Goodbye, Pony

(Written Saturday, January 29th, 2005)

It is with a great deal of sadness and no small measure of grief today that we unexpectedly announce the untimely demise of our Ponydog.

Since late last summer Pony snapped twice at children who approached her unexpectedly when she was lying down, and once at me when I was wrestling with her on the floor. Until the first incident last August, we had been completely certain that she was flawlessly trustworthy with children and adults alike, and we'd taken her into the homes of friends who had children and encouraged kids in the park to pet and play with her if they showed an interest. We told people about the breed and that Pony was tolerant and good-natured (if a bit aloof in comparison to a Retriever or a Labrador), and they should have no qualms about approaching and touching her whenever they liked. When she barked and scratched at our friend's son last summer it was an enormous shock and completely rattled our foundation of trust in her. Subsequent to that first incident, we were told by every dog expert we approached (and we approached several) and dogloving friends alike that the startle reaction we'd seen in her was completely normal, and it was entirely within the realm of regular and expected dog behaviour. That a small child in an unfamiliar environment was probably seen as another dog infringing on her territory. That the old adage "let sleeping dogs lie" was true and we were naive to think otherwise or expect the breed to be "above" such things. These testimonials aside, we thought that even this isolated snapping tic was very incorrect for the English Setter breed and as such it was troubling to us on a number of levels. However, we were repeatedly assured that it could be expected from any dog, and so we took precautions and tried to mitigate against it by warning people not to approach her without calling her name, and by keeping her on-leash in other people's homes when children were around. As time passed the few incidents began to seem like isolated circumstances that wouldn't recur.

However, since the pregnancy became more advanced (at about the 5-6 mo. mark, with its attendant decrease in physical agility and noticeable size-of-tummy changes) we noticed instances of being given the hairy eyeball and some serious stubbornness on Pony's part. We explained it to ourselves as adjustment to the new at-home stability after our time away from Canada in November and the many new environments we'd taken her through all year. In preparation for the arrival of our first child in March, before Christmas we purchased an excellent book, How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend, written by American monks in upstate NY who raise German Shepherds. We began to implement a more rigorous routine of discipline and praise so that we could best prepare Pony for another small creature arriving in her midst in a few months, and to assure ourselves that we had as much possible control over, and trust in, her at any given time. We also joined an obedience class and Pony was the star of the show, partly because she would do anything for treats. Since official obedience training involves a food-as-motivation, Pony was a very quick study and came along in her discipline exceedingly well, and was a favourite of the training instructor. Here at home we re-instituted the box kennel and she was calling it home during meals and when she'd rest in the back hallway. She had completely acculturated to the dog bed we'd bought and she wasn't stealing things off the kitchen counter anymore. In short, things were going really well, and just two nights ago we were reflecting on the year and crowing to each other about what an incredibly successful adult-dog-adoption Pony had been, and how great she was fitting in to our lives, and about how wonderful she was, and how far she'd come since she arrived in November 2003 when she was shitting all over the carpet and barking for hours non-stop every time we left the house. Despite the few – and again, what we were told were normal and to-be-expected – startle-reaction outbursts over the last eight months, overall Pony was a sweet, lovely, funny, charming, loving and gentle dog. Just last night Pony clambered up onto the couch, burrowed in between us, and buried her head in my elbow and sighed with cartoonish contentment. We loved our dog Pony and she loved us.

Very unfortunately, it turns out that Pony wasn't, in the end, a good dog. Something, and we don't know what, but something wasn't quite right in her. Unfortunately, our earlier gut suspicions about the quirks in her temperment were correct. And, sadly, as a result, today we had to have her put down.

This morning as usual I got up, fed Pony and put her out, and then sat with her on the couch while I did my morning's email before heading out to Saturday prenatal fitness classes. A few hours later Turner got up. First thing, he went to greet Pony on the couch, as always. She was awake and saw him coming, thumping her tail, as usual, at his approach. As he put his face down to greet her and was rubbing her haunches, she suddenly snapped at him without warning. Turner pulled back, and pet her a few times along the belly, reassuring her, telling her that things were okay, hello, good morning, did I startle you? She seemed calm and unperturbed, and like he's done a hundred times in the past, he bent his head down to hug her.

With no warning, our dog exploded, attacking Turner without provocation: she went at his face, tearing apart his upper and lower lips, biting out a big chunk that we later took with us to the hospital. She scratched down his chest and left a weird deep bruise, which Turner doesn't remember getting, on his arm. He said it all happened very fast, that the attack was over before he even registered what was going on. Immediately Turner stepped up to discipline Pony as per our monk book instructions, but as soon as he could taste the blood, he knew that in those few crazed seconds, Pony's fate was decided. We'd talked about this hypothetical situation a few weeks ago: she was jittery at times for no reason and could possibly hurt someone with her startle-reaction scratches. What would it take to seal Pony's fate? One more snap? Two more? But this was worse, far far worse, than any small scare we'd anticipated based on past events – this was a violent and disfiguring assault. Period. Before the dust had even started to settle, Turner already knew Pony was gone.

After a look in the mirror assured him he'd definitely need to go to the hospital for stitches, Turner called my brother (who lives three doors down) and my father for help. Ten minutes later, I arrived home from my classes into a scene of blood and shock and disbelief, my brother in the doorway to hold things together (and, I think, to catch me had I fallen over at the sight of T's face) with my father pulling up in front of the house, on his cel phone, telling the on-call Rockyview Hospital Emerg docs that we were on our way.

Turner's face needed 40 stitches by a plastic surgeon, and in the end they couldn't use the chunk of Turner's mouth we brought to the hospital on ice. The doctors project that Turner's lip will start looking relatively normal within a few months, though right now he looks like he was in a car accident, or in a serious post-football-match-bar-brawl, or – well, as though he was attacked by a vicious dog. Overall however, he looks a lot better than we anticipated, given the state of his face before we went to the hospital. But he'll be taking everything he eats for the next week or so through a straw, and he earned some serious double-take stares from people when we were out getting T3s and an ice pack at the drugstore last night. He looks bad. But the hardest part started when we had to go home and face having to get rid of Pony.

The breed standard for the English Setter is mild mannered, polite, social, excellent with strangers and children, exceedingly gentle. We chose the English Setter breed specifically for its docility and compatibility with families; this breed is known to be the "gentlemen among dogs", and it is essentially unknown to hear of one being involved in an attack on people. However, although Pony was all the things on that breed standard list, it is clear that somehow she was also the purebred lightning strike of bad luck: an unpredictable and increasingly violent and dangerous animal.

To the end, we loved our shithead dog. We are grieving her departure. But we adopted her and fed her and walked her and played with her, and we took her across the country and bought her the good treats and nuzzled her and hummed with her in the mornings and before meals, we were fair and affectionate dog owners and we were careful to train her to be the best dog she could be to share our home and lives --- and I say without melodrama that she gravely betrayed us both. This afternoon I talked to the mother of the woman here who originally put us in touch with Pony's breeder, the mother herself a breeder of golden retrievers. She suggested that Pony was reacting to my pregnancy, and that she was displaying a protective testy response. Sure, me being pregnant might have been a factor. Like I said, we saw that she was having moments of weird edginess in the last while during which we didn't bug her to participate or heel, but in general she was a better, more obedient, happier dog since we settled in at home and started the new disciplines and routines following Christmas. The pregnancy was only one factor and it alone couldn't have caused our dog to attack and take a chunk out of Turner, of all people. Turner: her favourite person in the world, the person for whom she'd dance around and moan and wail when he'd come through the door after being out a few hours, the person for whom she'd come and sit and stay, the only person with whom she'd seriously tug-of-war, the person whose leg was the humping instrument of preference, the person who fed her dinner every day and walked her every day and sang to her every day. She'd snapped at me once, a month ago, but she savagely attacked and maimed Turner. It was not an accident. It was not a startle-reflex. She was not defending me, the pregnant person - I wasn't even home. It's heartbreaking, but our dog was not right, and today she went way, way too far.

It could have been something, an incident in her puppyhood or from prior to coming to us - we don't know. It could have been that her pedigree was simply too inbred and she was the last of a bad line. Again, we don't know. The breeder's telephone number has changed, the local contact woman's number has changed, and the mother I spoke to today was mostly preoccupied during our call with repeating that Pony was legally our dog and that neither she nor her daughter could be held responsible for an individual dog's behaviour - and sure, fair enough. They didn't breed Pony and they didn't raise or train her, and are not responsible in any way for the incident. But it wasn't the call we were expecting; I was trying to contact the local woman who helped me meet Pony because she'd made me sign a document when we adopted Pony guaranteeing first right of refusal if ever we wanted to give her away or have her destroyed for our own reasons. We thought that the breeder and her contacts would be alarmed and professionally interested in the anomaly of this part of their breed line as demonstrated in this incident with Pony; further, I thought I might be obligated to notify our contact woman here of our intention to have her put down. We're not thinking about legal action or anything like that – but we were desperately trying to make sure that we'd covered all our bases and had tried all avenues to prevent the inevitable before actually taking her to be put to sleep. If the breeder had wanted to take Pony back, and – we didn't know... place her on a farm? One that didn't have any children? Or... with a hunting operation? I don't know... but if she wanted her, we would have handed Pony over to the local contact as per the agreement. However, I was told that Pony was my dog and that I could do with her what I wished.

In part, we were lucky and prepared, insomuch as we knew exactly what needed to be done, and we were in total agreement about everything. But it was still pretty fucking hard. When we got home from the Rockyview, we called the 24-hour Animal Hospital and made the appointment to have Pony put down. We packed up all her stuff and hid it from ourselves in the basement so we wouldn't have to look at it once we got back from the clinic. When I thought about what Pony would ask for if she could have a last request, the answer could only be one thing. So we sat down at the kitchen table and methodically fed her treats, one after another after another, until she couldn't eat any more. (She'd always seemed insatiable, and we'd wondered aloud many times about her theoretical capacity for treats. It turns out that on an empty stomach, she went through two whole sausages of wet Rollover, about half a bag of marrowbones, at least a dozen chew sticks, and a big handful of smaller treats before she wouldn't take any more.) Then she sat on the back porch in the slanting late-afternoon January sunshine, looking off into the next yard while we got ready to leave. I think she knew, in some way, what was coming. We were wandering through the house, upset, hugging, breaking down, moving again, mainly staying away from her. Pony knew something was up, and it was clear she knew that she was the cause.

At the clinic they were excellent: we were crying as we arrived; they rushed us to a room; the nurse took Pony's stats. We had about three minutes' alone time to say goodbye. Then the doctor came in, put a leash on our Ponydog, and quietly lead her away. We turned and left, and broke down again in the parking lot. We stood out there by the car for a long time, sobbing into each other's shoulders.

There was no question in our minds about Pony and her fate, and we're sorry it took us this long to have to face what needed to be done. Emotionally, it would have been so much easier if this had happened before we loved her, before we knew her. All those "experts" and doglovers who gave us advice and told us her reactions were normal, well - we're sorry we listened to them. We should have had her put down last August after the first incident, because things obviously escalated despite our efforts and all our love. What initially seemed like a circumstantial reaction to unfamiliar surroundings was actually the beginning of something much worse. Slowly, quietly, Pony was becoming a dangerous animal capable of drawing blood and sending a person to hospital. All the while, we thought she was getting better and better, becoming more and more "our dog", adjusting and settling in, a lovely and beautiful dog who trusted and loved us.

In another six weeks we will have an infant in our home. This could have been a serious attack on our baby child. Pony badly scared two children this year when she scratched and barked at them. Both those incidents were rattling and deeply foreboding, and never should have happened in the first place. Upon reflecting on this final and terrible attack, we are facing the reality that however unlikely, Pony was unpredictable to the point where it could have been any of you - you who so kindly took care of our dog for the weekend or the evening or while we were away on the book tours, or who welcomed us and her into your home for a visit or for the night. I can't escape the sense that by bringing our friends and families into contact with a dog we thought was sweet tempered and harmless, we inadvertantly put them in harm's way and they could have been the victim of this assault. And I am – we are – so, so sorry.

In a terrible twist of irony, we just finished the final edits to a piece that will appear next month in 2 Magazine of Toronto about the joys of owning a dog - we co-wrote the article, which is very specific and laudatory about Pony and our lives and adventures with her over the last year and more. And now, this.

We know we did the right thing, the only responsible thing to do. But we are sad for all kinds of conflicting and mixing reasons tonight. We miss our Ponydog.

RIP Ponydog, April 13, 2001 - January 29, 2005

Categories: Pony

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