I failed at BEDA this year. Truth be told, I don't feel too bad about that. For one thing, I'm not sure anyone even reads my blog anymore after all this time. For another thing, I have 2 (energetic, demanding) kids, a husband and a dog (yes, one dog, more on that later) and my life is crazy. I make no apologies for my failed attempt at BEDA. The 22 days I have posted this month is better than any month since the last BEDA I did which was in 2016. So there! Lol.
So.... dogs. We had a tough decision to make. First, let me start by saying that it WAS a really tough decision. You all know how much I love my dogs. You know how brokenhearted I was when Jax died. You know how happy Frank makes me. But. He is aggressive towards children. Not my children, but other children. He's always had a little bit of a territorial streak but it really escalated during my pregnancy with Orion and then got worse after Orion's birth in December. There have been a couple times where I barely managed to keep him from getting to a kid. I have no idea what he would have done had he gotten to them. I would love to say that there's no way he would have bitten them or hurt them but I cannot say that with 100% confidence.
Then, late last week some time, he ate 2 baby bottle nipples. He vomited one up.. I can't remember what day that was. But then the following night he was refusing dinner. This was terrifying because, as you may remember, this is EXACTLY what Jax did before we rushed him to the emergency vet, only to have him die of sepsis from a bowel obstruction.
So off I went with Frank that night, incidentally to the same vet that we took Jax to that February night. X-rays and an ultrasound were done and a partial obstruction was identified. He was admitted, given IV fluids and watched overnight (sound familiar?). When my phone rang at 3:00am, as I had been told it would, I answered it with trepidation. I was up anyway feeding Orion, so at least it didn't rip me out of sleep like it did when they called about Jax.
Thankfully, though, this phone call was very different.
"Hi!" A cheery voice said on the other end of the line. "This is so-and-so (can't remember the name) from Tanasbourne Emergency. I'm just calling with an update on your boxer, Frank. He passed another baby bottle nipple and the repeat x-rays show no more obstruction. We are going to continue his fluids and monitor him, but he's doing well. He can go home in the morning."
"Oh thank goodness," I whispered, trying not to wake the baby who had fallen asleep on the boob. "What time can I pick him up tomorrow?"
They told me to call back at 9:00am and we would set up a discharge time for him. I was $900 poorer but I still had my dog.
However, this caused me to think. How likely is it that over the next several years, one or both of my children won't leave small plastic things out that Frank could and would get ahold of, chew on and swallow? Not likely. And where on earth did he even get 2 baby bottle nipples?? He's never unattended in the house so he had to have found them and swallowed them both in no more than a minute or two, since that is the longest he's ever out of our sight in the house.
Because of his aggression towards children, I had already been in contact with a friend of mine who lives about 45 minutes north of me, on acreage in Washington. She and her husband have 2 boxers already, the older of which is only a day older than Frank, and Frank has known him since they were only a few months old. She had told me that if it came down to it, she would like to try having Frank come live up there with them. That way, she explained, I would know where he was, know that he was being taken care of and I'd be able to visit him regularly.
I thanked her for her offer and hoped and prayed it wouldn't come to that.
But it did.
And it all comes down to safety.
I cannot guarantee the safety of any children who come to my house. I can't really even guarantee the safety of my own kids because what if a UPS guy or something came to the door and Frank was barking and such, and Mara tried to shush him and he forgot himself and snapped at her? Or, what if he (heaven forbid) bit one of her friends and their parents called the police or something? He'd get put down, and that I could not bear.
So on Wednesday the 25th, Mara and I loaded up and took Frankie up to my friend's house. We stayed about an hour and a half getting him accustomed to his surroundings. He seemed to be doing great, having fun running around with the other two. When we went to leave, however, things didn't go exactly as planned. Frank managed to slip out the door and came running to the car while I was loading Mara. He jumped into the driver seat and crawled through to the back. While I had doors open trying to get him out, my friend came out with the other 2 boxers to try and entice Frankie back out to play. Instead, I ended up with all THREE boxers in my car. Poor Mara had 75 pounds of white boxer basically in her lap. Fifteen minutes later we had managed to get all three dogs sequestered in the garage but the damage had been done.
"Mommy," Mara said as I started the car and we headed down the gravel driveway. "Frankie is sad. He wants to come home with us."
"I know," I answered.
"He tried to get in the car."
I turned left onto the main road. "He did get in the car. But he'll be happy there."
"I miss him, Mommy."
"I know baby. I miss him too."
And she cried for him most of the way home.
So between Orion getting a tooth, three out of the four of us having a cold (me included this time), lack of sleep and Frankie going up to Washington, we are having a rough week. We leave for Hawaii on Tuesday. Infuriatingly, the weather in Hawaii is slated to be worse than the weather here in Oregon! It's a sad day when you go on a Hawaiian vacation and go to more rain than you leave.
We have a tooth!
Sigh.
