I have a soft spot in my heart for animals. Dogs tend to generally be my favorite, but I care for most any animal. When I think of animals, I usually think of ones that people tend to domesticate on a regular basis; such as dogs, cats, hamsters, and even the occasional potbelly pig.
It’s easy to have a big heart and love them. You see the cutest little puppy at the local humane society. Those beady little eyes look up at you; pleading silently and sweetly, “take me home.” Thirty minutes later, you end up taking that little bundle of joy with you to your car. You get in your car and head home to your family, hoping that they will be just as excited to see your new friend. You pull in the driveway and hope for the best.
You enter your house with your new puppy. As expected, everyone’s eyes light up, and the little one becomes the star of the household immediately. She is given free reign right away, and starts tugging at the furniture, playfully biting at your hand, and makes a general mess of the house. It’s not too soon after that you have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that maybe you shouldn’t have jumped into this so fast.
You see how the kids are playing with the puppy, and it scares you a bit. Perhaps they are being a little too rough with her. She’s clamped her jaws on one end of a towel, suspended in the air! Immediately you admonish your son that he really shouldn’t do that to her. He puts it down and the puppy gains traction on the floor, taking off on yet another adventure. She seems unaffected by the temporary roughness.
A few months later, she’s beginning to grow, and much larger than she was when you brought her home. You find she’s become quite hard to handle, and the kids seem to be uninterested in tending to her needs, even though you had a family discussion about taking care of the dog. You look down at those eyes that were once tiny, and now see her large brown eyes looking back up at you. You can tell she’s hungry and hasn’t been fed. A scent fills the air, and it consists of a little present that she left on the kitchen floor. Several urine spots are seen in your bedroom, and you just shake your head as you clean them up.
Starting a new job hasn’t afforded you much time with the kids or the dog. In your absence, you hope that your children would do their part in taking care of her. They have proven on several occasions that they were not able to do what it takes to have a dog in the family. You call another family meeting, and you decide that for her sake, that she has to go to a new home, or back to the pound.
You post an ad on Craigslist to find a new owner, but to no avail. Shortly after, you make the decision to take her back to the humane society where you got her. You leave her with the attendant, looking at those eyes one last time. You see the fear in her eyes as you tearfully tell her, “I love you…goodbye.” At least you realize that you weren’t ready for a dog. Many people can’t accept this, and let their pets languish because of their pride.