Letting Go Of My First Baby

A lot went on in our lives last week behind the scenes. That's why most of my posts were surface level or nothing special. I didn't have enough energy or emotion to really write. Writing this is hard.

We had to give away our Great Dane, Molly. 

She was our first baby, best friend, guardian, but in the past two months as Gunner has begun crawling, she has become antsier and began to show aggression toward him. She hated being touched by him and having her sleep constantly disturbed. I think some of it was fear and some of it was annoyance that she had no control over what he did. It began with small growls under her breath, but last week it reached a peak when she growled and lunged in Gunner's direction after he touched her leg. I grabbed Gunner. I cried. I hated what I knew was inevitable.

We immediately boarded her until we could decide our next move. We spoke to trainers who told us they could do their best to fix her behavior but that there was no guarantee. We weren't willing to risk a "no guarantee" situation with our son. We began the search for a new owner(s) and luckily found several interested people really quickly. 

Last Thursday, we dropped Molly off at her new home. I cried like a big baby as we picked her up at PetSmart. She licked my tears, like she always does. She threw up in the car on the way to her new home...Cody and I joked that it was her parting gift to us. The couple was perfect. He's a cop, she needs a night time companion. Their house was perfect...a 2.5 acre backyard, all of the room she could ever want. But there was that knot in my stomach knowing that never again would I see her sprawled across our bedroom floor or trying to get food off of our kitchen counter. Painful to think about that now. 

I don't feel like I'm doing any justice to describe how I feel. The ache I feel for her and how badly I just want her to return home. If you aren't a "dog person," or an "animal person," you probably think my emotion is silly, but I don't. We loved her with everything we had, invested so much time, and it seems so unfair that we don't get to keep her. 

I know it'll get better, it already has a little bit. But, it just stinks. That's okay to say here, right? That sometimes life just stinks and I wish it was different. I know I'm blessed that my biggest pain right now is the loss of a dog, I welcome that that is my biggest pain, but it still hurts. 

We love you, Molly girl. Always have. Always will.

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