A Sad, Sad Day

We recently brought home what we thought was the cutest chocolate lab with the most beautiful green eyes. We soon discovered that our sweet little Cody wasn't as sweet as a lab is supposed to be. Despite all of my best efforts to train him to not bite people and be aggressive when he got in trouble it just wasn't working. We had also noticed that is once flat ears were now standing up on his head, also not a trait of a lab. One night it all came to a head and I got on line to see if all the people that stopped to tell me how beautiful our dog was and to ask if we had a pitbull were right. Low and behold a picture of our dog came up under pitbull terrier. The picture of the yellow dog is from the Internet. Everything from the short nose, the ears, the tail, the eyes, the broader shoulders and the white patch were our dog. How could this have happened to us. After many tears and much heartache we decided that we could just not afford the liability of owning a very stubborn and hard to train pitbull that could snap and bite someones face off at any moment. This was a pretty big mistake on the part of the humane society if you ask me and they got very defensive and said we couldn't prove anything without a DNA test. Whatever! The picture speaks for itself.

So the kids said their final goodbyes and wanted pictures taken with Cody so we could remember him always. I had nightmares for days and I kept tearing up just thinking about what might become of him. He really was a sweet dog. He rarely barked. He didn't run to the door every time someone came. He was super friendly. He could be out front without a leash on. The problem was he was just getting worse with each day that passed with his biting and he really hated Ethan and would attack him even when he was unprovoked. My niece that is super good with animals didn't want to believe me, but while she was here visiting she tried her dog whisperer techniques on him and couldn't believe how defiant he was and non responsive to training. While we had him he did learn to sit and was working on staying and was sort of good with potty training but once he decided he wanted to bite someone there was absolutely no stopping him.

Lesson learned....... We will have to get an older lab from a lab rescue shelter or get a puppy from a breeder so that we are certain of the dog we are getting. We wanted a lab because of their temperament around kids and that they love to hunt and swim which is the kind of family we are. We are devastated and have to talk ourselves out of going to the shelter to pick him back up daily. We love you Cody and we will never forget you!