Blog Fodder

Despite the infrequency of my posting the last few weeks, I have not been lacking blog fodder by any stretch of the imagination. It's funny how I've come to think of the happenings in my life in terms of blogging. I've caught myself thinking up witty titles such as "Mopping With Milk" and starting the post with "And no, it's not another one of my crazy ideas like cleaning your stove with bologna." Or "My Dog Has Lost Her Mind" followed by "Do you want her?"

A sweet friend has emailed me that she is concerned that my dizziness is a result of all the stress in my life. She listed in general all the things she perceived me to have the propensity to be stressed about. I replied that I hadn't felt stressed at all until I read her email. LOL Yes, I suppose it could be stress, but God's grace has been so abundant that I haven't felt it emotionally like I normally would.

But....

Things do keep coming up that have definitely not helped my stress level one bit.

Wednesday night right before church, my sister was making her Rotel Tacos for dinner. She had Jordan go out and pour the grease from the ground beef onto Pepper's food in the garage. Shortly after this I sent Dillon out to get some music out of the van for me.

It took Dillon an awfully long time to come back in, so I sent Alia to go see what the problem was. When they came upstairs Dillon had a deer in the headlights sort of look on his face, and was holding his hand. When we asked him what had happened they said that he had fallen down. I figured he had and didn't think much of it. (I'm not one to coddle my children when they hurt themselves. I'm compassionate when the situation calls for it, but my kids are constantly getting hurt, and they've pretty much come to take it in stride.)

Right then the phone rang, and while I was answering it I heard Amy asking Alia if she had lied to me. Upon closer inspection, Amy saw that Dillon had puncture wounds on his hand. She finally got them to tell her that Pepper had bitten Dillon when he walked past her food. They didn't want to tell us because they knew we would have to get rid of her if we knew.

I'm sorry to say that this isn't the first time this has happened. We gave Pepper grace since this is pretty much her only flaw besides completely ignoring us when she gets out of her yard. She's trained, house broken, and is just a little lover girl in every other respect. She's a member of our family. But Josh said that if she ever breaks the skin, she's gone. With this in mind I worked with her as much as possible, and haven't had too much of a problem with it until recently. She's getting way too aggressive with lunging and nipping wherein in the past she's only given a warning growl.

My confusing thoughts...

When we lived in our old neighborhood we had several people come to our door and tell us that if she ever needed a new home, they wanted her. I've put free ads in the paper, but I think our only recourse would be putting her down. I don't want to take the chance of her biting anyone else. I know I can retrain her, but there is no gurarantee that she won't still be aggressive with the little ones. The kids and I are completely heartbroken about it, and I've thought about asking Josh if I can't just enroll her in professional obedience training and get help from someone on working with her on the canine possession aggression specifically. But I just don't know for sure what to do. It has always frustrated me in the past when people have given up on their pets because of their (the owners) lack of discipline in training, and I don't want to be guilty of that myself, but I also want to err on the side of caution.

I'm pretty sure you're all going to tell me just to get rid of her, but I'll ask anyway. Does anyone have any input on this situation?