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<\/a>A question I\u2019ve been getting a lot lately: \u201cWhat happened to your dog???\u201d I get this question via email, through blog comments, on Instagram<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, Facebook<\/a><\/span><\/strong> and in person. It\u2019s taken me awhile to put together my response because it\u2019s a painful one. But today, I\u2019m ready to share.<\/span><\/p>\n Gigi showed up emaciated and covered in scratches in our friends\u2019 yard in late September. They (and we) tried to locate her owner, but she came with no tags and no one responded to our advertisements with her photo. We took her to the vet to scan her for a microchip and she didn\u2019t have one. Our theory is that she was a bear hunting dog who got lost from her pack and couldn\u2019t find her way back to them. Our friends kept her at their home for a few days and then planned to take her to a shelter as they already have a dog and can\u2019t keep a second. We had a chance to meet Gigi and spend time with her and we knew we couldn\u2019t let her go to a shelter. So, we brought her home! She joined our family on October 3, 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n Our friends named her Gigi (for good girl) and we all loved her\u2013the kids especially. She was a perfect dog who loved hiking, didn\u2019t bark and (mostly) followed directions. However: she could not be left home alone.<\/strong> At all.<\/span><\/p>\n We crate trained Gigi (as we\u2019d done with our previous dog<\/a><\/span><\/strong>) and she loved her crate. She\u2019d elect to go in there while we were home, would happily nap in the crate, slept in there every night and utilized it to avoid our children\u2019s constant attention. We assumed this crate training would also work when we left the house, as it had with our previous dog. It did not.<\/span><\/p>\n Poor Gigi had a panic attack every time we left the house, no matter how long we were gone.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 1) We figured there must be a behavioral remedy so we sought out a dog trainer who gave us a regimen to follow. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Among other things, this entailed leaving the house for brief periods (~30 seconds to start) and returning to praise her if she was quiet. However, we were never able to work up to an absence of longer than five minutes before Gigi began to panic.<\/span><\/p>\n We worked with the trainer in person and she was flummoxed by Gigi\u2019s panic response to our absence since she was such a calm, well-adjusted dog around people.<\/span><\/p>\n 2) Then, we figured there must be a technological solution.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We installed a camera so that we could observe her behavior in the crate and report back to the dog trainer. This did not help. So, the trainer suggested a camera-treat-dispenser combo thingy, which does exactly what it sounds like: you observe the dog through the camera and remotely dispense a treat into the crate if the dog is being calm. This did not help.<\/span><\/p>\n 3) Finally, we assumed there\u2019d be a medical solution.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n And so began the many, many vet visits. We\u2019d already done all of the behavioral modifications\/training the vet recommended and so, they prescribed a mild anti-anxiety medication. That did not work. The vet next prescribed a mild sedative. Also ineffective. Next up was a mild tranquilizer. And on and on\u2026 all to no effect.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the full list of techniques we attempted (that I can remember):<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, none of this worked and we could not leave her home alone for any period of time. Ever. If we did, Gigi would have a panic attack and poop and pee in the crate and pace endlessly in circles. This happened every single time we left the house for longer than 5 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n I washed both dog and crate more times than I can count.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n We realized that, as an active family with little kids, it\u2019s not tenable for one adult to always stay home with the dog. It\u2019s also not possible for us to take a dog with us everywhere we go. Recognizing that we could not live this way\u2013with one adult always staying home OR the knowledge that we\u2019d return home to a panicked, poop-covered dog\u2013we had to give Gigi up.<\/span><\/p>\n After four months of trying to help Gigi learn to stay home alone, we acknowledged that we simply could not keep her. We were heartbroken, but did not see another option. I located a foster-based rescue organization that had a space for Gigi and, after an initial visit, they accepted her. What they discovered is that she does fine alone in a house IF there are other dogs present. They confirmed that she cannot ever be left alone, but that as long as she has a pack\u2013either human or canine\u2013she\u2019s fine.<\/span><\/p>\n The rescue organization\u2013and we\u2013share the assumption that Gigi was originally a bear hunting dog, which means she likely always lived with a lot of other dogs. They report that Gigi is now adopted and doing just fine in her new family with many other dogs. It\u2019s painful to write about this because we loved Gigi and wanted to keep her.<\/span><\/p>\n However, I also had to accept the reality that creating a family dynamic where either: 1) one parent always stays home and doesn\u2019t attend events with the family; OR 2) the family returns home to an hour+ of work to bathe the dog, calm the dog and wash the crate, is not reasonable or tenable.<\/span><\/p>\n During our time with Gigi, we didn\u2019t go to church as a family, we didn\u2019t go to school events as a family, we rarely skied as a family\u2026. and the list goes on. We had to accept that this isn\u2019t the way we want to raise our kids and, it was putting a lot of stress and pressure on us parents, which the kids noticed and were internalizing.<\/span><\/p>\n I learned a lot during this brief and tumultuous Gigi experience. Chiefly, I realized that we rushed into dog ownership. We didn\u2019t fully consider the ramifications and we let our hearts get ahead of our heads. I still wish we had a dog, but I\u2019m also at peace with our lack of dog because right now, our kids are my priority. It did not feel like the right trade-off to always leave a parent at home to babysit the dog.<\/span><\/p>\n It has taken me quite awhile to write about this because I feel like a failure of a dog parent.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I am comforted by the knowledge that when Gigi came to us, she was malnourished and had been living rough in the woods for who knows how long. We gave her lots of food, love and a warm bed. And we got her spayed, all of her shots, and adopted into another loving family (with other dogs!). When I remind myself of that perspective, I don\u2019t feel so bad. But when the kids mention how much they miss Gigi, I feel a little stab in my heart.<\/span><\/p>\n I wish we could\u2019ve made it work with Gigi and, I will tell you, we spent over $2,000 trying to make it so. $2,373.25 to be exact. I tallied up our Gigi costs, just out of curiosity and here\u2019s what I came up with:<\/span><\/p>\nThe Tail of Genevieve (aka Gigi) the Hound<\/span><\/h3>\n
The Cannot-Be-Left-Alone Saga<\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/a>Giving Gigi Up<\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/a>What I Learned<\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/a>The Costs<\/span><\/h3>\n