People Educate your Children!

I will never understand people who mistreat animals. In the past twenty years countless dogs have come through my home. Most came from abusive or neglectful situations, and required a lot of rehabilitation and training before being able to move on to forever homes. The little girl who came to us last night is no exception. Surrendered because her owners 5 year old son would not stop abusing her, Pebbles is six pounds of nervousness. Can you blame her? After all if you had someone ten times your size kicking you on a daily basis you'd be nervous too. Imagine then that the owner allowed this behaviour to continue until this little dog finally bit her son. Then what is her reaction? Get rid of the dog! From a rescue perspective getting the dog out of that home was a blessing, from an ownership perspective, this woman needs to learn to take responsibility both for her pet and the actions of her child.

There have always been multiple pets in our home, therefore as my children were growing up it fell to me to teach them the proper way to handle animals. Teaching her son to respect and care for her pets is something this women apparently did not feel was necessary! She did not see the need to teach her son to be kind to animals. As a result we in rescue will be cleaning up his messes for years to come. I can not stress enough the importance of teaching your children to be humane to animals.

For Pebbles, the road to recovery has just begun. I am confident that she can be rehabilitated, as a matter of fact my husband is already working on her fear of men. Whenever we get a dog in that is afraid of men it falls to Todd to turn them around. He has an aura about him that animals trust. He makes it easy for them to learn that not all men will be abusive to them.

When I brought Pebbles into my home after her rescue, she was terrified. She sat in my lap shaking, but the pack soon brought her out of her shell. She is now roaming my house along with the rest of the dogs although she does seem to be wary of Nakita my husky/lab mix. I suppose if I only weighed six pounds Nakita would intimidate me too! Pebbles is a sweet little dog who just wants a lap to curl up in. She doesn't ask for much, just that someone love her enough to protect her from nasty little boys with flying feet. There are no little boys here and that suits Pebbles just fine.

All I can tell you all now is this:

It is YOUR responsibility to teach your children right from wrong. No matter how young a child may be they should NEVER be allowed to be aggressive with the family pet.