Bobby

On Sunday, August 19th, we adopted a dog that was a male grey hound/shepherd mix named Bobby from Prairie Paws Animal Shelter in Ottawa, KS. We looked at several other shelters in Topeka and Lawrence, then made the even longer trip to Ottawa, which of course was where we found our lover of a beast.

Bobby had a previous owner who taught him well, but do to financial reasons, they had to move into an apartment and the apartment that they could afford wouldn't allow pets. We've been there before and understand how difficult it is to give away a family member. Several years ago we had to give away our sweet Tabby cat named Mr. Bigglesworth, and sometimes you are just forced to ensure they have a new or better home.

Here was my baby before I had our little Jocie-Bear.

Because of Bobby's last family, he already knew how to sit, lay, shake with both hands and was exceptionally well potty trained.

Isn't he the cutest? The color of his fur was really cool and he was actually hard to see when laying on the rug in the livingroom.

We have had our bout with Bobby being destructive, and his worse occurrence was when he chewed up Jocelyn's DAFO boots. For those of you who don't know what DAFO's are, they are special boots that Jocelyn wears in an attempt to keep her feet and ankles properly aligned and prevent contractures. Seeing how these cost at least $2,000 for one pair...I literally thought I would kill him! He knew the second I found those DAFO's, and said his name, that he was in trouble. No sooner did I say his name did he take off with his tail tucked and head down which of course made me feel bad for even getting mad. Poor pooch!

Other upsets we had were a destroyed garage door, shredded blankets, torn up garden, lots of holes in the yard and one terrified little girl.

Bobby was as gentle as a big dog could be and would give her kisses, but Jocelyn was terrified of him and she was constantly upset whenever he would even get close to her. He was a big time smoocher, and craved both attention and love. Another battle besides Jocelyn was apparently we are gone quite a bit because of our therapy and doctor appointments and with Justin's work schedule. The shelter was not aware of this, but Bobby has extreme separation anxiety. We tried putting him in different rooms, a kennel, outside...anywhere and everywhere...and he was always so upset and definitely destructive. 

Now, its been greater than a decade since either Justin nor I have had a dog of our own and there are many things that we have forgotten. Unfortunately, because of what Bobby's been through, we think being left alone was so much worse for him. It was absolutely heartbreaking, but we took him back to the shelter because we felt that we couldn't come close to providing what he needed. I know, many of you are shaking your head at use or disappointed in our decision, but we felt it was worse to keep him if it was a terrible fit for all of us. We are not in the business of doing something like this, its been a new experience for us all, and Jocelyn is just not ready in the slightest.

The shelter informed us that there was doggy Prozac and other things we could try, but we just really already have our hands so full with simply taking care of Jocelyn, and adding a dog that requires special treatment just wasn't going to work in our life right now.

While we had him in our care, we provided a tremendous amount of love, fun and treats so we know he got spoiled as much as we could. Taking him back was very difficult so this is all I'm going to say about this right now because it still makes me very sad that he couldn't be a permanent member of our family.