Good-Bye

Why.... hello there

Today Scott and I did the hardest thing we've done so far, we took Snickers to the vet for the last time and held her as she passed away, and it was medically induced. There were a lot of factors leading to this decision, but the main one was this: our beloved Basset Hound was aggressive. This confuses a lot of people because, I mean, she was a Basset Hound and they are supposed to be the most laid back of all the dogs, but this one wasn't. We don't really know Snickers' background, we got her from friends who were not able to keep her, and we're pretty sure she was from a backyard breeder, and we're also pretty sure she was a runt. Snickers weighed 35 pounds and that was a little heavy for her. Most of the bassets we have met are twice that size.

We had Snickers (or Snickerdoodle as we liked to call her, Snick Snick to others) around 3 and a half years, and we spent three of those years trying to train her to stop the aggression. It didn't work. When we bought our house her anxiety went up and the vet put her on Prozac. In the less then two years we've been in
the house her dose had up twice to the point that she was on the maximum amount possible. It didn't really make a difference. For the last three months Snickers' aggression had steadily been increasing to the point that for the last month she spent most of her time awake growling, snapping and snarling at us and voluntarily spending at least one night a week in her crate. Something was clearly wrong.

Snickers loved laying in the grass after chasing geese

When we talked to the vet about it a week ago she told us to give her a few days to see if she could find out any other information about what could be causing her aggression, but she did warn us that there was a good chance that putting Snickers' to sleep was going to be the best option. Wednesday she called us to let us know that she was recommending that we put Snickers' to sleep. She talked to all the rescue groups in the area she could think of, none would take her because of the aggression. There were no more medicines we could try, something was truly wrong with her brain. We could have opted to run a lot of tests to try to figure out what exactly that was, but the chances of it being treatable were slim. So we decided we were going to follow the vet's advice so today around 8:45am Snickers' passed away while Scott was holding her. It was fast (less than 30 seconds) and was just like she was going to sleep. It sucked, it was awful, but it was the right thing to do. Snickers was not happy, she was not mentally stable, and she was rapidly becoming dangerous.

One of my favorite pictures of Snickers from a couple months
ago. She had just finished eating a goldfish cracker without even
lifting her head up. Silly Puppy.

Luckily, Nico seems to be adjusting ok- it probably helps that he is completely distracted by the fact he is on the floor in front of us chewing on his bone- which is something he could NEVER do before because of Snickers' aggression. We do plan on getting another dog, but we're going to try to wait a month or two so that everything with Snickers feels settled. We know some people will not understand or approve of what we did, and we're sorry they will feel that way, but they did not deal with the constant struggle of having an aggressive dog and they clearly don't know how hard we worked with Snickers to try to prevent this exact thing from happening. For those of our friends and family who have supported us throughout the ordeal of trying to find ways to fix Snickers' aggression - thank you so much.


We love you Snickers and we are so sorry we had to do this, we will love you forever and hope that you enjoy snuggling up to Grandma, Gagoo and Dad Dad. Try not to steal too much of the pie that I'm sure Gagoo is feeding you... and don't destroy his trains.

Nico just doesn't understand.....

After around four months of Nico and Gypsy Kitty hostility, last night the hostility came to a head and Gypsy Kitty moved in with Elfie's parents. We had already been planning on moving her up there after having a discussion with said parents on Sunday- we just decided to move her up 12 hours a head of time. For the longest time I thought that the hostility was Nico thinking that Gypsy was food, now I'm not so sure. He's been pacing up and down the stairs all morning (since about 6:30 when we got up) and keeps staring, whining and barking and the two doors the cat was usually behind. It's really quite sad. On top of Nico acting up, Snickers is very confused and walked into the former kitty room and started whining. It's a sad day but Gypsy will be safer and happier up with Elfie's parents, and we knew this was eventually going to have to happen since Gypsy hates kids since some kids used to try to sit on her. On top of that our allergies towards Gypsy have been progressively getting worse and worse. Oh well. Gypsy is up with Elfie's parents, the dogs are with us and hopefully everyone in the house will settle down, and hopefully that means more blog posts will get written!

Nico doesn't understand that Gypsy now lives with Elfie's parents.

We're BAAAACCCKKK

Ok so, since we got Nico we've kind of slacked of on the blog, but trust us, Nico has been eating up SO MUCH of our time it makes sense. While we don't regret, even for a second, rescuing him, he is a handful and a half. So, an update about Nico and Snickers.

The two dogs are now getting a long the majority of the time, with only a few growlies here and there from Snickers when she is protecting something that she views as hers (mostly food). Nico has successfully destroyed one crate, about 1/4 of our bedroom carpet, a baby gate, the bottom of our bedroom door, a Washington Nationals Hoodie, a bathroom rug, and his face (multiple times). We finally figured out a way to keep him from Houdini-ing out of his crate and Hulk-destroying it. After he destroyed the first one- which was also the same night he destroyed the carpet and the bottom of the bedroom door, we got smart. We got a new crate, zip-tied ALL the edges together, and zip-tie the door shut when we leave so it has no give when he pushes against that. Once we did that, he focused on moving the crate, with him in it, and destroying the plastic tray within the crate...this is when he destroyed the Washington Nationals Hoodie that I loved so much. So next up we got a piece of plywood, cut it down to size so that it's about 2 inches bigger than the bottom of the crate, and used u-nails to nail the crate onto it. We also cut a piece of plywood to size to fit inside the crate, wrapped that with a stapled down blanket and replaced the plastic tray with that. Since we've done that he hasn't moved the crate or destroyed it any more than he did before we started that. Granted, we're not sure if we fixed it, or if it's just a matter of time before he figures out how to Houdini or Hulk-Smash his way out of the fortified crate.

Also, yesterday was Nico and Snicker's Good Manner's class graduation. We're happy to say that both dog's have improvement, but Nico still has a LONG WAY to go before he'll be ready to take the classes for his CGC (Canine-Good-Citizen) certification... the next step in getting him ready to be a therapy dog that kids can read to! Our biggest struggle with him, other than him either not knowing his name or having selective hearing, is his undeniable urge to chase Gypsy, the cat. She is NOT amused, ends up fluffy and has scratched his nose up more times than we can count. We're hoping we can fix it before he loses an eye. He's pretty good at sitting on command in the house, again not perfect, not doing it EVERY time, but getting there. He really is great at walking on a leash unless his sister, Snickers, starts getting him riled up.We just have to keep telling ourselves, he is better than he was when we first got him.

As far as the house goes, we really haven't done much. We finished our front flowerbeds, but haven't gotten around to ripping up the bushes and haven't done anymore painting or updating on the inside. We'll get there. So yes, after a couple months of unexpected hiatus, we're BAAACCCKKK.

Our dog's not spoiled... we're just well trained..

As many of you know, Superman and I have a basset hound, Snickers, who is quite spoiled. She is used to sleeping on the bed with us so when we got a new bed frame from my Aunt's parents that was so high she was not able to get up on we decided to give her a step up. As a temporary fix we used a wooden shoe rack thing from Walmart that we already had. Well, this past week it broke so we knew our temporary fix needed to go away. So Superman went to Home Depot and got 2 eight foot lengths of 2x4s and he headed over to my parent's house where he and Dad went over the design idea and used Dad's table saw to cut the pieces to the correct size. Then Superman came home and put together a nice, sturdy footstool so that Snickers will be able to use to get up and down from our bed using a nails that my Grandfather was nice enough to give us! Those nails (he gave us a lot) will also come in handy as we work on finishing the basement and maybe make some raised garden beds for the backyard once we get that cleared.

This is Snickers, our almost 3 year old Basset Hound :) 

The awesome footstool Superman made! We have a bathroom rug covering it so Snickers has a better grip getting up and down from the bed. 

~Elphie~