Let's Talk about the Dog, Part 2

The very first picture I ever took of Cat in 2008.

    As much as Cat seemed to want to go home with me, she seemed to hate me the minute we walked into my apartment door.  She parked herself in the corner of a room and wouldn't look at me.  She wouldn't eat, wouldn't pee, and her little tail was as straight as a stick.  I was so upset, thinking I had made a huge mistake and I had no idea what to do.

     This went on all weekend.  I was never so glad to see Monday come in all my life!  I carefully caged her and went to work.  When I came home, she had messed all over the crate and pushed it out through the bars.  I took her out so many times, but no matter what I did, she wouldn't pee until I stuck her back in the crate when I went to work.

     Finally, a friend of mine suggested that I baby gate her in the kitchen, and see if she would cooperate better that way.  We went to Walmart and picked up a gate and she helped me set it up the next morning before work.  We put Cat in the kitchen, bid her farewell, and started down the stairs, only to hear a loud thump.  We went back to the apartment to find Cat waiting by the door, having jumped the baby gate.

    We eventually got a 4 foot tall piece of particle board and hooked it into the kitchen doorway to keep her enclosed.  Even then, she tried her hardest to dig through the board or floor with her nails, but eventually figured out that she was not going to be successful.

       Every evening when I got home, she would resume her position in the corner.  We weren't bonding at all.  It seemed like it was just going to be a matter of who was going to break first, because we were a bad combination.

     At the same time, I was making a huge mistake without knowing it.  The friend that had helped me with the baby gate had only ever had large dogs.  When I got Cat, she bought me this cute little collar that just happened to be a choke collar.  Neither one of us realized how sensitive the eyes of a pug are, making a choke collar a huge mistake.  I was walking Cat daily on this collar and she was pulling on it, sometime quite hard.

     One day I came home from work and went to let her out of the kitchen.  She lunged at me and tried to bite me.  I wasn't hurt, but was shaken because I hadn't seen this side of her before.  By the end of the evening I noticed a red spot in her eye, and the next morning both eyes were completely red.  I called the vet and made an appointment for after work.

     This woman looked at her and diagnosed her with separation anxiety and told me I obviously wasn't fit to have a dog.  She then advised me to return Cat before I "killed her."  I left the office crying and feeling like a total failure.  I attempted to contact the place where I had gotten Cat.  I got no answer, so I just drove there.

     I sat in the car outside for awhile and just cried, believing the vet was right and dreading giving Cat up.  I called my friend and let her a message telling her that Cat was leaving and headed inside.   As I went to put Cat in her pen, her little paws dug into my shoulders and she clearly didn't want me to put her down.  I took that as a sign that I needed to give this another try, and took her back home.

     That was the turning point in our relationship.  We bonded that night, and didn't look back.  It turned out that her eye issues were from the choke collar, and we both finally trusted each other.  Also, I never let that horrible vet lay a hand on her again.