A New Home: Part 1

By: Alisha Broemeling

Ours was a classic story.

Girl meets boy with cute schnauzer.

Girl marries boy with cute schnauzer.

Cute schnauzer-loving couple decides to adopt a second cute schnauzer.

After several years of blissful, wet bearded, schnauzer kisses the couple has a beautiful baby girl.

Babies are like tiny, cute hurricanes.  You know they are coming, you prepare for them, but somehow you are still surprised when they rip your house off its foundation and scatter all your belongings on the lawn.

The schnauzers adapted to hurricane B like the champions I know they are.  I devoted a lot of time to researching how to introduce them to B and how to socialize both sides, and for the first nine months we were a blissful family of five.

C and B were immediately best friends; C quickly realized that if she followed B around B would share her toys and snacks.  B learned to throw the ball for C and laugh when she brought it back.

J, who has always been a stoic little guy, enjoyed sniffing and licking B’s toes.  He would push her swing with his nose while she slept.

B started walking at nine months.  So at nine months, suddenly, nothing was sacred.  She can go everywhere and get into everything.  Busy fingers always roaming looking for something new to touch do not like to let sleeping dogs sleep.

We did our best to show B “nice touch” and make sure she didn’t inflict too much torture on our dogs.  And for a while, we were fine.  B would play and when her play neared a sleeping J he would get up and move to another room.

In one day things changed.  I don’t know what triggered the change in behavior, but it was sudden.  J began to stand his ground.  He no longer would make room for B’s play.  He became directly confrontational with her, growling and snapping when she came close.

Back to researching I went.  Giving J more exercise and space worked for a while, but one day my husband was home with B and the dogs and J snapped at B and caught her face.  She only had a small scratch (THANK GOD) but it was a wakeup call.  J is not happy in our home and he is taking it out on B.

The last thing we want is for B to get seriously hurt or to grow up to be afraid of dogs.  We also wanted J to have a full life, to be part of a family.  After much more research and conversation my husband and I decided that the best thing for J, and our family, would be to find J a family that he could be happy in.