Oh dear me some people.

Well it seems not everyone was in agreement with us taking Millie back to the shelter, check out the original post here.  It seems Abgurl in Alberta Canada thinks I am both cruel and insensitive.

This is what they had to say about me:

"What a shame- I just started to read your blog but because of what you have just disclosed regarding first adopting this poor animal( who clearly needed a loving family) and then chose to return it( akin to taking an item back to the store because of a flaw or such),I am extremely dismayed that someone would do this. Yes the animal certainly had medical issues and yet you did not see this when you first chose the animal??? How in the world did you miss some of the obvious ones that you speak of??? Had this been a child that you were choosing to adopt and once you got "it" home, it displayed a problem, would you have tried to return them???

What you did was cruel and insensitive and I hope to heavens that you never never have the opportunity to do this to another helpless animal that might be relying on us humans for care and love( and that it sounds like this poor animal never had in its prior life-you could have made a difference) And if my tirade makes you feel any type of remorse, good. Shame Shame on you

Abgurl in Alberta Canada"

Abgurl of course doesn't have a blog or an email address where I could privately let them know what's what, so I guess I will have to respond to her message here.

You wanted to know:  "How in the world did you miss some of the obvious ones that you speak of???"

So lets start at the head.

Cataracts:  I for one am not familiar with cataracts in either human or animal.  I don't know of anyone with them and had no personal experience with them.  Plus without my glasses on I can't see things clearly close up anyway, so it would have been the case of the blind leading the blind here!

Enamel missing on her teeth:  When you first bring an older dog home that you have no previous history about and even though they seem very good natured; I don't think it's very prudent to try and see what's going on in their mouth until you have formed some bond or trust with them?  Now that's just me, maybe you are comfortable with inspecting a dogs teeth/mouth when you first meet them?

Heart Murmur: This is not an obvious one, and only a qualified vet would be able to determine this one.

Hips/spine:  Now some of these issues are obvious to the naked eye, but some are not.  There were signs that something wasn't right, which included how she was sitting.  She infact squatted not actually sat on her bum.  We mentioned that to the shelter but it was dismissed as nothing.  

When we were at the shelter both times it was busy with lots of things going on, which not only distracted you, but the animal.  We didn't bring her home until the Monday night, so we didn't have too long with her before it was bed time.  On the Tuesday morning I was out and about with her and on Tuesday afternoon she slept a lot as she was tired.  By Wednesday when we had more time together it was very obvious there was something going on with her back end.  I had previously booked an appointment with our vet for the Friday but moved it up to that evening, as we were concerned.  It was at that appointment all these issues were pointed out to us.  At that point both ourselves and our vet who knows us very well thought it was in the dogs best interest to return it to the shelter.

"first adopting this poor animal( who clearly needed a loving family) and then chose to return it( akin to taking an item back to the store because of a flaw or such),I am extremely dismayed that someone would do this."

If the shelter had bothered to disclose these issues about the dog from the beginning, we would have never even considered taking her home.  Both my husband and I talked with the coordinator at the shelter at length about what we had gone through with our prior dog Molly.  If you care to read back through my blog history you will see what we did to make Molly's life as bearable as possible despite all the allergies she had.  At no time did we say we were willing to take on a animal with a lot of health issues, infact we said the exact opposite.

From what we knew the shelter takes their animals when they are brought into the shelter to their own vet for a check up to see if there are any problems.  It took our vet all of 15 minutes tops to figure out all these problems; so I am guessing their vet would have been able to do the same?  However I don't know that for a fact, so I can't assume that.  They however did confirm that the vet had looked at her, as they were not 100% sure that she had been spayed and they didn't want to open her up to see, so if she did go onto heat that we were to bring her back and they would spay her for us.  Our vet confirmed she felt as scar where it should be when a dog is spayed.

If we were not serious about adopting an animal and did this as a distraction to keep me amused for a few days (I know this is not what you wrote), why on earth would I have gone out and spent close to $100 on supplies for this animal, including two beds so she would have a comfy place to sleep, toys and other things?  Also why on earth would we spend $90 getting her checked out at our vets?  I don't think that is a sign of someone who is cruel or insensitive?

Again if you had bothered to read through the rest of my blog you will see we have adopted an animal from a shelter before and gave Molly a good life and she was loved dearly.

So before you go judging me Abgurl in Alberta Canada, try and at least get your facts right first.......

Thank you for all your good wishes regarding Millie..

we seem to have got through the first 24 hours relatively unscathed.  She did pee in the house on Monday night once, but since then (touching wood) we have not had any accidents.  Molly used to pee on command, just need to get Millie to understand that!!!  Went into town and she is so good in the car  I am so impressed.  Called in at some friends house and she was pretty good there as well.  I was just terrified that she may pee in the house, but she didn't.

She has really made herself at home and has decided the couch is hers:

She can be quite vocal and barked/howled up a storm at the two horses in the paddock......

The only person who is really suffering is myself.  I have been stressing so much about her not being house trained I have ended up with a severe headache.  So I need to relax and everything will fall into place.  Also my apologies for not visiting everyone's blog, I am so tired with this headache my eyes just can't focus properly.

Would you like to say hello to the newest member of our household....

Millie

We brought Millie home on Monday night, so sorry about the quality of the photos.  Millie is around 4 1/2 (we were told 6) and is a beagle. She was originally brought into the shelter last August.  One of the volunteers took her home, but her dog didn't take to Millie and so she was brought back to the shelter.

They were telling us at the shelter that beagles are often at the shelter especially in hunting season, as hunters bring the dogs up to hunt and then dump them which is just awful.

I will post more photos as the days go by in the daylight.  She is a smaller version of Molly; hopefully minus the allergies.