Each morning for the past week I have awakened with dread. First I think, "my puppy is gone."
Then, "I killed my puppy. I miss my puppy." Each night before I fall asleep I think, "my puppy is gone. I miss my puppy. Did I do the right thing? Could I have done something differently? Did I do everything I could to make him better?"
I torture myself with these thoughts. Last week my husband and I made the dreadful decision to euthanize our dog. And now, afterward, our hearts are completely broken.
Jax was fear aggressive, a label which doesn't describe how delightful and joyful and wonderful he was when he was feeling safe. We adored him. Bright and beautiful and lively, scary smart, and so full of himself when he did something well. When he felt safe, he melted blissfully under our touch, stretched out on the floor and sighing deeply as we stroked his silky fur and scratched his ears. He was sweet and affectionate and completely bonded to my husband. Patrick was Jax's safe place, his sanctuary, his protector, and Jax loved him.
But when he was scared, and we never knew precisely what might scare him, he was a different animal. A touch on the wrong place (and why was it the wrong place - a small painful bruise or wound, some phantom memory of an earlier injury?), a loud noise, or successive loud noises like fireworks, a clumsy grasp on his collar - and Jax would transform into a desperate wild animal. His eyes glazed, his snout wrinkled to expose the full length of his teeth, he would dart and snap, run away, snarl, dart back, snap. Sometimes his teeth would chatter uncontrollably, sometimes he would circle around me, leaping at my hands and snapping. He missed, maybe on purpose, some sane part of him inhibiting his bite, or maybe because I kept whirling and holding my hands up high. Jax was swifter and had better reflexes than I do, so probably the former. Even in his extreme fear and wildness, he inhibited his reactions to the panic chemicals flooding his brain.
I couldn't trust him. I loved him dearly, but each time we experienced one of these fear episodes, my fear of him increased. I couldn't handle him with confidence. It became a vicious circle - the more fear I felt, the less reliable he was, either because he intuited my fear as submission and he became more dominant, or because he felt the fear too, and that made him more fearful, and increased the liklihood of a biting episode.
I couldn't see how we could take him to the vet for regular check ups - he would be terrified of the strangers there and try to bite them. On our last few walks together, we encountered young children who saw a beautiful, cute, very appealing dog and came too close. Jax's reaction to children was frightful : vicious snarling, lunging, and snapping. I couldn't groom him - what if he had a small injury that I accidently hurt when brushing him? What if I hurt him while trying to clip his nails?
With the other dogs in the house, he became obnoxious and dominant, mounting them, getting into small very noisy quarrrels, nips and lunges. Any kind of excitement - dogs entering the house, someone at the door, threw Jax into a whirlwind of arousal, snarling, leaping - this in turn had caused fights to break out among the dogs which was terrifying.
Jax always, always, wore a leash, and generally I held the leash to take him outside. But the leash had recently worn down, and broken, so what was left was just a short tab. Trying to put a new leash on his collar had resulted in a fear episode that left us both shaking, so we were left with the short leash. Sometimes attempting to grab hold of this short leash was difficult when Jax was excited - he'd dash and dart away, protect his head and neck by ducking under my hands. And sometimes he'd snap at me. Our daily life together had become a tentative walking around each other, questioning myself, wondering if it was okay to touch his collar, lift his leash, stroke him. One morning I let him out as usual - but I didn't want to risk an attempt at reaching for his leash, so I let him out without holding onto to him. On every other morning, Jax had run to the gate and waited until we opened it so he could enter the back yard. On this morning he ran the opposite direction, toward the street, toward the sidewalk. Oh, God, I thought, he'll get hit by a car, or he'll collide with someone walking on the sidewalk and he'll bite them, or he'll just dash away to roam through the yards and how will I catch him? What if the police try to pick him up? All these fears burst through my mind in a flash, as I walked slowly to the end of the driveway toward him. He had paused in his dashing to pee on a bush. I knelt down and stretched my arms out, waiting. He watched me. When he was done with the bush, he rushed into my grateful arms. But it was a close call. It could have gone any other way. How could I risk it anymore? How could I risk someone, a child perhaps, getting bitten? How could I risk my puppy being shot by the police? Or captured, terrified, and taken to the vet clinic to be euthanized by strangers?
When I first met Jax at the shelter, he was about 6 months old, timid, submissive. At seven months he had been deemed fear aggressive, he had attempted to bite several people, had lightly bitten a couple of others. A decision to euthanize had been put into consideration. What I saw was a highly misunderstood young dog, whose spirit had been beaten down, literally, by a very rough start in life. I thought he deserved another chance, he was so young.
Later I learned from his previous owner and a person who had known him then, that he had been taken from his mother and littermates when he was just 4 weeks old - an extremely careless and uncaring decison on the part of his breeder, a stupid, ignorant decision on the part of his adoptive family. A puppy's healthy brain development and social development depends on his inclusion in his canine family until he is at least 7 weeks old - it is then that he learns that he is a DOG, it is then that he learns how to function as part of a pack, he learns canine manners and language and culture. A puppy who is deprived of this essential learning is stunted in his brain development and will almost never develop in a normal, healthy way. He may look like a dog, and smell like a dog, and behave from a human perspective like a dog - but he doesn't know he's a dog - he doesn't understand how to behave, he doesn't relate to other dogs, and he will never
reach his full potential no matter how smart he is.
THEN, his new owners for whatever reasons, decided to employ extremely harsh training with this little baby animal. I don't know the details, I know from the conversation I had with a person who witnessed it, that the behavior of the human toward the baby dog was brutal.
Jax, for the first 7 months of his life, lived in a world dominated by fear, confusion, loss, betrayal and pain.
When my husband and I decided to bring him home, to try to rehabilitate to him, to save him, it was perhaps not the best decision we ever made. In the end, it broke our hearts.
But it may have been the kindest decision anybody ever made for Jax. For 12 months, in our home, Jax knew love for the first time in his life. He experienced pleasure, fun, positive training, a healthy routine. He played and was petted and cared for. That he couldn't overcome the fear he had learned first was not his fault. Once the young dog brain is organized, whether it is a healthy organization, or an unhealthy one, it is nearly impossible to reorganize it. Jax may have wanted to trust us, but he couldn't, not always. We may have wanted to heal him, but we couldn't completely.
In the end we decided we would make this hard decision and have him put down by our trusted veterinarian. We would be with him in the end, he would feel our gentle hands, hear our voices. We would all be scared and haunted and horrified, but we would do this one last thing together.
We drugged him first to help him relax, then the vet drugged him so he would fall asleep. It wasn't that simple. When he felt the strange sensations he panicked, he ran and tried to hide, his legs were wobbly and he staggered. My husband, behind me, said, "oh no, oh no," and started to sob. My daughter next to me was sobbing. Jax collapsed in an awkward heap in front of me, his nose and front paws facing one way, his hind legs facing the other. I held his precious head in my hands, kissed him and whispered, "It'll be okay, it'll be okay. You'll have fields to run in forever, you can herd the sheep, there will be forest trails to explore, and squirrels to chase and streams of clear running water. You can play in the snow and pounce on the snowballs. You'll be free. And we will meet you there someday, and we'll be together again, forever. You will be brave, you'll be the Big Dog. And everyday will be a good day. I love you so much, I love you so much."
The vet administered the overdose, and our dog was gone. Our beautiful puppy was gone.
Jumping Jack Flash, my baby boy, our good little guy, was gone forever.
