I've gone back and forth over posting how I feel about our recent adoption of a shelter dog and was afraid of too many negative responses further increasing my anxiety and guilt. But I feel like I need advice or reassurance from someone other than my husband that everything will be alright.
About 2 weeks ago we adopted an aproximatly 10 month old black lab. We previously had a chocolate lab (also from the shelter) that passed a couple summers ago at the age of 12 and a golden retriever that died just this last February at the age of 13. We also got our last lab when he was young, so I have dealt with the energy level/chewing/clinginess of a young lab, but it's been so many years that I think I must have forgotten a bit what those first couple of years were really like.
I had become kind of obsessive the last few weeks about finding and adopting another family dog. I thought I was ready to add another pup into our lives, but now I'm questioning that. My husband and I thought we wanted another lab or golden because they felt like a good fit for our family. I saw our current pup posted by our local shelter on Facebook, and knew he wouldn't be there long. It was a Friday and the shelter was holding a sort of weekend-long "clear the shelter" event. I called to see if he had been adopted and they said someone else was currently meeting with him, but it seemed that they were putting him back. They don't do holds for you to meet a pup so they told me, if interested, I just needed to come as soon as possible. It was lunchtime so I made my daughter's (6 and 4) some lunch, gave it to them in the car, and we rushed to the shelter to check out the dog.
We had to put our names on a list because others were currently meeting with him and we had to wait to see if they decided to adopt him. They chose not to, so we got an opportunity to spend some time with him. When they initially brought him to us, he was of course excited and reacted how you would expect (a little jumpy and licky and whatnot) My youngest daughter is a little weird about wetness right now, so she did not want the dog to lick her and cried and kept her distance because she was afraid of being licked. I'll say that she also did not want our previous dogs too close to her if they were going to lick her.
We took the dog outside at the shelter for a while and he calmed down and mostly laid around and accepted tummy and head rubs. My oldest didn't have a problem with the pup and called him a good dog and was on board with taking him home. My youngest was another story. She wanted to keep her distance and didn't want to come close. She cried and screamed if the dog got too close to lick her. I decided that I couldn't possibly take a dog when one of my daughters was having such a reaction to it. We left and returned to our car, but I can't lie that I was super disappointed and a little frustrated that my daughter wouldn't calm down and give the dog even a minute. From her point of view as a 4 year old, though, I see her hesitation. She's a 35 pound child and this is a 65 pound puppy.
I called my husband and explained why I wasn't bringing the dog home (because of our daughter's reaction) and he asked me if she was overreacting how she tends to do towards many things that ultimately end up being okay, or was this different? The thing is she had just started preschool, I threw off our whole schedule that day and I had made her leave her fav stuffed animal in the car so a pup wouldn't grab it away and traumatize her. So I know she was tired and out of her element, which added to it. He told me to just go back in and get the dog, our little one would be fine and would warm up to the dog.
And he was right, she has for the most part. On the drive home, not even 15 minutes later and unprompted, she said "I love him". So this made me feel better. But I can't stop thinking that I made a terrible mistake in bringing him home. What kind of mother decides to bring home an animal after their child has such a negative initial reaction to it? I feel like a terrible parent and I keep beating myself up. I keep looking back and wishing that I would have just continued getting everyone into the car and decided to not go back in for the pup.
There isn't anything really outright bad or unexpected he's done since we brought him home. We've been trying to work on getting him comfortable in a crate while we're away, and he was doing well, but not so much the past few days. He barks and whines when he's in there when we're leaving and has bent the metal along the front of the crate and is injuring his snout from trying to push his nose under the crate door. He has a nighttime crate beside our bed and he will go in there on his own no problem at bedtime, so I feel it's mostly a separation anxiety issue. He won't stay in our fenced back yard for any period of time without one of us there within his sights, and if we step back inside, he freaks out and won't relieve himself.
We have a very old cat (about 16) who is pretty accepting of the dog and the pup didn't pay that much attention to the cat when they first met, but now that he's more comfortable in the house, he gets all up in the cats business every time the cat gets up and moves. Initially the cat is fine with it, but then the pup gets too rambunctious and they need to be separated. We're afraid that if not constantly supervised that he will unintentionally harm the cat by playing too roughly.
My biggest concern came yesterday when I thought that the dog jumped on our 6 year old and grabbed her glasses off her face. She was obviously upset but then acted fine around the dog last night. My husband spoke to her this morning and learned that her glasses actually fell off when he jumped and then he picked them up, so that issue became less concerning.
Sorry this is so long, but I know as I'm typing this all out, that all of these things aren't out of the norm or anything, but I still feel such strong anxiety about having this dog. Although she seems fine with the situation, I can't stop feeling like I somehow failed my child by bringing home this pet she seemed so against having in the first place. I have been randomly crying over it and I'm not even normally a crier. The thought of returning the dog to the shelter makes me feel relief, and that makes me feel worse. What's wrong with me? I can't sleep at night because of the stress and anxiety. Any suggestions, advice or just reassurance that I'll start to feel better about all this? Because right now I feel like a pretty terrible human all the way around.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/d7bylw/experiencing_anxiety_and_regret_over_dog_adoption/
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