The dog is gone...

Last Saturday, we took the dog back to the shelter for good. Don't worry, here where I live, they do no perform euthanasia on dogs, never ever.

My wife and I have never had a pet, let along a dog. Although she was way more patient with the dog than me, I was losing my ground. I was stressful, and, worse of all, angry at the dog at all times. I could not take it anymore.

After leaving the dog at the pound, I was relieved tremendously. However, my wife cried all weekend. The good thing is we talked before we made the excruciating move. She understands my point of view though and I understand hers.

There are some facts that make it harder to have a dog that I realized later and then convinced my wife. First of all, the dog has a really bad shedding problem. It is beyond belief which forced us to clean up the entire house every weekend. After 5 mins later, the house is a mess again. It was relentless. Second, the dog had this biting and jumping habit for which we tried to train her with the guidance of the books we purchased to solve simple training problems. Obviously, all the time we spent training her did not work a bit.

Another problem was and is that the vets working at the shelter are so used to telling "white lies" to prospective dog adopters that it is impossible to get accurate info regarding the dog. They are afraid to tell the truth fearing that we might return the dog. However, by doing that they put enormous pressure on us, so when we reach our boiling point, it is too late to turn things around. For the shedding problem, all my questions were dismissed. As if it were a miniscule problem, there was no way to convince them that the problem causes a real trouble for us. On top of that, the vets have no idea what kind of dog they are giving away. As a result, they don't have anything to warn the adopters about the dog, like shedding, behavior that sort of things.

I am not blaming anyone for my deed. But, I can tell you this for sure that I won't be adopting a dog from shelters anymore. There is this sticky emotion attached to the dog. Whenever you have a problem with the dog, talking about the problem becomes a tabu or asking for more info replied with this stonewalled attitude as if it were a shame to ask such questions.