keep equilibrium in the group.  But she offers that in smaller groups, family-sized groups of dogs, that a more reasonable and necessary function of the human is to act as a parent, much as wolf family groups in the wild function.   As with our human children, Grandin promulgates the idea that we serve our dogs better when we teach them to handle frustration with equanimity, since much of dog life with humans involves the frustration of natural dog behavior.  Now, as a woman whose life is partially ruled by three very large, friendly dogs, I agree that its important for dogs to tolerate frustration well.  God knows it has to be frustrating as hell when my children dress them up in hats and coats, or tie all three of them together with winter scarves to make a driving team...and its remarkable to me almost daily that my dogs don't just finally say "Done" and take off a limb.  So yes - I see how frustration tolerance is a key element of dog behavior.  She believes this is more important than the concept Cesar teaches about teaching your dog to be submissive to a dominant alpha.  Applying my approach with my own dogs, I can see how I do a little bit of both.  My dogs know who I'm boss...although they don't always choose to listen.  Hercules, he talks back a lot, but he usually complies.  Roscoe?  I can give him a sideways look and he immediately rolls over on his back and does his best imitation of a pathetic little love-starved puppy (yes, all 70 pounds of him.  Puppy.  Heh.)  Lady is a being unto herself.  I have never met a dog more stubborn and willful and yet at the same time completely dopey and loving.  She is the most single-minded dog I've ever seen, fortunately her mind is mostly set on sleeping.  And eating.  And having her belly rubbed.  Lucky, fortunate, because even at a small-for-a-bullmastiff size of 93 pounds, she is a formidable enough dog that if what she *really* wanted were to make you not be in her way any more? Not hard to accomplish. 

I read after I adopted Lady that the bullmastiff was originally bred to control poachers on the large game estates of very wealthy Lords in old Britain.  They are very quiet dogs, not big on barking.  Their job was to locate a poacher, sneak up on them, and restrain them physically until the Game Warden could some slap the cuffs on and throw the miscreant in the pokey.  Watching Lady sometimes this doesn't surprise me at all.  She doesn't move a lot, but when she wants to, she can move FAST.  When she plays with Roscoe I wince.  He is all legs and he's whip-fast.  He can outrun her any day of the week, but she knows this.  All she does is wait for him to come flying at her, then she drops her shoulder and takes him OUT.  She doesn't even have to try...she's so big and solid that he just hits her, WHAM!, and goes rolling. 

Grandin suggests that the newer theory about never letting your dog win in games of tug-of-war, because they might learn they are dominant over you, is rubbish.  She cited a study in her last book Animals in Translation that collected data on Golden Retrievers playing Tug of War.  Essentially, the dogs' submission to the human leader was unchanged regardless of whether they always lost, always won, or were allowed to win half the games.  In fact, what would happen when the dogs *always* lost was that they eventually lost interest in playing.  Apparently dogs don't like to lose all the time, who knew?  So anway, when it comes to things like playing games with your dog, or even letting them up on the furniture, Grandin says "Beating a person at tug of war didn't make the dogs more dominant.  I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the same thing in a study of dogs getting up on furniture and beds."  OH THANK GOD.  And here I've been worried that someone was going to tell Cesar that my dogs were sleeping with me and he was going to show up and revoke my dog-ownership rights for being a lousy alpha. 

Oh, and there's actually a chapter in this book on Chickens.  Which I cannot wait to read.  Because I am intensely curious as to how it is I will be able to recognize when the chickens are happy.  I will become the best chicken momma EVER.

Interlude

The pile to the right is the laundry I was going to fold.  It was irresistable as a backrest for the dogs, and the dogs on the bed were irresistable to the kids.  Next thing you know, the laundry needs to be rewashed, but the dogs and the kids?  Happy.  That's how we roll around here.

Just. Fine. Thanks.

So I returned from Atlanta Friday night late.  Dragged my butt home from the airport and fed the various animals.  I was pretty fried from four flights in three days and two days of conferencing, and the kids were at their dad's, so I figured I'd just take my paperback to bed and read myself to sleep (which should take all of about five minutes).   I did sit at the computer for a half hour or so, checking Facebook and catching up on a few emails.  I heard the dogs wrestling in the bedroom but didnt' think much about it.  They wrestle a lot.  Except sometimes I should pay attention to that. 

This is what was left of one of the new dog beds I just bought them:

Here's the rest of the room: 

I just LOVE my dogs.  Love them.  LOVE THEM. 

Its times like this I wish they had opposable thumbs so they could clean up their OWN DAMNED MESS.  Except if they had opposable thumbs, the messes would probably be much larger and more creative.  So I should be thankful they don't and just suck up the mess clean-uppage.

Guilty parties.  At least one of them has the good graces to look ashamed. 

He is fine, and random Sunday musings

Roscoe?  He's fine.  He's so fine that yesterday morning he got up at 4:30 am to play with the kittens and ask to go outside.  Yeah.  Suffice it to say Roscoe is currently more in danger of being maimed or injured by me than he is of dying from his injuries.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad to have my bouncy dumb dog back.   There were so many "if's" -- If he hadn't gotten out of the yard - If I'd fixed the place in the fence - If I hadn't turned my back for a few minutes.  There are other if's as well - If he hadn't dragged himself home - If I hadn't gotten him to the vet when I did - If the pellet had penetrated his heart.  So not much gain in dwelling on those if's.

In other weekend news, Child A had her second soccer game of her first season playing yesterday.  They don't keep score in the younger kids' league, so I couldn't say if we won or lost.  She' so squeaky new at soccer that she doesn't really have a clue what she's doing.  She lacks the aggressive, attack the ball style of play some of the more experienced girls have.  Even so, she's having fun.  I'm thinking maybe soccer isn't her sport, but we'll at least get through a season.    Here she is in her first game, getting her turn at goalie:

She's rather stylin' in her shin guards, don't you think?  She's the tallest girl on her team.  If she had any skills at all she'd be the most intimidating player on the field.  Some of the girls she's playing against are less than half her size.

We spent some time in the driveway today working on basketball skills.  For almost 8 she handles the ball pretty well, and she gets things I ask her to do after a few tries.  I'm really hopeful she'll take to hoops, it was always my favorite game. 

Roscoe Update, Thursday

Our handsome boy is muuuuuch better today.  His eyes are sparkly, he bounces when he walks (until he remembers that it hurts to move too fast) and his appetite is back with a vengeance.

Here he is yesterday, hanging under the desk:

   He was still feeling a bit punk at this point, but making the best of it.  He didn't want to be up much, and when he got up and around for very long, he was soon back on his pillow, all pooped out.

Today he spent the day in his crate while I was away at work, and tonight he is a bouncy, happy guy.   He's always been the class clown around here, pestering the other dogs to play, using the cats as chew toys.  He never bites them, per se, but he will put his mouth over their head and shoulders and drool on them.  Whenever he grabs one of them they just sort of flop over and tolerate until he either lets go on his own or I catch him and tell him to knock it off.  Here he is, reconnecting with his pal Tucker:

I'm sure Tuck CAN'T WAIT for Roscoe to start chewing on his head again.

His wound seems to be staying clean so far.  When he wakes up in the morning and his pain meds are worn off he seems pretty uncomfortable but as soon as they kick in he's happy.  Great, I'm turning my dog into an oxycontin addict...

His follow up vet appointment is tomorrow and I plan to take him over to Dr. P afterward so he can see how great he looks. 

That's all for tonight, its time for kids to go to bed and me to empty the dishwasher and fold some clothes.  More happy news tomorrow, I hope.

Oh, I forgot to add, I'm waiting to catch my across-the-street neighbor Bob, who is a local K-9 police officer, home off duty so I can talk to him about what happened.  He'll be able to tell me what, if anything, can be done to find out who did this and what possible consequences might be.  I do think, that even if there are no legal actions to be taken, as a neighborhood we need to make it known that discharging a firearm where we all have homes and children and pets is simply not acceptable.  If someone was warding off a violent intruder -- sure.  Absolutely.  But  Roscoe's not a mean dog.  He's not aggressive.  It just disturbs me that someone's first reaction to seeing my dog was to get a gun...am I crazy?

People, you are amazing

The outpouring of support and love since last night has been incredible.  If the power of the human spirit could make Roscoe well he would be leaping tall buildings today.  As it is, even from this morning he is improved.  He is still hurting - his breathing is shallow and labored - but his eyes have a sparkle, his tail has a wag, and he is trying to be the energetic pup we are used to seeing.  He spent most of the day on his dog bed under my desk, since today was a work-from-home day for me. 

At the moment I am feeling very confident that he is well on the road to recovery.  I am incredibly humbled and grateful for all of the offers of financial assistance for him.  I will say that if he should contract an infection and require chest tubes or surgery to make it through I will remember all of the incredible people who wanted to help and reach out to you.  For now, please know that I am floored, touched, blown away by the kindness not only of people I know and love but complete strangers as well.  If my faith in humanity was damaged by the cruelty of a neighbor, it is being patched and mortared by the good will of all of you.

I'll continue to update on Roscoe's condition as we go forward.  I'm cleaning his wound at least twice daily and keeping it well covered in antibiotic ointment, and he gets pain meds in the morning and antibiotics twice daily for the next couple of weeks.  And for those of you who asked about the kids, Roscoe's improved condition today has helped tremendously.  Last night was tough, my daughter was inconsolable and afraid that he would die.  Tonight after seeing him looking so perky she wasn't worried at all.  My son - well, you know how boys are.  His first words to me this morning were, "Mommy!  Roscoe's in his crate and his nose is breathing!  He isn't dead!"  Boys.  :)  Love them.  Don't get them, but love them.

Dear Neighbor,

Note:  To everyone who has emailed me or commented on this post asking how to donate to help Roscoe, thank you for your generous and kind offers of assistance.  Seeking funding was never my intention when I wrote this blog.  Roscoe is healing well at the moment, and I think we will pull through without him requiring any more care from the vet than he has already received.  If he develops an infection and his condition worsens, requiring hospitalization or further veterinary care, I'll consider putting up a paypal link if the choice is between losing him and losing my pride to accept help.  In the meantime, thank you for your support and for helping restore my faith in humanity.  Please check Roscoe's updates to see how he is doing and keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

 

I live up the street.  I have two kids, three dogs, a couple of cats, some chickens and some horses.  My kids are noisy and not particularly well-behaved, my dogs bark when you walk by my house, and I don't keep my lawn as well-manicured as I should, but I do my best.  Life's a little complicated, with the job, the single parenting and all.  I don't have a lot of free time or money to take care of everything the way I'd like to, but I try.  I do try.  I know about that spot in my fence, behind all the great big rose bushes, where the bullmastiff likes from time to time to scramble over and go walkabout.  I haven't been sure what to do about it, since its in a place that is worse than hard to get to, I lack experience repairing fences and can't afford to have a real contractor come and fix it.  What I've done instead is to try and be sure I'm outside with my dogs when they take their potty breaks.  Today I was brushing my teeth, and I needed to go spit out my toothpaste and eyeball my kids to make sure they weren't killing one another.  I was gone maybe half a minute, but I guess it was half a minute too long.  Lady decided to take a little road trip, and in an unusual turn of events, Roscoe followed her.

Maybe you were mad when my dog came into your yard.  Maybe you thought you were solving a problem when you got out your gun and SHOT HIM.  Let me tell you what your actions have done to my family.  First of all, my dog is at the moment still alive, but at the vet's on oxygen and pain medication.  He might live; he might not.  I can't afford extraordinary measures, so if the bullet is someplace that will cause him to bleed internally or make a lung collapse, he will have to be put to sleep.  I can't even afford xrays.  The money we have spent, which is the minimum to get him stable and give him a chance to heal, means I have to choose between gas and groceries for the next two weeks so my children and I can eat and go to work and school, and making my car payment, which means we might lose our only method of transportation.  We were already living on the edge; you helped pull us significantly closer to that edge.  What I think is the worst part, though, is the emotional trauma my children experienced, searching through the neighborhood for our lost dog and finally finding him near our yard, bleeding and clearly in pain. 

I am sorry that I was a negligent dog owner.  I try not to be. Sometimes things just happen.  But you didn't have to shoot my dog to make a point.  What would have made a better point was if you wanted to be a good neighbor and maybe offered to help me fix my fence, or let me know you had a problem with my dog, or even called the number on his tag and let me know where he was when we were looking for him.  But what you decided to do, in a neighborhood full of children, was to pick up your gun and shoot it.  I guess I'm thankful that you hit what you were aiming for and didn't accidentally shoot a child instead.  Maybe I'm even thankful that I'm learning something the universe is trying to teach me today.  I don't know who you are - but you know.  Maybe you will consider that your actions often have unintended consequences. 

What if the difference you could have made in our lives was a positive one, instead of this?  What if you had been the kind of person who makes people grateful to have neighbors? 

I'm not going to waste any more time wondering who you are or thinking about you.  I'm going to concentrate on making it to next payday, hugging my traumatized kids and nursing my dog back to health.  You?  You get to live with yourself.  Enjoy that.