This post was a tough one to write, full of raw emotion and feelings of vulnerability, like very few other posts I’ve written. But I think there’s an important message to be shared here, and that’s why I’ve decided to publish this. I hope that this is a message of trying your best, knowing your limits, and being gentle to oneself.
Let me get to the point: last month, we had to re-home our beloved puppy. This decision was a long process, full of tears and pros-and-cons and back-and-forths. But in the end, we did what we thought was best for him. And for us.
Both my husband and I are “dog people” who grew up with dogs by our side- and we had a wonderful Chocolate Lab named Tyson for the first eight years of our relationship, who sadly passed away in September 2012. However, our puppy Oz, an 80-lb Chocolate Labradoodle, is/was a gentle soul full of friendly energy. We got him only a year ago, in May 2013, when he was just eight weeks old, and he soon became a constant companion for our children. But as he grew, so did the am-I-giving-him-what-he-needs doubts. Then came my two-year-old’s amblyopia diagnosis, and the choice became clear.
When her eye was patched, we were told, she would be virtually blind. Add in an 80-lb puppy bouncing around, and I became overwhelmed. It seemed I just didn’t have enough to give….. not enough energy, not enough time, not enough love. I didn’t want to resent our dog for just being a dog. I saw this on Facebook and I think it says it all:
He simply needed more than what we could give him. And so we diligently searched, extensively interviewed, and thoroughly screened potential families…. and we found the perfect fit.
Done and done. So what’s made this post so hard to write? The guilt part, the failure part, the I-made-a-mistake part. The I’m-sorry-I-just-couldn’t-do-it-all part. I’m a Type-A, first-born, female Virgo with high expectations and self-imposed perfectionism. To feel defeat and admit to failing is hard for me. It’s taken me more than a month to begin to see this situation in a different light, but I’m slowly getting there.
And I’m trying to focus on “rising up”.
The note explained that Casey and her new bear can wear their new glasses together; the empathy of a stuffed animal. For those keeping track, my 2-year-old daughter has just been diagnosed with amblyopia, and will require glasses and daily eye-patching to ‘teach’ her left eye to function. But Sarah happened. She’s a plane-ride away and she managed to feel my worry, to support my daughter, to help us out, to make me better.
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