• Standing by your Dog when he is put to sleep is one of the hardest challenges of being a perfect furparent, but there are other challenges nobody tells you about.
• Dogs are social creatures, don’t abandon them.
• Spay/neuter your Dogs if you don’t want 20 Dogs.
Last Sunday, I had to put my Dog down. He had chronic kidney failure. I was out of town and gave the decision online at the vet clinic. I was confident my kennel assistant could handle it in my absence.
She couldn’t.
I learned about it when I got home. She had abandoned the Dog inside the clinic and stepped out when they were about to put him to sleep. She couldn’t take it, she said.
My fury ran deep. “The Dog died alone?” I demanded.
“That Dog loved us with all his heart and in his last moment of life – you left him?”
Standing by your Dog when he is put to sleep is one of the hardest challenges of being a perfect furparent. Has anybody told you that?
There are other challenges nobody tells you about.
DOGS DON’T DO WELL ALONE. NEVER ABANDON THEM.
The Dog is a social creature. They’re not solitary animals.
Social creatures such as Ants, Bees, Wolves, Elephants, and Dogs thrive with company. Solitary animals like the Canary, Polar Bear, Moose, Tiger, and Leopard are self-sufficient and are better off alone.
That said, the Dog’s greatest fear in life is to be abandoned. It goes against their nature. Separation anxiety is closely tied to abandonment. They fear nobody will come back for them when they are left alone. Their fear will cause them to destroy their environment or try to escape their home to find safety, their owner.
That’s how many of them get lost and end up in the city pound. Others will stay there and wait forever.
Because of this nature wired in Dogs, I vehemently disapproved of how my assistant left my sick Dog alone to die among strangers in a vet clinic. In his last dying moment, he looked for a face he loved for his last goodbye.
We were not there. We had abandoned him at the end of his life.
If I were evaluated as a furparent, I’d be a major failure.
SPAY OR NEUTER IF YOU DON’T WANT 20 DOGS.
If I didn’t do this, I’d have 21 Dogs in my front and backyard.
It started with a pregnant Dog who slipped into my backyard to give birth one rainy season. She had six puppies. She was feral, not used to humans. We allowed her to come and go to nurse her young. When they grew older, we took it upon ourselves to raise the puppies until they found good homes.
But we weren’t looking. A female Dog’s fertility heat comes every six months. We were still looking for homes for her pups when the six months passed and she came home pregnant. She gave us five pups.
We tried to catch her for a spay job but she wasn’t easy to catch. We saw her everyday anyway when she came to feed so we thought of keeping an eye on when her next season would be. Then we’d collar her while she was feeding.
As the sixth month drew near, she disappeared for days. When she came back, she was pregnant. She gave us another five puppies.
That’s it, I said. She must be stopped. By that time she was becoming more docile and often spent afternoons in our yard. She was amenable to being leashed. I booked her for a spay job at PAWS.
WE DO OUR BEST AS DOG PARENTS.
I found out a few months ago, though, that this mother Dog had her first litter at a construction site before she came to us. If we gathered together the number of offspring she had in two years’ time, she might have given birth to 21 puppies.
That’s all from just one Dog.
So what do you do if you don’t want this to happen? Spay and neuter. Their population increases exponentially. Nobody tells you these things until you have an armful of those cute little beings under your care. But if you don’t do anything about it they will keep coming.
These are some of the challenges of being a Furparent. Many tasks are fun and delightful, they bring joy to the heart when the little ones come.
But yes, we are also responsible.
Their future, like your own children, is in your hands.
