Honestly, I'm not even sure how to compose this post. Last Friday night, a week ago today, we said a final goodbye to our sweet dog, Emma. This whole blog started out as a silly dairy of sorts all about Emma. It's so heartbreaking that her story ended this way.
We rescued Emma from the Savannah Humane Society in August of 2010. She was a puppy and so tiny and small. I remember going to look at the dogs at the Humane Society with the intent to adopt an older dog. We passed by Emma who was this teeny tiny thing, shrinking back in the corner of this large run. Miguel was the one who took to her first. I was hesitant because she was skittish of us and we hadn't wanted to bring a puppy home. Miguel talked me into choosing Emma - which wasn't very hard, because, hello PUPPY!
Emma ended up being a real Godsend for me in many ways. Shortly after we adopted her I went into a real funk and depression. Emma was such a healthy thing for me while I was struggling with my place in the world, my identity, and learning to be in a new stage of life. She was a great outlet for me and our little adventures together helped give me something to focus on. You just need to go back to the beginnings of this blog to see what a big part of my daily life Emma was.
The Humane Society had told us Emma was a black lab puppy, but she clearly never grew into that. She had a lot of terrier in her and liked to bark, dig, and do other terrier-like things. So some of that played into her obnoxious behavior and she always was a mess in the car. However, what I think really set her off was when our home was burglarized a few years back. Both Miguel and I were at work when it happened, and we don't know what happened to the dogs while we were gone. Emma ran away during the burglary and was later found and taken to the Humane Society. She's never been the same since that day.
Over the years Emma's behavior became more and more neurotic and unpredictable. She became more and more anxious and nervous. About two years ago she began randomly jumping up from a peaceful sleep and attacking our other dog, Jack. It was scary and unprovoked. Emma had never been aggressive towards Olivia, but I began to worry that Olivia would get caught in the crosshairs of a random attack on Jack. She would also nip at Jack when the mailman came or someone walked down the street. It got worse with time.
Alarm bells started going off in my head about Emma possibly hurting Olivia. About a year ago I reached out to various shelters and rescues and was turned down at everyone. Many actually gave me not so nice responses and told me Emma was acting out due to us having children and that becoming parents and having kids in the home wasn't a good enough reason to rehome a dog. If our situation had been as simple as wanting to rehome the dogs simply due to having kids, then that would be different. I was super discouraged and we tried other things to help control Emma's behavior including homeopathic remedies and a bark collar.
Once I became pregnant with Juliet, and Olivia became more and more mobile and active, I felt really strongly about needing to do something about Emma again. I was just so scared she'd hurt our girls. We began working with our vet and tried various medications to help Emma. I kept thinking Emma was starting to do better, but then the medications seemed to stop having an effect. We upped the dosages to their max points and still we had no positive, lasting results.
At the beginning of the year we started to actively look to rehome the dogs again. I just couldn't take the stress and constant worry that Emma may just "snap" at any given point. I posted on Facebook looking for help and received a lot of negative feedback and judgement. Shelters and rescues again wouldn't take Emma due to her history of aggression. We ended up finding a home for Jack and having him out of the house actually seemed to help with Emma! I became really hopeful that by simply removing the other dog in the family that it had given Emma some sense of peace.
But a week ago today all my fears came true. The day was wrapping up and we were waiting on Miguel to get home from work. Emma was napping on the floor and Olivia was calmly playing. Olivia passed by Emma, who was sleeping about a yard away, to take a book of the bookshelf. Emma jumped up out of nowhere and straight up bit Olivia in the face. Olivia fell backwards and hit the ground. Emma backed off almost immediately, as if she was surprised at what had just happened. I jumped up instantly. Olivia was doing a silent cry and held her hand over her eye. Pulling her hand off of her face was honestly one of the scariest moments of my life. I was so scared of what damage I was going to find. Thank the Lord that the bite missed her eye!! She hardly cut the skin too. I'm so so so grateful that Olivia wasn't more badly hurt.
I put Emma on the screened porch and called our vet. I was in tears and shaking. I was so so upset about what had happened to Olivia, but also so sad about what this meant. After speaking with our vet, he agreed that we had exhausted all our options and we knew what we probably needed to do. He actually suggested we sleep on the decision, but I couldn't bring Emma back in the house in good conscious and the thought of having Emma here knowing what was going to happen in the morning was unbearable.
Miguel got home and immediately took Emma to be put down. I have no memory of ever crying so hard. It was just so sad that this is how her story ended. I loved that dog. She annoyed me a lot and was an inconvenience, but she generally had a really sweet temperament and I felt like she had really been there for me during a hard time in my life. It may seem trivial to some that I felt so heartbroken about losing Emma, but I don't know a time where I have felt so sad. I felt like we had somehow let her down and I hated knowing what was going to happen and she had no idea. It was the worst thing ever. I sobbed - like ugly cried hard - for hours.
End of the day, Emma was broken. Something had just snapped along the way. Our girls are more important and we could never put them in harms way. We honestly probably prolonged the inevitable for too long. I will never fully forgive myself that Olivia got hurt when we had imagined this as a possibility. We keep telling Olivia that "Emma is with Jesus". It's so sad but I hope she's happy now and no longer broken and that she is chasing squirrels.
Emma Demma Do
May 2010 - February 2018
