The Good the Bad and the Dogs

Pictures are Sandi chilling in Russell's room, the new puppy Monte and Polly.

For those of you who have not heard, in a tragic turn of events, we went from 5 dogs to 3 dogs to 4 dogs in December of 2010.

When we left for Florida in November we had 5 dogs. First, there was Balou (Zeke's dog) and Sandi (Russell's dog), mini-dachshunds almost 7 years old. Then Kadiy our Brindle English Mastiff, who although she is really my dog has long since been claimed by Caden, and she is 5 years old. After Kadiy comes Mischief ,Balou and Sandi's first puppy from 4 years ago. Mischief is Chris' dog. Last is Polly. Polly was born, March of 2009 and as Olivia quickly figured out that everyone else had a dog, she claimed Polly as her own.

Polly was supposed to be a Neapolitan Mastiff but was, very obviously, from the start a mixed breed. Polly always played rough but not was not mean. She was however aggressive with food so we had to feed her separate from everyone else, and WOULD NOT stay in the yard even on the strongest invisible fence collar leading us to put her on a run in WV while every one else ran free. When in Florida Polly had a new measure of freedom. There is a chain link fence as well as the invisible fence around that yard so she did not have to be on a run. For all of November and most of December things went really well. Polly and the other dogs were settling in and enjoying the nicer weather, and Polly being a VERY energetic dog, was especially appreciating her new found freedom.

On the 17th of December our family experienced a tragic event. Chris and I had taken the two youngest (thankfully) with us to finish up some last minute Christmas shopping. While we were gone Polly, viciously attacked Sandi. There was no discernible reason for the attack. They had never had any confrontations before. Polly was about 100 pounds and Sandi weighed in at all of 11 pounds. She shook Sandi causing permanent paralysis. After a VERY long weekend and one enormous vet bill, the final decision was that we had to say goodbye to Sandi. We also said goodbye to Polly that weekend as we could no longer trust her. Some have questioned our decision to have her put down, but we could not in good conscience give an unpredictable dog to someone else. How sad it would be if it were someone's kid she attacked the next time.

Russell had a really hard time saying goodbye to Sandi, as we all did. So to make things a little easier and distract him from the loss of Sandi, we bought him another dog. Russell is now the proud owner of a mini-schnauzer named Sir Monte Cristo or Monte for short. Monte is still a puppy, but proving to be a wonderful addition to our family, and Russell has taken on the full responsibility of feeding training and caring for him.