>Goodbye, Dipper
>Some of you may remember my stories about Dipper, the lemon beagle we “inherited” when my stepdaughters moved in with us five years ago.
Dipper may have been man’s best friend, but he wasn’t mine. My limited tolerance for him stemmed from an incident a few years ago, when he tried to run past me into the house while I was sitting on the garage stairs. I grabbed him around his middle as he rushed past me and, in response, he growled and snapped at me. I managed to keep him out of the kitchen, but I’ll admit, I never really trusted him after that.
Still, he was ours, so I reconciled myself that we would take care of him until he went to run in that big kennel in the sky. We kept him fed and watered, he had our large backyard to run around in, and once Punky got old enough to play outside, she became his constant companion. Punky always referred to Dipper as one of the family. She prayed for him each night, created adventures with him out in the yard for hours each day, and has always regarded him as another sibling.
Last summer, though, the Dipper situation went awry. He escaped from our backyard and when a neighbor we didn’t know tried to drag him off the street and back to our house…
Hubs and I were, understandably, freaked. We consulted our animal expert friends and all of them assured us that the incident did not mean Dipper was dangerous. Beagles, they said, were notorious for snapping at strangers who grabbed them by their haunches. It apparently was very painful for a beagle. We looked into finding another home for Dipper, but quickly realized how difficult it is to place a dog. There are rescue organizations, but they limit their efforts to dogs that are being abused, or are already at an animal control center.
Not wanting to sentence him to the pound, we reluctantly kept him on and made extra sure that he wouldn’t get out of our yard again.
But then, a few months later, our babysitter opened our garage door while Hubs and I were on a date night. Out Dipper ran. He’s a friendly dog and quickly found two children who were playing outside. He ran with them into their garage and when the 11-year-old boy who lived there began to try and drag him back out, you can guess what happened next.
He bit the boy on his finger. It bled. I. Felt. Horrible.
We were very lucky that the boy’s parents knew us and were forgiving about what had happened, but this time, I really, really wanted Dipper gone. We made a major effort to find him another home. We couldn’t find a place for him. Our animal expert friends still assured us he was not a dangerous dog, and that the circumstances in which he bit were understandable and avoidable, but the fact was, we live in a neighborhood with lots of small children. Dipper was bound to get out occasionally. We could not take the risk of him getting out and biting someone else.
A few more months passed as we e-mailed around and tried to find a new home for Dipper. Then a few weeks ago, a friend of mine agreed to come over and babysit Punky and Bruiser for a few days while I was in San Francisco.
I had warned her about Dipper and told her how to use a Milkbone to entice him into the garage so that the kids could play in a Dipper-free backyard, but she’s an animal lover and felt comfortable with him playing outside with our kids and, truthfully, so did I. He’s not an aggressive dog, Punky knows his history of biting when grabbed and is very careful not to do the same thing, and I’ve never been the slightest bit worried about her playing in the backyard while he’s out there with her. It sounds strange, but if you could see how happy and loving he is when he’s with Punky and Bruiser, you would understand.
However.
At one point, Dipper jumped up on my friend’s five-year-old daughter. My friend tried very carefully to get him off of her, and he bit her on the stomach.
Strike three.
Dipper was out.
No one in the house argued that Dipper had to go. He had to go. We had no choice. We were incredibly lucky that the three people whom Dipper had bitten had been so nice about it. But it seemed like his biting habit was only getting worse.
Hubs tried once again to find Dipper a new home and was writing to every animal activist we knew and placing call after call to the Humane Society (which doesn’t take dogs that bite, by the way) to try and convince them to take him, but we had decided that if we couldn’t find a new home for Dipper by this past Monday, we would have to take him to the pound. We just couldn’t risk him biting another person.
Literally at the eleventh hour, we got an e-mail from a wonderful woman who lives just outside of Nashville and rescues dogs. She already had 53 dogs and her limit was 50, but she was willing to take Dipper.
After months of trying to find Dipper a home, it felt like a miracle.
I told Punky that Dipper would be moving to a farm with a bunch of other dogs, where he could run and play and make new friends, and she promptly burst into tears. It was the first loss my little five-year-old had ever faced, and I was terribly worried about her.
Yet when it was time for Dipper to leave us, she was stoic. She gave him a few last pats and sent him off to his new home.
At the last minute, I realized that I didn’t have a single picture of Bruiser and his first dog (I’ve always limited his contact with Dipper since he’s a rough and tumble type of guy and I wasn’t sure Dipper would take well to that), so I quickly took a few shots of Bruiser saying his goodbyes.
Dipper and I may not have gotten along, but I cried when he left. This is not how it’s supposed to end when a family buys a dog, or even inherits one.
This is not how it’s supposed to go.
I hope that Dipper will be happy in his new home, and that he’ll end up with a new owner who can offer him an environment to which he’s better suited. He’s actually a good dog and he loves people, but he clearly needs space to roam, and no small children around.
Punky desperately wants a dog, and we’re planning on eventually getting a house dog, but I’m hoping to wait until Bruiser starts preschool or kindergarten. After all, I’m the one who will be taking care of the dog 90% of the time, and so, I told Hubs, I have to be the one who decides when I can handle it. Right now, I think that caring for a dog in addition to everything else will give me a nervous breakdown!
So that’s the sad story of Dipper Ferrier.
Godspeed, boy.
