A Little Update on Our Dogs

It's been a little over a month since Maven died. For the first few days after she passed I was second guessing my decision. Had I really tried everything? Should I have been more patient with her, or maybe looked into some classes? Draco would lay down at the door, or he'd still be a bit skiddish. Jumpy even. It wasn't until about a week after that started to change as well. But in the opposite direction than Maven. 

I guess we never saw how much Maven's behavior was really affecting our other two dogs. We had an idea, and I was always concerned about what happened when we weren't at home. Did they fight? Did Violet ever end up hurt? I hated being gone for too long because I was afraid of what could happen. Now, with Maven gone those worries were gone too. And with that, I started to see the changes in both Violet, and Draco a lot more clearly. Draco started to become more playful, and he was running around the way he did when he was a puppy. He didn't flinch, and he spent a lot of time playing with the little weenie dog. He was back to being a confident puppy. However, Violet decided she was going to start being the boss around here. She's become our little guard dog. She no longer darts straight to her crate like she used to do. And she's become the 6 lb dominate little pack leader. Which Draco has no issues rolling over for, and allowing her to dictate how they spend their time. 

So those two are doing well. It's helped me find peace in my decision to let Maven go. It's helped me to truly realize that we did do everything by the book. I made sure that we tried everything, and that's all that I could do. Our other two dogs are back to being happy, and my daughter isn't ever worried about going outside to play anymore because she knows that the dogs won't be fighting. That peace of mind made it very clear to me that it was the right thing to do. That even though I loved my dog so much, I couldn't allow her behavior to escalate. I couldn't allow her to hurt the other dogs anymore. But most importantly I couldn't allow the risk of her accidentally, or even purposefully hurting Emery. My child, and her safety came first.