On Pancakes

So a lot of the stuff I'm about to write isn't actually official, and is mostly me just processing feelings and stuff because I don't actually know the difference between having a blog and having a Livejournal. Oh, and it's also pretty boring, probably, so maybe just go read my archives or something.

Andy told me yesterday that he thinks we need to find Pancakes a different home.

You've read about Allie Brosch's simple dog over at Hyperbole and a Half, right? Well, Pancakes is an awful lot like that simple dog. She wants, very badly, to be a good dog. She just doesn't have the mental capacity to do so a lot of the time. This causes Andy a lot of stress and unhappiness.

Pancakes is part Jack Russell. This means that she is really, really into finding stuff to do outside of, say, our backyard. She has managed this by finding a weak spot in our fence and worrying at it until she got it loose enough to slip through, then by doing the same to any fix Andy has made to it. Now that he has it on serious lock-down, Pancakes has apparently discovered that she can, in fact, just jump the fence.

She jumped the fence and disappeared last night, while I was asleep, and refused to come back when Andy called her. He had to find her in our dark neighborhood at midnight. He came to bed and told me what had happened, and then said, quietly, that he didn't know if he could keep dealing with this. When I asked him what that meant, he told me that he thinks it might be time for us to find a better home for her.

It's not like we haven't tried to train her, and she is in fact loads better than when we got her. But she also does completely bizarre and unacceptable things sometimes. For example, I put the dogs outside, waited for them to pee, let them back inside, then went down to the basement to get something. Pancakes followed me down there and peed on the carpet. What the fuck is that about? She's housebroken and had literally just been outside.

I have more patience with Pancakes when she does stupid shit like escape or chew on stuff, because I know we need to give her more exercise than we do. I guess I see it as a failing on our part instead of hers. But the peeing in the house? Oh, no. That needs to stop.

Andy has agreed that we can try a) getting a long lead for the backyard, so that Pancakes can't go past a certain distance but can still run around, and b) trying an obedience class so we know she'll come when we call her even if she does get out. We'll do that before we start talking about who we know who might be willing to take her (even if we do find another home for her, it absolutely wouldn't be the pound).

Ugh. I'm PMSing, so obviously I'm even more emotional about this than I need to be. I see how stressed Andy gets when he has to go out looking for a dog who has plenty of room to run in our backyard, and how pissed he gets when she pees in the house. He doesn't deserve to feel that much stress in his own house. He deserves to not have to worry about what she's getting into. But at the same time, I feel like he's giving up without doing any of the extra stuff himself: he is okay with ME finding her an obedience class, or taking her for walks more often, or whatever, even though he's the one with the problem with her behavior.

Like I said, this post is just me sorting through what I'm thinking and feeling, which can be summed up as follows: this fucking sucks, no matter how I slice it.