The Warren Family: January 15, 2012

Jake hasn't been able to shake the congestion and cough symptoms that he's been hanging onto for over a month so we took him back to see a PA at his pediatrician's office in early January. Miss Allie was quite impressed with Jake and his manners and told him that he was a pleasure and that she thought he should teach a class on good manners for all of their patients. Trip and I were so very proud of him!!!

Jake is beginning to ask a lot of very thoughtful questions about God. Trip was bringing Jake home from school one afternoon recently and Jake was very quite for awhile and just looking out the window before he said... "Daddy, is God the sky?". After a brief discussion he then asked... "Daddy, what is God made of?" to which Trip replied ... "Love". These questions have made it clear that we need to find a church home for our family now that we have officially settled into our new house. If he's ready to learn and he's interested then we need to give him every opportunity to learn about the love and the grace of our Lord.

As you know, we promised Jake a dog when we got a house and a yard and as luck would have it a photo of an adorable one showed up on our community board at work with a note saying that she had been rescued and now needed a good home. I stopped and looked at that sweet face over and over for a couple of days and then I brought a copy home to show Trip. We talked and decided to find out more about her and to make arrangements to meet her in person. We discovered that her name was Daisy and that she was a Great Pyrenees mix. She had been found along a hiking trail with a broken leg and severe malnourishment. She was very lucky to be found and rescued by Miss Anne who took great care of her for several months while she was nursed back to health but Miss Anne didn't feel like she could keep her so she was looking for a family to adopt Daisy. We had a very nice visit with Miss Anne and Daisy and decided to give her a home. Jake was over the moon with excitement and could hardly wait a whole week to bring her home.

Unfortunately our adoption was short lived because just ten days after bringing Daisy home with us we determined that we were going to have to give her back to Miss Anne. Daisy is a great dog and will make someone a wonderful companion but it will most likely need to be someone without small children. She seemed to like Jake but the herding tendencies of the Great Pyrenees part of her were too prevalent to work well with a little boy. We quickly discovered a notable concern. Daisy began nipping at Jake constantly and 'herding" him to the point that she wouldn't let him stand up or move from room to room without our intervention. The nipping had us pretty concerned because she was only doing it to Jake and the frequency seemed to be increasing instead of decreasing.

Trip called a dog trainer who said that Daisy thought she was in charge of Jake and that she was nipping at him to change his behavior or movements because that was part of the herding instinct. She told us that if Jake were older and bigger (10-12) that she would be able to do private training to establish Jake as a leader but that since he is so little that it would be virtually impossible to stop this behavior because dogs with this personality won't accept "little people" as their pack leader. The trainer also cautioned us that while she sincerely believed that Daisy was not trying to hurt Jake that she could still accidentally hurt him trying to do what she believes to be her job.

This threw all of us for quite a loop because we went into this planning to be Daisy's forever home and then found ourselves afraid to let her play with or be alone with Jake. The final decision didn't come until one night when Daisy was resting/dozing near us while we were all playing a board game in the floor of the family room. Jake decided to go get some yogurt and when he stood up and started to walk around Daisy it must have startled her even though he didn't touch her and she jumped up grabbed him by the right shoulder and threw him to the ground and might have done more if we hadn't jumped up and separated the two of them. This one wasn't just a nip... she chomped down on him pretty good and left a bite mark and some bruising.

It is with great regret that we have come to the sad conclusion that we aren't going to be able to be Daisy's forever home. She is a beautiful dog but sadly we can't take the risk that she might inadvertently cause Jake serious injury so we have made arrangements to place her back in Miss Anne's loving care. We're really dreading next weekend when we will be returning her and aren't sure that Jake fully understands yet but we feel like we've made the best possible decision given the situation.