I recently rescued a dog from an animal shelter. I decided that I wanted a dog for protection and for my son who has autism. When I saw the dog on the animal shelter website, I knew that he was a dog that I wanted to rescue. He had obviously had a hard life, he was covered in ticks and was malnourished. So the next day I went to the shelter and adopted him.
When I arrived there, I was in shock at just how skinny he was. He was listed as an old English bulldog and I knew that couldn’t be his breed based on his size and his having very little wrinkles on his face. When I looked into his face he definitely had some Pitbull in him. It was determined by myself and the vet that he was Pitbull mixed with American Bulldog. The dog who had no name at the shelter seemed to be very excited to be outside in the play yard but didn’t pay much attention to me. He never once barked or growled and so I thought maybe he’ll be a good dog.
When I put him in the car, he sat down like a human on the seat and seemed really happy to be leaving the shelter. It’s almost like he knew he would have a forever family. We got him home and he ran about the big yard that I have which is fenced in fully and smelled everything. He seemed very happy and within a few minutes he quickly warmed up to me, still no bark. I was highly concerned because he didn’t know us and he wasn’t responding the way many dogs do. No matter how much noise was going on here, throughout the neighborhood or even the barking dogs in the neighborhood, he paid no attention. I took him to the vet the next day and everything checked out ok, they removed all the ticks and said for me to keep feeding him 4 times a day. Though he’s very protective of me and my son, he’s still not barking at all.
He does this thing where he’ll stand length wise in front of my legs any time I feel anxious and I’m kind of wondering if he was a service dog to someone. As someone who suffers from chronic anxiety, to see the way he reacts to me when I’m in an anxious state, I have a feeling that he was trained for someone who had anxiety. I wonder if he’ll ever actually be protective of me in the event that someone is a threat to me. I’ve had him for 3 days now and with no signs of aggressiveness or barking, I’m not so sure I picked the right dog. He also seems very needy, at night he lays at my bedroom door (he’s an outside dog) and he whines.
My suggestion to anyone who’s getting a dog is to take the time and think about it. Do you really want a dog? Especially a large dog like what I have. He eats tons of food and drinks lots of water, when they are malnourished and you adopt them, prepare to be feeding 4 times a day sometimes more and prepare to be their only friend. If you’re wanting a dog to be protective of you but not be aggressive towards you, test them out at the shelter. So what you would want to do is have someone else make a sudden move toward you or pretend that they are going to attack you and see how the dog responds. I didn’t do that and now I’m left with just another animal to feed and no guarantee that he’ll protect me. So in my case, I wasn’t looking for a baby, another mouth to feed to just to be a family pet, I was looking for a working dog.
Dogs are a huge responsibility and you definitely should adopt from a shelter rather than a person. In the event that it’s not the dog you had hoped for or he/she’s too much trouble, you can return them to the shelter and pick out the dog you really want. If you take it from someone, you’ll end up with the dog and no guarantee’s and of course you can always take it to the shelter but, there’s also the risk you run that they won’t take a dog they haven’t already had before and there’s always guilt of returning a dog to either way. At this point, there’s no way that I could take him back to the shelter, I know that if he didn’t get adopted right away, they would euthanize him because they didn’t have the space.
UPDATE: We have figured out that he will bark if someone rings the doorbell, so I’m hoping any criminal who comes here rings the doorbell, lol. In the little over a week that I have had him, he’s gained 19 pounds. I take him once a week to the vet just for a weight check and we were all pleasantly surprised at his weight gain. He also decided he wants to play now and though he won’t fetch anything, he does like to play tug-o-war with his rawhide bone and a rope. A dog will be your friend for life if you feed them, pet them and play with them so make sure you have sufficient space before getting a dog because chaining a dog up means you shouldn’t have a dog and make sure that you’re going to give them plenty of attention.
Recently, I got a cat that’s an adult from a married couple who could no longer keep him. We had to drive quite a ways to pick him up and he had never been in a car before. We realized trying to bring him home that it was going to be a tough ride because he was not at all happy about being in a car. Finally about 30 minutes into the ride he started settling down. He lived in a very small apartment and was allowed to be outside roaming the parking lot any time he wanted to. He had never had any immunizations, seen a vet or been neutered. We brought him home to a house nearly 5 times bigger than the apartment he lived in and the first thing he did was run and hide behind the couch. I had known that he probably would do that because I have had cats before. We finally managed to get him out from behind the couch, I put a soft fleece blanket over an extra pillow that we have and laid it on the floor. He wanted nothing to do with the pillow and decided to sleep on our bed the entire night. The next day he laid around the entire day and decided to lay in a torn up trash bag in our closet with only his head sticking out. We left him alone assuming that he would come out eventually. Later that night he began meowing at the door and scratching at the door. He wanted to go outside just like he was used to doing and of course we couldn’t just let him out because he doesn’t know how to find his way home and we don’t have any tags for him yet or even a collar.
So the next day, we took him outside in our backyard which has a large wooden fence all the way around and we watched him carefully. At one point he ran under my legs and jumped all the way on top of the fence and was getting ready to jump over it when I grabbed him. We knew that we couldn’t just let him outside. Most of the time he just lays around or stares out the window but, sometimes he comes around being all annoying and wanting constant attention which I can’t give him constant attention because I have a toddler in the house who has autism and he needs much more attention. I would imagine that some of you will judge me and say that I shouldn’t have gotten a cat to begin with but, I really wanted my son to have a small animal that he could grow up with and maybe even help some of his autism characteristics and I have heard that cats can be very loving and gentle with kids and people who are sad.
Tonight has been the most unusual night of them all. He got up on our bed and squatted over my husbands blanket, was trembling very badly and jumped off the bed and he left behind a small wet spot that didn’t seem like urine. So now I find out that he’s “in heat” and I know male cats don’t go in heat but you know what I’m saying. So now we need to take him and get his shots and get him neutered. He’s also been jumping up on the toilet in our bathroom and jumping up on the tiny windowsill in our bathroom and falling to the floor. I’m not sure if he actually knows there’s a female cat outside or if he’s just hoping there is. Either way, I probably should have looked for a cat that’s already been neutered rather than just asking for any cat.
If you have cats, especially rescued cats you will probably understand all of these frustrations that we’re having right now adjusting to life with a new cat. If you don’t have cats but you’re considering getting one, get one that’s neutered or spayed already.
Public breastfeeding has now become widespread and now a trend has been started where women are taking pictures of them breastfeeding and posting them all over social media. Although I have no problem with breastfeeding in general, I also don’t want to see it on my news feed. I think that people who do this are trying to seek any type of attention they can get and honestly, they are exploiting their children. Allow me to explain.
When I first started seeing these pictures my initial thought was “What in the world are they doing?!” I couldn’t believe that someone would post a picture of their child feeding from their breast on social media and actually try to defend it by saying things like “It’s natural”, “All women should do this” and of course my first reaction was to say “What’s next?! Showing your baby’s poopy diaper, that’s natural and that’s what happens when the milk digests”. Now some of you may feel that I’m wrong here and I’m sure you will because I have been called an idiot and ignorant on social media.
I feel that this is exploiting children because, the women on there who are trying to prove a point do not take into consideration that pictures are on the internet forever and when that child grows up enough to be on social media, the last thing they want to see is them sucking milk from their mom’s boob. It’s embarrassing just like taking pictures of your kid using the potty for the first time or giving them a bath.
I look at it this way, I don’t want my child to see your boob flopped out any more than I want a man to whip out his penis and pee in public. That’s natural but, I don’t want to see it. There are options to not disrespect other people’s children in public and they won’t look away because they are kids and kids notice everything. When people have suggested that these women use covers or feed their kids breast milk in bottles they fire back and say “My child won’t take a bottle” or the famous one “Why don’t you put a cover over your head while you eat” first off, that doesn’t make any sense, a child should not ever be solely dependent on it’s mother’s nipple alone and I don’t suck on anyone’s boob when I eat, I eat with a spoon and a fork. I believe that both of those common reactions are excuses to “Prove a point”.
If a man cannot “be natural” and pull out his penis and pee in public, a woman should not be allowed to expose herself and flop out her boob. People are arrested for peeing in public, having sex in public or exposing their self in any way in public and I believe that flopping your boob out is also exposing yourself in public and should be punishable by law. There’s no excuse why you need to do that. It’s not natural to do that in public and it will not be accepted. I will not allow my child to see a woman’s breast at his young age. I’m not against breast feeding but, there are other ways to do it and regardless of what the mother says, I think that it needs to be enforced.
Recently, there was a story on a woman who went to a public place called Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC and she was told that she would have to go to the bathroom to breast feed her child. She became angry and went to the news with it and of course attention seeking women praised her for standing up for herself. However, she has no right to take her baby to a public kids play place and flop her boob out in front of all those children and I do feel like the company had a right to say what they said. Though she tried using the excuse that she paid for entry and that they don’t force patrons to eat in the bathroom, it’s an invalid argument. The fact is, children are extremely curious and I don’t want them staring at another woman’s boobs. Children are imitators and they do sometimes try things like that on other children when they see an adult having it done by a baby. That is not natural and I won’t stand for it.
Final Conclusion: If you refuse to cover up and you refuse to feed your child from a bottle, stay at home. I will not have to explain to my child why you have your boob exposed and I will not leave a place that I paid for because you want to cause a mess of drama.
AmplioRecorrido 