a rock, a hard place, & a broken heart

In short, this is a bittersweet post. Let me preface what I'm about to tell you by saying that I never in a million years thought that what has happened is something I would ever do. Which has led me to know that I have always judged people in the past for doing so, but the question remains which is the lesser of two evils?

After a tremendously hard week and a lot of tears shed (we're talking break-up tears here, people), we came to the conclusion that Scout would never be fully happy with us as her parents. Our beautiful and rambunctious Scout was the alpha of her litter in an alpha-type breed, and it became hard to ignore that we were never going to be able to give her the adequate amount of exercise to ever satisfy her needs. That puppy is quite the titan and can already handle several miles of walking at 8 weeks and still have plenty of energy to go on more. The honest truth is that it wasn't going to be fair to her to live in a 650 square foot apartment and never have the opportunity of having the life she deserved: running rampant on lots of land and investigating to her heart's desire all that nature has to offer. 

To set the story straight, we would never do something that would be a disservice to Scout. Even though she was only here for a week, she's left quite a void in our hearts. But she has now happily returned to her mama and the rest of her littermates, and I pray that she finds a loving home that will give her everything she needs.

In the short time she was here, she left us with plenty of funny and sweet memories:

+ her adorable bouncing and bumbling puppy run to jump in a giant pile of leaves

+ her incredible intelligence in learning the commands of sit, stand, off, take it, and here all in the course of 10 minutes (seriously), as well as knowing her name, Scout, almost from the start

+ her sweet puppy stretches after waking up from a nap and that anteater length tongue that came out in her yawns

+ her relentless confidence in meeting any and every person or dog she came across, including a ferocious German Shepherd puppy and a very large pitt mix dog. She never got scared even though she was pawed and barked at pretty hard (if I were her that little bob of a tail would have tucked between my legs and I would have scampered off). And when I say every person, I mean every person. In the course of 9 days, she met almost 40 people 

+ the way she ran around the apartment investigating while chewing her rawhide bone (quite the multitasker, that one)

+ her tendency to sit patiently at your feet (for a few seconds, mind you) and stare up at you as if she were waiting for the next item of business
+ her consistent and obvious distaste for my Uggs, which apparently are hated more by dogs than by humans (I didn't think that was possible). I'm guessing she thought my feet were part sheep.
+ every. single. time. we came back from being outside she would stop climbing the stairs midway to look at herself in the hallway mirror. She knew she was cute. This would usually cause husmate and I to hum "You're so vain..." while she stared at herself for a few seconds
+ one night at 3 am, husmate took Scout out to go potty. He got locked out of the building... without a phone. Together they walked in the 20 degree weather to a hotel a quarter mile away to call me. Let's just say both husmate and Scout were shivering with cold from that botched mission. And did I mention Scout hated cold weather since her fur is so thin? Yeah... The little diva was NOT a happy camper when she got back inside.

As for us, I think it's safe to say that it's not in the cards for us to have a dog right now. One day in our future we'll have the ability to love and care for some little (or not so little) ball of fur, but not today. 

Scout, we love and miss you. We hope you have a long and happy life and become the great dog we know you will be.