BRILLIANT idea for staining. Thank you for this!!

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

I mean I get it, but there is so much more that we can do to be productive and preventative. I think understanding why people do this—a lack of empathy or compassion and/or financial desperation—and addressing that is maybe a better long term solution. People who lack compassion are often abuse survivors themselves.

In the meantime, I understand your anger and hope you are able to find a way to channel it for positive change.

I have two rescues, and they are the best dogs I have ever had. The first was likely abused before I got her; the second, badly neglected.

There is no such thing as a bad dog! Dogs need mental and physical stimulation, consistent boundaries (enforced by patience—NOT punishment!), adequate nutrition, and love, in the form of being around their pack, which includes us. That’s it. If your dog is misbehaving, one of those things is lacking: he is bored, antsy, hungry/thirsty/tired/hurting, lonely, or doesn’t understand what the rules are. They’re just like us.

My dogs know what life was like before me: locked in a dog run in a shelter, abused and dumped in the country. As a result, it is so easy to make them happy. We still have some behavioral issues, like my abused dog still fearing male strangers and being a little timid, or my other dog getting a little too confident and independent, but it isn’t anything I can’t handle with a little bit of patience.

My dogs can be walked off leash, and I think it’s because the only lives they knew without me were unhappy. My boyfriend got his dog as a pup, and he goes off on an adventure—because he doesn’t realize that life can be difficult. My dogs know when to approach and when to hold off, because they have been extensively socialized around people and other dogs, which is awesome. My dogs also learned to wait at crosswalks and NEVER to cross the street until I allow them (I yell at the street, not the dog, and “rescue” them if they try—first, I imagine them dying so I get scared, then I grab and pull them back to “safety,” and pet them while I calm down). I have only had a problem a total of once in over two years, when my deaf elderly dog caught a scent and disappeared into a creek area at night, then reappeared the next day, muddy from a swim (so, she had found water) but less than 100 yards from where she got lost (probably because she got turned around). She had found another dog owner who called the number on her tag; she wasn’t close to a street at all, since I had trained her to avoid them. She had found water and knew how to get the attention of another human, by annoying her dogs until she went to investigate. She now wears a lighted collar at night and is always on a leash, since she can’t hear me anymore. My young male dog occasionally gets too far ahead, and after I ask if he wants to go home (which is what I normally do to “punish” him for misbehavior during an otherwise fun outing), he comes running. Lol. I used to have to pretend I was leaving the dog park without him to get him to come with, but it worked (and I never got more than a couple of feet past the gate before he was crying to get out).

Dogs are way smarter than we give them credit for. The key is knowing that they want to make you happy, and giving them attention when they do what you want, ignoring them when they don’t. The only negative reinforcement should come from a correction, immediately followed by an easy task the dog knows to get back into your good graces.

Anyway I’m rambling but yeah, shelter dogs are the best and they literally saved my sanity and maybe even my life (I was super lonely and depressed) during the pandemic.