Blogger's Block.

I've taken a few weeks off from blog-writing duties. It's been no crazier than normal around here of late-two birthdays, meetings, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Handbells, Church Council, MathCoutns, Chemistry, school, homework, doctor appointments, SNOW, SNOW, SNOW, and the loss of our dog, Max. I've been feeling zero inspiration to write anything. Not for lack of subject matter, I have plenty of that, but lack of wanting to share anecdotes with you.

It's Max that kind of tipped the scales for me. The short story is that we adopted a 3 year old Saint Bernard named Max. He came from a shelter in the Thumb and he was gorgeous. HUGE and gorgeous. Max had a secret, though, that the folks at the shelter never bothered to find out. Max, an untrained 200 pound Saint Bernard, was NOT good with small children. He was a super dog for the big people in this house, but he growled at Bryce and (the last straw) was when he lunged at Bryce's face, unprovoked, and gave him a fat lip.

To say that we were heartbroken seems so trite. Max was so cute, so fun--but not if you're 3. I tried three different Saint Bernard rescue groups to take him. I called three different no-kill shelters. No dice. I was NOT going to take him back to the shelter that didn't bother to check his background. I spent a bit of time making a few phonecalls to Max's previous owners (yes, owners PLURAL--something the shelter didn't tell us about until we arrived) and learned that Max had been shuffled around since last summer-we were home #6-and it was due to his agression towards small children and other dogs. He should've never been allowed into our home.

As I have no idea how to re-train a dog to "unlearn" agression and we weren't willing to risk having him in our home long enough to find a trainer,  I had to take poor Max to the Humane Society. It was heartwrenching. Now, lots of folks have made comments like, "You only had him 5 days." or "You have to keep Bryce safe." and while those things are true, it doesn't mean we can't be sad about knowing what will likely happen to Max at the Humane Society. We can only dream that he passed their behavior test and found a nice retired couple with no kids who live on a farm as his forever family.

Here's some photos of Max: