#opinion piece
I’ve been AWOL for months now, and there’s one simple reason for that: no sense in running a dog blog when you don’t have a dog.
Christmas is fine–he’s doing great actually. He is in Switzerland with a backyard several acres large, another Samoyed buddy, and five people in the home with him all day long.
Giving him up was an intensely personal decision that I didn’t particularly feel like discussing publicly at the time, as I wasn’t ready to deal with the potential conversations that often come up when you re-home a dog.
I miss having a dog, and I miss blogging about dog training and life with dogs, but I’m not currently in a place where I can have one, and I don’t know when that will change.
I could go into all the reasons I ultimately made the decision to give Christmas a better life with someone else, like how foolish it was of me to think I could handle having a dog on my own in a city while working 10 hours a day, or how I wasn’t ready to deal with a breed so very different from Daenerys, and how helpless and bitter I felt sometimes when he didn’t bond with me like a shepherd dog would.
At the end of the day, however, it came down to the fact that I couldn’t give Christmas the life I felt he needed to suit his personality and breed type. So when he was 6 months old, (a little over a year ago) I got in touch with his breeder, asking her what I could do, and she offered me an out, I took the out.
A good friend of hers had recently lost one of her Samoyeds and was looking to fill the void, and Christmas was just the kind of puppy she was looking for. I follow his social media account and love seeing the updates (not a fan of his new name, but couldn’t very well expect most people to appreciate the uniqueness that is Christmas), and as much as it’s a kick in the gut sometimes, I know I did the right thing.
There’s a bit of a stigma when it comes to rehoming dogs, and I wish there wasn’t, because honestly I should have rehired him months before I actually did. We weren’t a good fit, and we both deserved better, and I should have made that call for him earlier than I did. But, of course, I was afraid of the potential backlash. “You should have done your research” and “dogs aren’t toys for you to chuck when you’re bored”.
But keeping him out of guilt over what society might say is bullshit. I wasn’t doing him or myself any favours. Sometimes it doesn’t fit. And as long as you do the research and make sure that his next home is a good fit, you are not abandoning your dog, or betraying him. You are making a responsible choice to ensure that his needs are being met and that he gets the life he deserves.
Christmas has a great life, and as sad as I am that it isn’t with me, I’m glad he’s with someone who can offer him everything he needs and loves him unconditionally.
Someday I’ll have a dog again, but I don’t know when the circumstances will allow it. Maybe I’ll find a way to work with dogs as a hobby in my free time so I can still blog and get my daily dose of dog, but it’s all a bit out there right now. A lot has happened in the last year, and I’ve been uprooted and tossed into limbo more times than I care to count. I am not where I thought I would be, and I still need to find my bearings.
All that to say: it’s okay to re-home your dog. It’s not okay to abandon them, and it’s not okay to toss them out because you’re bored or tired of them, but it is okay to recognise that things aren’t working out and to find a solution that puts their needs above yours.
Don’t stick with a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
We are in the midst of a heatwave here in London (or at least we were when I started writing this but then, well… The heatwave distracted me) which means the parks/ beaches/ any bench anywhere are full of people sitting, eating and of course reading. I think I may have just found your next fave summer read.
On a night out, four friends witness a stranger in trouble. They decide to do nothing to…
