Comment on Loving a reactive dog means grieving the dog you thought you would have by Kirsty.

Thank you for posting this story. I needed to read this today, we rehomed our 11 month old Cavapoo a month ago due to him being reactive around children. He would bark & lunge if they ran past him or try and snap at them if they were in the house. We have 3 children and he utterly trusted them (although was hard work round my youngest), but we got to the point where he obviously couldn’t cope with children he didn’t know coming into the house. So we found it incredibly stressful letting our children have their friends round, or taking him out on family day trips to parks. We couldn’t leave him with any of our friends to look after if we went out for a day trip or away for a night and the situation was getting worse. The stress & anxiety of it got the better of us & we rehomed him to a much calmer home which is better suited to his needs. However, the utter guilt of making this decision, and feeling like I have failed my kids and him is so immense. I’m grieving the loss of what I thought our family life with a dog would be like & the toll of the anxiety over the last few months is really hard. I would love to have another dog one day but I feel like this experience has scarred us all and the thought of ever having to rehome a dog again is heartbreaking and something I’m not sure I would ever want to risk.