My family decided to foster a gorgeous 1 y/o husky mix in early October. She had a ton of behavior problems at the time, and since I've been completely free I spent almost all my time with her either training her, playing with her, taking her to the dog park, taking her on walks, or just hanging out. I formed a great bond with her which she shared as well (she would often sleep outside my room waiting for me to wake up in the morning).
As the months progressed, I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of attention my parents would give her and the lack of effort they put into attempting to form a bond with her. I repeatedly asked them to try and teach her a new trick or even reinforce old tricks but my dad viewed this as a chore, and my mom kept saying she isn't really a "dog person." Another thing that bothered me is that my parents would feed my dog vegan food (Wild Earth) as our whole family is vegan. I did some research into this brand and although I think it is technically okay for her health, meat is something that dogs really enjoy and given she only has maybe 15 years to live if she's lucky, I think she deserves to enjoy meat even if I technically don't agree with the ethics behind where it comes from.
I am going to be leaving for medical school in August, and I know our dog would have been miserable with me in a small apartment, where I would constantly be busy. As much as I would have loved to take her with me to school I knew it wouldn't have been practical, thus it was important for me to know that my parents would take good care of her.
One particular behavior that I never corrected was she would jump on my grandmother (i think playfully). My dad would tell her off from a distance to not do that but he never really put any effort into making her stop such as counter-conditioning. One day, my dog jumped on my grandmother and caused her to fall down as she was caught off guard. My dad went over to my dog and hit her while screaming "stupid dog stupid dog" multiple times. He then went to check on my grandma and once he realized she was okay, he went over and hit our dog again and continued yelling at her. We have a camera in the room that this all took place so I watched it afterwards as I was in my room and felt an extreme amount of hatred towards my dad. There is no doubt I would have hit him if I saw him do that to her. This was the moment that I decided to put our dog up for adoption through the foster organization we got her from.
Since she is such a pretty dog, the adoption coordinator called me just a couple of days later saying she thinks she has a good match. We talked about the potential family and I agreed. I went to visit them and they had another dog (our dog loves other dogs so this seemed great), a pool, and they were also super nice and seemed like they would take good care of our dog. My dad refused to come with me on these visits claiming he would "be too emotional" so I went by myself. I was happy with the visit so I decided to give her to this family and did so the very next day (this was about a week and a half ago). Since then, my dad keeps bringing up things about the family I gave her to and it's making me so worried.
For example, he saw a picture and noticed that the woman is pretty overweight while the man is in relatively good shape and said something along the lines of "that's a weird relationship I hope they are stable." He also said, "I hope they didn't lie about caring for her properly just to get the dog." More recently he said "The man in that family seems shady. I looked him up and he's been divorced twice and also has some lawsuits against him. I think he just gets married for the money." These are just some of the things he brings up after he didn't even come to meet the family. None of these thoughts even crossed my mind when I met him, but now I'm honestly worried and I don't know if I should be. Did I mess up in giving them our dog?
I miss our dog so so so much. She had the most beautiful fur (each individual strand would be multicolored, half black half white) and she shed like crazy so I keep finding myself tearing up as I find her unique strands throughout her house, on my bed, in my car. I feel as though I acted somewhat impulsively in giving her to this family, but at the time it did seem like a good fit.
I appreciate any advice - I know not much can be done at this point but I've really been in the dumps lately. For those that do, thanks so much for taking the time to read this, it turned out to be much longer than I expected.
As the months progressed, I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of attention my parents would give her and the lack of effort they put into attempting to form a bond with her. I repeatedly asked them to try and teach her a new trick or even reinforce old tricks but my dad viewed this as a chore, and my mom kept saying she isn't really a "dog person." Another thing that bothered me is that my parents would feed my dog vegan food (Wild Earth) as our whole family is vegan. I did some research into this brand and although I think it is technically okay for her health, meat is something that dogs really enjoy and given she only has maybe 15 years to live if she's lucky, I think she deserves to enjoy meat even if I technically don't agree with the ethics behind where it comes from.
I am going to be leaving for medical school in August, and I know our dog would have been miserable with me in a small apartment, where I would constantly be busy. As much as I would have loved to take her with me to school I knew it wouldn't have been practical, thus it was important for me to know that my parents would take good care of her.
One particular behavior that I never corrected was she would jump on my grandmother (i think playfully). My dad would tell her off from a distance to not do that but he never really put any effort into making her stop such as counter-conditioning. One day, my dog jumped on my grandmother and caused her to fall down as she was caught off guard. My dad went over to my dog and hit her while screaming "stupid dog stupid dog" multiple times. He then went to check on my grandma and once he realized she was okay, he went over and hit our dog again and continued yelling at her. We have a camera in the room that this all took place so I watched it afterwards as I was in my room and felt an extreme amount of hatred towards my dad. There is no doubt I would have hit him if I saw him do that to her. This was the moment that I decided to put our dog up for adoption through the foster organization we got her from.
Since she is such a pretty dog, the adoption coordinator called me just a couple of days later saying she thinks she has a good match. We talked about the potential family and I agreed. I went to visit them and they had another dog (our dog loves other dogs so this seemed great), a pool, and they were also super nice and seemed like they would take good care of our dog. My dad refused to come with me on these visits claiming he would "be too emotional" so I went by myself. I was happy with the visit so I decided to give her to this family and did so the very next day (this was about a week and a half ago). Since then, my dad keeps bringing up things about the family I gave her to and it's making me so worried.
For example, he saw a picture and noticed that the woman is pretty overweight while the man is in relatively good shape and said something along the lines of "that's a weird relationship I hope they are stable." He also said, "I hope they didn't lie about caring for her properly just to get the dog." More recently he said "The man in that family seems shady. I looked him up and he's been divorced twice and also has some lawsuits against him. I think he just gets married for the money." These are just some of the things he brings up after he didn't even come to meet the family. None of these thoughts even crossed my mind when I met him, but now I'm honestly worried and I don't know if I should be. Did I mess up in giving them our dog?
I miss our dog so so so much. She had the most beautiful fur (each individual strand would be multicolored, half black half white) and she shed like crazy so I keep finding myself tearing up as I find her unique strands throughout her house, on my bed, in my car. I feel as though I acted somewhat impulsively in giving her to this family, but at the time it did seem like a good fit.
I appreciate any advice - I know not much can be done at this point but I've really been in the dumps lately. For those that do, thanks so much for taking the time to read this, it turned out to be much longer than I expected.