Hi has anybody had to go through the rehoming process and if you adopted your dog that way, were they ok? Please don't come for me as I'm already feeling horrible about this.
I've had my dog for 4 years but my situation has changed since we got her. We got her to be a family dog but I'm now a single parent to 2 disabled children and of course with CoL everything has gone up in the last couple of years. I work and get DLA but we are just scraping by. It's a struggle financially just for me and the kids, but when I look at everything the dog needs, like dog walker and daycare, food, insurance and now huge medication costs on top, I feel so frightened. I'm having to think about rehoming her but I feel terrible about it.
Adding to this over the last 2 winters my poor dog has got more and more stressed out with fireworks, but now this year it's every evening she is scared - even without noises. She associates darkness with scary noises, but won't hide in any dens I've made or be comforted by me, she just stands totally on edge, constantly panting in fear, even with music and lights on. She's now alerting and barking at every little sound during the day too, which tbh is now affecting me as she's so loud and it makes me jumpy and on edge too. She can't even sit down, just stiffens up staring at me, and I can't stay with her all night to keep her calm as I need to be caring for my dc. If I leave her to see to my dc upstairs she howls and cries, she's madly scrabbling and scratching the door of the room where she sleeps, but if I open the door she just paces from room to room shaking with fear, absolutely terrified, and the dc can't sleep for the racket she makes. I need to be upstairs close to the dc as they are also both terrified of fireworks and noises at night, but I can't take the dog up with me because she doesn't settle there either, and goes into the kids rooms, panting and staring, which they hate. We've even worked with behaviourists who can't help, she's just highly strung in her nature despite being a gun dog. So the vet is trying her on some daily medication that is meant to reduce noise sensitivity but it hasn't done much so far. Plus she needs a prescription of Xanax every time it's going to be loud, eg NYE, bonfire night. She's a big girl so needs a lot of those meds. We live close to a multi cultural city centre where there's been fireworks let off most evenings since the evenings got darker after the summer. Recently it's of course been Diwali, Halloween, and then bonfire night will span last weekend and the next. Judging off last winter it'll carry on sporadically after bonfire night til New Year's Eve and then for a while even after that. If it was just a few nights she could have the Xanax in advance and be calmer, but because it's regular but infrequent noises, she can't have the Xanax long term like that.
I can't help thinking that if she could be adopted by someone more rural she'd be so much happier. We'd all get sleep and feel calmer not having her in the house. But thinking of just abandoning her in a dog's home for however long til someone takes her is just heartbreaking. She'd be scared there and it would be noisy. But then she's scared already even with us and financially it's not sustainable if she has to keep having all these medications. I don't know what to do for the best, as either way seems like it's going to make her miserable.