Tuesday, 3 April 2018

I am considering giving up our dog for my mental health and to better care for our newborn.


My wife gave birth 9 days ago. About us: 30's, my wife works in education and has six months of maternity leave. I telecommute a full time position as a high performer, and I'm a veteran with mild PTSD (this will come into play).Last summer we adopted a 10-month-old pit mix. She's sweet, but she's a handful. After months of training (from a pro trainer, who regularly comes over to help us work with her), we've made plenty of progress training her. She knows a ton of commands, has pretty good manners at mealtime, is crate and house trained, etc. She's still terrible at going for walks and barks at literally every person walking through the neighborhood, or whoever comes to the front door (visiting or delivery). Her barking triggers my auditory related PTSD and makes me extremely upset. I'm normally a very calm collected person, but when the dog starts barking I will sometimes yell at her at the top of my lungs. This obviously upsets my wife and doesn't make for a peaceful household. I've come to regret getting the dog, I now know that dogs are great at other people's houses and to be friends with, but I really don't think I'm cut out to be a dog owner, especially a loud barking one.Enter the baby, I'm now at the point where I feel overwhelmed, my wife feels overwhelmed, and neither of us wants to deal with the dog anymore. I don't have it in me to care for a newborn and train the dog at the same time, so the dog is being neglected. When she does require my attention to be split between her and the baby (because she's barking, or doing something she shouldn't be, etc) I find myself resenting her. I hate that I feel this way and it makes me feel like a terrible person.My wife's sister loves the dog and offered to adopt her from us if she was causing too much stress. This seems like a simple solution but I still feel like a fool for adopting a dog before knowing how I would react to one, and I have guilt from feeling like a bad dog owner. We have tried our best with this dog but I feel like it's not working out and I wish that I had not taken responsibility for her life. As first-time dog owners we also spent a ton of money on this dog (initial costs to get crate, medications, adoptions, everything probably totals $2k), so I am feeling some sunk-cost guilt as well, that we had poor stewardship over our money if we give up this dog.I did not know that her barking would trigger the PTSD response in me that it does. For anyone wondering, the baby crying loudly does not trigger the PTSD response.Help me work my way through this, please.edit: changed "vet" to "veteran" for clarity. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2Jh54vZ

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