I have been trying to get up the oomph to post a blog about my beautiful blue cabinets, or the greenness of our backyard... But I'm a bit down this week and just can't bring myself to post a cheerful blog. Maybe next week.
But I decided that I called my blog "Sunshine - and rain" for a reason. So I'm going to share a little bit of the rain we've had this week.
In the month since we moved here we have been blissfully happy. We started coming together, feeling like a family (yes, us and our dogs is a family!) And we even started to work some of the kinks out of our relationship. Things definitely haven't always been running smoothly, but we were ironing them out, and feeling very good about it. Living together in the moments we had, and eagerly looking towards the future. Okay, that part has not changed at all - we've just had a hiccup because the comfort of our home has been disrupted!
On Sunday night our dogs started fighting - violently! We tried together (and sometimes at contention with each other) for two days to fix the problem, and stop them from fighting... To no avail. On Monday night they fought and Ledger AND Bobby got hurt. Don't worry Bobby is okay! (Ledger is too). But we realized at that point that whatever was going on was beyond our abilities to fix.
I realize that most people at this point would just find a new home for Ledger (the new dog) and stop whining about it. And we did discuss that option. But ultimately what we decided is that that is not the kind of people we want to be. We chose to bring Ledger into our home, and we are not just going to discard him - as I said earlier, we feel like this is our family!
Our vet suggested a Behavior Specialist at UC Davis and we've got an appointment with them next Wednesday. Did you know that there's a credit card you can get, that is specifically for expensive Vet bills? It's no interest for 18 months. THANK GOD for it, because it's the only way we were able to make the decision to see the specialist!
For now life is sort of tense in our house. The dogs have to be separated constantly, and playing "musical dogs" means that Bobby and I spend more time in different rooms than usual - but we are managing. We've decided that tonight we will have a (very cheap!) date night and spend some time together.
Bobby was making a video of the dogs playing together the last time they fought. I figured I'd share it, because... Why not? Maybe someone can watch it and catch something we missed? Any info we can give the behavior specialist is helpful! :)
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Ari has this same issue, but only with dogs that are larger than him, so it usually happens with my parents lab. I know you prob. know this, but i'm assuming it has to do with dominance. They both want to be head honcho, and since neither one gives in, they fight to work it out. I am really curious what the specialist does.. I feel lucky that Zoe and Ari don't fight with each other, but I do know how you feel, beacuse whenever we are at my parents, its like, okay Brody needs to come outside, lets put Ari away.. and so on. goood luck!
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