end of february

so, february was a rough month for me.  actually, this whole winter was really hard on me.  we had tons of snow this winter, and joe's schedule had changed for him to work nights.  i spent a lot of winter alone in my house.  when i went outside it was cold and bleak.  it was a hassle to go anywhere or do anything.  i was really depressed.  one of the big reasons that i wanted to get a dog was because i wasn't really comfortable being in my new house by myself.

february was particularly bad, though.  i had tons of stress going on at work on top of my seasonal depression.  adding to that the new knowledge that instead of adopting a dog who was my new best friend i adopted a dog who would kill me if he could... well, it was hard.

when we first brought him home, he was very shaggy and very dirty.  the friday after i brought him home, i had him at petsmart for a serious grooming sesh.  when i got him home, he looked like a whole new dog!  he was clean and shiny and soft...  and i discovered upon his "rub my belly" pose - an intact dog! 

nancy, the woman who runs the shelter where i got wally said she'd always be there if i had any questions.  i called her when he bit me and asked her if he had been aggressive with anyone else.  she told me that he wasn't crate trained and i shouldn't have tried to "force" him into a crate.  the next day he growled at me for pulling his face out of a cat food bowl at my father's house.  she told me that i shouldn't have brought him to my father's house since he still didn't know or trust me yet.  she basically told me that wally's aggression wasn't his problem, i just wasn't communicating effectively with my new dog. 

i called her the saturday after wally's grooming appointment and i told her i found two reasons why wally's aggression was his problem, and not that i wasn't communicating effectively with him.   since he was supposed to have been neutered when i brought him home, she asked me to drop him back off at the shelter so that she could take him to get neutered.  that night, my car died.  just to add to my stress.

i borrowed my sisters car to bring wally home from the shelter after his neutering appointment.  he was chilling on the rug in the kitchen while i was cooking.  i walked past him to get to the fridge, and he growled at me.  i totally lost it at that point.  all the stress came out in that one moment.  i called joe up and i told him that i wasn't going to be able to keep doing that with my life.  every waking moment i had was spent trying to train this dog, trying to make him trust me and respect me.  and it wasn't working.  i felt like a failure.  i couldn't handle his rejection anymore.  joe told me that we should wait a few days to see how he'd do after being neutered before we brought him back to the shelter.  i agreed with him.  i didn't want to give up on him, but it had been two and a half weeks straight of hard work, with almost no results.  taking him back to the shelter wasn't an ideal situation, but i really was at my wit's end.

thank god, and joe, i didn't just flip out and give up that night.