Saying Good-Bye to Grace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I haven't made a secret of the fact that I've been wanting a dog. I've blogged about it, dreamed about it, and gazed longingly at pictures of sweet faces\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/05\/saying-good-bye-to-grace.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saying Good-Bye to Grace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I haven't made a secret of the fact that I've been wanting a dog. 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{"id":4088,"date":"2015-05-28T12:54:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T17:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/?p=4088"},"modified":"2015-05-28T12:54:25","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T17:54:25","slug":"saying-good-bye-to-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/05\/saying-good-bye-to-grace.html","title":{"rendered":"Saying Good-Bye to Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My husband would shake his head and tell me that\u00a0we already have a dog,\u00a0<\/em>which actually meant that he has a dog<\/em> and she put up with the rest of us because he lives with us. Grace isn\u2019t a bad dog.<\/a> We\u2019ve had her for almost 10 years now, through\u00a0three moves and a litter of puppies. She doesn\u2019t like to play or cuddle up with any\u00a0people\u00a0but him, mostly she likes to go on walks and sleeping the way old dogs do. She\u2019s a big dog in a small body, a boxer beagle mix who doesn\u2019t know she\u2019s runty. Her lethargy disappears when other\u00a0dogs come to our house for a visit, or my eldest daughter brings her cat home from college and there\u2019s a kitty to chase. Her 12-year-old self becomes young and bouncy whenever she\u2019s in hot pursuit.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

Which is why I wasn\u2019t worried on Saturday when two of the boys went with me to meet a dog at the rescue shelter. He\u2019s a beautiful black Shepherd (he looks very much like the dog I loved way back when) who somehow got lost and ended up at the pound. Already trained, house broken, and good with children; we were excited to bring him home. He\u2019s sweetness and patience with the kids, and at two years old he still has enough puppy energy to love playing. We all adored Gus\u00a0from the moment he bounded through the door\u2026all of us except Grace.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

She hated him from the moment she first laid eyes on him, which is not her usual response to new animals in the house. We anticipated sniffing, chasing, and then napping in their respective corners. What happened instead was overtures of friendship from him,bared teeth and growling from her.<\/p>\n

After a couple nights of her ignoring his existence, she attacked him yesterday. No warning. Not a growl or even laid back ears. She launched herself at this intruder. She threw herself at him and wouldn\u2019t stop coming. While he tried to evade and hide behind me, she grabbed the loose skin of his neck and held on\u2026.until he bit her on her side to make her turn loose.\u00a0And then I grabbed her. \u00a0She had a puncture wound on her back and a scrape on her side, and left a streak of blood on my t-shirt before she wriggled out of my arms and made\u00a0a mad dash for the gate. She hit the old wood with all kids of force and knocked it down. We didn\u2019t see her again until late yesterday afternoon, one of our neighbors brought her home.\u00a0That\u2019s when we knew that\u00a0she was hurt\u2026 and she\u2019s really hurt. She\u2019s spent almost 18 hours straight in her crate, refusing to come out even for my husband. She is completely not interested in eating or drinking. She even turned down cheese<\/em>, y\u2019all. That\u2019s how we know it\u2019s serious.<\/p>\n

We are all\u00a0horrified that my husband\u2019s laid back dog could have become so vicious. The four youngest children witnessed the whole violent ordeal. They don\u2019t understand how the dog who sleeps all the time could suddenly become a whirlwind of teeth and fury.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m taking her to the vet this afternoon, once I figure out how to get her into the car without hurting her worse. I don\u2019t know what he\u2019ll be able to do to help her. She\u2019s 12 years old, I don\u2019t care how young she thinks she is. I\u2019m fairly certain that we\u2019ll be saying good-bye today. Between her injuries and her Jekyll and Hyde personality switch, I don\u2019t see that we have many options.<\/p>\n

My husband is losing his buddy, and I\u2019m feeling incredibly guilty for that. I wanted a buddy to go running with, and he seemed so perfect for us. If I had known that bringing him home would have led to this awful dogfight and her ultimate death, I\u2019d have never gone to the shelter last weekend. He\u2019d have gone home with a different family, and she\u2019d be spending her golden years chasing squirrels and laying in the sun. She may not have been\u00a0my girl, but she deserved a better end than this. I can\u2019t take it back and make it all better, and I so very much wish that I could.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"