Well, our mission to Germany continues apace. We’ve spent a lot of borrowed money on getting our fixer-upper house ready for sale, and it’ll go to auction in late March. As always, I’m very aware of our privilege in being able to access finance for this, and that we have a mortgage at all. We’ve been lucky in life.
Nothing in life is perfect, though, and we’ve hit a real big bump.
Yesterday I posted this message to Threads.
We’ve hit a roadblock in our move to Germany – staffies of any sort are banned in Germany, so our beautiful little storgi (staffy x corgi) Hanky can’t come with us. We don’t want to separate him and our dachshund Dolly, as they absolutely live for each other, so now we’ll have to go without them. Hoping family in Tassie or Brisbane will take them, but damn it’s sad.
I was venting, lamenting the sorts of things that get in the way of dreams, etc. I received a lot of kind and lovely well-wishes, but social media is a colourful place. In retrospect, I should’ve seen the other side of the blade coming into view.
“You don’t deserve those dogs and they 100% don’t deserve you.”
This next guy in particular is a real piece of work. A look at his profile shows he clearly lives for dunking on people. That said, I suppose I’m doing a version of that here, aren’t I.
“Your goals can’t wait, right?” – let’s not pretend this was asked in good faith.
“So irresponsible”.
“Not everybody is decent and caring of others. Those pups will be devastated, but out of sight out of mind, I guess.”
“Look, you feel guilty, we get it. You should. You’re abandoning family, and those pups won’t understand why they’re being abandoned. Every day of their lives, you’ve been the only thing that mattered. Now you’re tossing them aside for a “goal.” That goal obviously matters more than your obligations to your pups. I’m waiting until mine are gone before moving to Lisbon, and that’s just because I don’t want to risk them in the cargo hold.”
That’s terrific mate, good on you. Lovely intentions. Your life circumstances and timing are different to mine, clearly, but why let that detail come into the picture? Presumably there’s nothing that could ever justify leaving my pooches behind. (I wonder if he does have any exceptions to that, actually…)
Alas, I took the bait, from all of them, and added a cranky follow-up reply to my own original post.
Lotta shamers diving in here. Eesh. We have two young children and timing matters. We were in the process of spending the $10,000(!!) to take the dogs with us, but we didn’t expect one of them to be banned. We don’t want to separate them, so we’re in the process of finding a loving home they can be happy in together. Y’all can feel how you like about that, but kindly shove your judgement up your arse. The dogs will miss us, we’ll miss them, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be happy. Piss off.
And that’s about all I have to say on that, I guess. We absolutely love our dogs, but in the minds of these people, that can’t possibly be true. If it were true, how could we dare leave them behind?
People leave things behind. People get left behind. That’s life. Now, the argument against doing that to dogs is understandable: dogs can’t understand. They can’t know it’s goodbye and they can’t say goodbye. They can’t know if it’s forever or a few days. That does eat at me, but for these people it should not only eat at me – it should also preclude me going through with this adventure.
Sorry, but no. It’s a valid perspective, I don’t begrudge you that view. Sure, I begrudge you being unable to shame me for my decision, but I also understand that when you feel strongly about something, it’s difficult to keep your disappointment to yourself. We all go through that emotional battle.
But, like I said, things get left behind and sometimes it’s not fair. It’s truly not fair for our dogs. But we’re doing what we can to mitigate their suffering while also ensuring that our young children are able to have this adventure at the right time in their development – when they’re best able to learn the language, best able to resume their primary education with minimal disruption. My son has aggressive ADHD; delaying the trip to his teen years would make the challenges far, far greater. He’ll soon be far less able to absorb the lessons. This is just simple brain chemistry, it’s not a mere guess on my part.
We won’t leave until we find them a good home, and I’m confident we will. I know our family circle, I know our social circle – that gives me a confidence that social media critics can’t guess at, but boy are they happy to! Shoot first, ask questions later, right? Sigh. Well, I’m sure I’ve done that plenty of times too. It’s human nature.
We could just put an ad up on Facebook and dump them with the first family that puts their hand up. We could let them be separated. I imagine a lot of people do that. (I presume a lot of people do that.) We won’t. We’ll keep them together, we’ll make sure it’s a family we can trust. And I’m saying right here that we won’t leave until that’s done.
Is it possible that we’ll get duped? Sure. It’s possible the ground will open up beneath us all tomorrow. I don’t deal in those sorts of odds, especially not when making life plans.
Interestingly, with further conversation, that fella came to appreciate a little more about our plan.
That’s not my goal. My goal is I don’t want them traumatized. Any vet will tell you that when a dog is brought in for euthanasia, they’re frantically looking around for their human. They feel very deeply.But your post didn’t say you WILL find them a good home. Just that you HOPE you find them a good home. If you’re saying now you WILL find them a good home, than I think that’s great for both you and the dogs.You’re arguing with someone who cares more about animals than people, anyway, so….
“I never read you writing that you wouldn’t leave until you found them homes. You don’t really expect others to first go through every single response before responding to one specific post of interest.
“So to the shaming part: I wasn’t trying to shame you. I was expressing my disgust at what read like abandonment. You certainly don’t think its inappropriate to express disgust under those conditions, do you? But you’ve said you’re not. I believe you. And so yes, I will move on.”
I’m pissed that he leapt straight to presuming an awful lot about me as a person, but I’m glad we got where we did. And, frankly, I respect his passion.
Hey, let’s end on a positive note.
“We adopted a bonded adult pair just over a year ago (about 6yrs old – their family moved) – best decision ever. I hope your two have the same happy experience.”
Love this. It can be done, folks. In an imperfect world, a near-perfect outcome is still possible.