21/08/2022
This is the tragic part of rescue that owners that feel that rescues are a limitless source for giving up dogs that cannot be kept do not understand. Please read this and understand what is being said. NWAR has experienced this same situation several times. It is emotionally devastating for our rescue family. Especially the foster homes that are one on one with these dogs.
It was a sad week in rescue and we debated heavily on posting this because often times we are verbally attacked for being this transparent. Attacks aside, our integrity supersedes those that won’t be understanding.
Sadly, we had to gently send Kali over the Rainbow Bridge.
Kali was an owner surrender to us from a family who could no longer care for her. When we first met Kali, we debated taking her into rescue. She was aggressive and showed she was extremely uncomfortable with getting in our transport person's vehicle. The owner had to put her in the vehicle in order to maintain our volunteer's safety. Thankfully our volunteer was able to safely offload Kali and bring her to her experienced foster home.
Why did we take Kali if she showed all of this concerning behavior? Aside from her owner traveling a good distance, Kali's aggression could have meant a lot of things, including hypothyroidism, which often goes undiagnosed. So we took a chance and held on to Kali for 7+ months while her foster home worked with her. Kali did have hypothyroidism, and we did see positive results with Thyroxine therapy. It required some tinkering as initially she went from hypo to HYPERthyroidism. Finally, we got Kali to a good level and we decided to trial her into an alternative foster home. This was a test to see how Kali would do if she left the comfort of her current foster's house.
Upon meeting her new foster, Kali again displayed aggressive behavior and at that point, we knew a decision had to be made. How could we give her to anyone else if she wasn't safe to handle?
Rescues are not built to absorb every dog that needs help, especially in cases like Kali, where she wasn’t considered safe.
We (and our vet) have been called murderers and we have been verbally attacked for
making these calls. Until you have lived in a home with a dangerous dog, please reserve your judgement. We care about our fosters deeply and these decisions are not made thoughtlessly.
Sadly, we simply *cannot* save them all.
We have foster dogs with us who initially showed they could not be trusted, but we worked with them and they proved themselves able to safely live in rescue for the remainder of their days. Those dogs will get a chance with us.
It is not fair to all the good Akitas being euthanized over shelter space. One dangerous dog taking up space and resources could mean a missed chance for 2, 3, or 20 other Akitas (depending on how long the dog is in our care) in shelters who CAN find their happy ending. Akitas in need are at record high numbers and we are getting several calls for help DAILY.
Ask yourself, if you were in a situation where you had to give up your perfectly healthy and sweet Akita, how would you feel if your dog never was rescued because all the rescues were full? Because an Akita who cannot be rehomed was permanently living at the rescue, taking up a foster space and resources? It doesn't make any sense to lose so many other sweet, friendly, rehomable dogs because we are pouring so much into one who will never leave and reopen a spot.
The safety of our other foster dogs, our volunteers, and adopters will always be our number one priority and we ask the public to look at this objectively; not with emotion.
It's a war out there, and we have to treat this as triage. Make the hard calls. Take the dogs we know we can help and safely rehome, making way for another to be saved.
We are so sorry Kali. We hope you are at peace and running with all those who have left us over the years.
Any negative comments will not be responded to, deleted, and, if nasty enough, we will ban people. We have a zero tolerance policy for hateful or spiteful comments. Tears are shed when these calls are made, and we ask you to please keep that in mind when we make posts like this, it is NEVER an easy decision, and we are ALWAYS by their side, holding them, in the end.
