The Rescue Blues

It's the wee hours of the morning, and I can't sleep.

It's 1am and I have a sweet little cattle dog sitting next to me, nudging my forearm every now and again for pets.  Her name is Alice, renamed from her original name of Buckie, that she was given by the humane society here in Flagstaff. I felt like Buckie sounded too much like a boy name, and that she deserved something a little more dignified and befitting to her ladylike demeanor. I also think that human names for animals are hilarious, and given that Alice would most likely have been my first choice had I had a little human girl of my own, I figured giving the name to a dog was fitting.

There wasn't much backstory for Alice. She was a stray that was brought in to the humane society. She has a docked tail and wasn't spayed, and could quite possibly have been a breeder, as I'm pretty sure she's a pure-bred Blue Heeler. A Texas Spotted, according to the gal at the boarding kennel we had her housed at for a few days while we were out of town. She knows how to sit, and does it readily and happily, particularly if she thinks you might be harboring a treat somewhere on your person. And even if you don't, she will still run right up to you and sit anyway. She seems incredibly intelligent and very eager to please. I'm pretty sure my roommate was almost 90% successful in training her to rollover in just a few attempts. I set up a crate and she immediately went into it and laid down. This dog had to have belonged to someone at some point; how she ended up at the humane society, I guess we'll never know. She has a funny little chuffing cough and doesn't seem to be able to bark, despite all appearances that she's trying. She's absolutely beautiful, with a speckled grey coat and a smattering of white across her nose. She has one solid little black spot on her short little nub of a tail, which always seems to be wagging and wiggling. She's definitely got that intense heeler personality, and made her rounds last evening when the three of us in the house happened to be in separate rooms. She's quick moving, but also readily relaxes once she's ascertained that everything is as it should be. She's a little jumpy, which I think is to be expected given her breed and her recent situation at the shelter, and isn't a huge fan of having her paws touched. Upon entering the house, she went to every window and popped up to look out to see what there was to see. She does the heeler lean, slumping into your legs while being petted, staring adoringly into your eyes, begging you to never stop.

She really didn't pay too much attention to Cooper, nor he to her. She met my neighbor and coworker Steff, who happened to be out on a walk with her little boy and was totally rocking a new pixie cut. She went right up to the little guy, game him a sniff, and reveled in his affections. Alice seems to really like Simon quite a bit, following him from place to place like a little shadow. Ironic, really, given that he doesn't like dogs all that much but tolerates me having them because he knows they make me happy. 

Last night Alice attacked Cooper. I had just given her her nightly antibiotic pill. Looking back, it was incredibly stupid on my part to have given her that in front of him, as he immediately followed her to investigate what tasty nibble she had gotten. She gave all the warning signs for him to back off...bared her teeth, growled low in her throat, and held her head low over the remains of the peanut butter treat I had hidden the pill in. Cooper is deaf and mostly blind, and whether he picked up on her signs or not, she didn't give him time to deliberate and was on him in a second. I was maybe three feet away at the time, seeing what was coming but powerless to stop it. It happened so incredibly fast, and it took three of us to pull her off of him. There was a moment there where I thought that not only was she going to bite my roommate, who fearlessly and immediately jumped right into the middle of it, but that she was going to kill my little dog right there in front of me.

Earlier this spring I saw my neighbor's pug mauled nearly to death by a roving neighborhood dog. I was, and still am, incredibly traumatized by bearing witness to that. Luckily the little pug survived, but just barely. Over the years I've caught plenty of nature shows, and have seen just how brutal animals can be to each other, but it was always through a screen; there was always a degree of separation that didn't prepare me for seeing something brutally mauled right in front of my face. Everything I felt that day came rushing back to me in an instant as I cuddled Cooper on the couch afterwards, looking him over from head to toe to make sure that he was okay. Given how brutal the attack appeared to me, Cooper seemed rather nonplussed, and was his usual resistant self when all I wanted was for him to sit on my lap and give me comfort. Funny that, he's the one who gets attacked and I'm the one needing to be comforted. I felt so terrible about the whole thing that I was physically nauseated and couldn't bear to eat, despite the fact that my roommate had made some pretty amazing macaroni and cheese in the Instant Pot. If you know me at all, you know I don't miss a meal for anything, and I never skip the opportunity to eat mac and cheese.

I know that there are dog psychologists and trainers, and that she probably just needs more time, and that there's so much to learn about resource guarding and adding another member to the pack, but I just can't stand the thought that she might someday really hurt or even kill my little buddy, or that she might hurt one of us as we try to keep her from hurting him. The fact that she attacked him makes me wonder how she'll be with other dogs. They told me at the shelter that she was good with other dogs, but how could they really know? Having worked in a shelter in the past, I know that the shelter environment is no place to gauge an animal's personality. I should have spent more time with her before comitting to the adoption. I should have slept on it. I should have listened to Simon's hesitations.

There's a big part of me that feels like I'm not trying hard enough, that this is just another example of me rushing into a decision without the proper forethought and planning, which has become such a predictable and classic character flaw for me. I feel like such a failure. It wasn't fair of me to have trusted her so implicitly so soon. This is all relatively new for her...we're new, Cooper is new, the house is new...she's experiencing everything with us for the first time, just as we are with her. I don't know what to do, I feel like I'm in way over my head, and I feel like the longer I wait, the more opportunity and inevitability there is for her to hurt Cooper. I have little doubt in my mind that she will attack him again, most likely over something food related. The thought of feeding them in the morning is now terrifying. I certainly can't trust them alone, and after the attack I won't let Cooper out of my sight for even a second. I've come to the conclusion that I just can't keep her. I don't know how I would live with myself knowing that I brought this other dog into the house who hurt my loyal little companion of 14 years. He doesn't deserve that, he didn't ask for it, and I think given the choice, he'd be perfectly content to remain an only dog for whatever time he has left here with us. 

So I'm sitting up tonight with this beautiful little girl while she sleeps all curled up in a pet bed next to me, softly snoring and sighing. I feel like I owe her that much and probably more, knowing that this coming morning will be our last day together, that I will be returning her to the shelter from which she came, in the hopes that maybe she'll be a fantastic dog for a different family. Maybe if I didn't have Cooper, things would be different. But I do have him, and I will continue to have him, and it's not right or fair for me to compromise his safety on a whim. I really wanted this to work out so badly, I was so excited to have an adventure dog, but I guess maybe this just isn't the right time, and maybe she's just not the right dog. But this is Flagstaff, everyone goes nuts over their heelers in this town, and I know she'll be a great addition to someone else's pack. I wish she could have been for ours.