Finding my way…To you, my little one!: Panda’s story

Several people have asked why I wrote about bringing Sophie home and not Panda. The answer is simple… Sophie’s story is easy, light and happy. Panda’s is much harder for me to talk about. I have very much tried to forget about a lot of what he had to go through in the beginning. So here I go, I will try to get through this with as little tears as possible…

I really wanted a second puppy. I used the excuse that I thought Sophie would like a playmate but really it was what I wanted. I thought how hard could a second dog be? Sophie made having a puppy look easy. (I have since learned that I just got really, really lucky with her.) I knew just what I was looking for, a black and white boy Shih Tzu that I could name Panda Bear. I again started looking at adopting a puppy from a shelter but was again denied. (???) So I went back to The Seattle Time (where we found Sophie) and started looking. I found the cutest little puppy right off the bat!

I emailed the breeder and told her I was interested. She emailed me back in a matter of minutes. She sent me a link to her website, more photos and told me that the little boy I was in love with has the runt (just like Sophie) and was the sweetest one in the litter. (Sigh) She also mentioned that he had a “very small” umbilical hernia that would just go away with age. Ok, I am a sucker for a cute puppy face so I believed her. We set up a time for me to come and get him and she emailed me directions to her house the day of. Never gave me an address and she didn’t want to give me her phone number but she did after I pushed for it. I thought that was a little odd but maybe she was just very private? (Flashing lights saying “WARNING!!!”)

---Side note! - I missed a lot of signs when I got Panda, I know that now. I am trusting person, sometime to a fault, I pride myself in always see the best in people and want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I will tell the story the way it happened (please don’t judge) and I know I may sound dumb but at the time I really believed her and trusted she was who she lead me to believe she was. ---

Soon I was driving two hours to bring home my new baby. I got to a kind of run down looking house and knocked on the door. An older man and woman answered and let me in. I remember thinking “Oh, this is a very big house and they are older so it must just be hard for them to keep up with it.” (The lights now are saying “DANGER!!”) The house was a split level and when you walk in you can either go up stairs to the main part of the house or down stairs to what looked like the garage and storage. They led me down stairs, through a long hallway to a back room. There were the puppies! They were all very shy and didn’t seem to know quite what to think of me. I found Panda right away and scooped him up. He was a little shaky in my arms but I would be a little shaky if some stranger came and grabbed me so I again just blow it off. (Lights to me -“TURN AND RUN YOU FOOL”)

Panda kissing his Mom

The breeder’s husband brought the dad in and she grabbed the mom dog and handed her to me. They both seemed on the small side to me but then the breeder said the mom was heavier that usual because she still was pretty full of milk. (Why did I miss what that meant?) She told me a few things about the puppies, handed me a zip-lock baggy of dry dog food, took my money and kind of pushed me out.

Panda was still very nervous but curled up in my lap once we were in the car.

Riding home

Once we got home we bought Sophie out to meet her new baby brother. She didn’t really care much about him, she was just glad I was home. He loved her from the very second he saw her. Once we got them inside he would just fallow her all around, trying to snuggle with her and was even trying to nurse. (Umm, Hello Abra!) She really didn’t seem to care much one way or another. He also loved to snuggle with me. If he couldn’t get to my lap he would just curl up on my feet.

Panda didn’t eat at all his first day home. When I put food in front of him, he would look at me like “what do you want me to do with that?” By the second day I was concerned. Me concerned? Shocking I know. :) He still wouldn’t eat and he was trying very hard to nurse on Sophie. I called the vet (who just so happens to be a good family friend so I had his home number) and told him what was going on. He said it sounded like Panda had never been weaned. A light bulb went off in my head. I told him that the breeder had made a comment about the mom still having milk. That confirmed his suspicions. He told me to go get some puppy formula from the pet store and a preemie baby bottle. I would have to bottle feed Panda four times a day for about two weeks until he learned to eat on his own.

Let me tell you if you thought baby formula is bad you should smell this stuff. It was nasty and expensive! It was super thick. I had to cut the top of the nipple on the bottle to get the sand like milk to come out. But my baby was eating and that’s all I cared about.

How cute is that?

After a while Panda adjusted to life at our home. He was (and still is) scared of new things. It seemed like he was experiencing everything for the first time. After a while I figured out that he must have had very little interaction with humans. Sadly what he had known was hate and abuse. How sad is that? All you know of humans is pain and hate, then some lady comes and rips you away from your mommy (probably one of the only comforts you ever had) and takes you to this new crazy place. I still have a lot of guilt for how hard that must have been. If I would have known I don’t know what I could have done differently. He needed out and I led the way.
He started showing signs of separation anxiety soon after he was home. He was fine as long as I was with him but the second I left the room even if it was just to use the bathroom he would freak out and start barking and running around like a crazed dog. While I was at work he would eat the carpet, walls and moldings trying to get to me. Dogs really don’t understand time or space. To him if I was gone I must just be on the other side of the door. If he eats through it? Poof, there’s mommy. There are lots of things I had to try in order to fix this little, ok not so little, problem. First some new chew toys and chewies. Nope, didn’t work. Then there was the plug in calming sent releaser about $60. It did nothing! Next were dog anxiety pills, $20. Nope. Double strength pills, double price $40. Nothing again. The last hope was a low dose human anxiety pill, $40 for a month. It worked! I was so happy when I came home and there was no new damage, his toys weren’t everywhere and he seemed happy. I have since found his pills are much cheaper at Costco, $20 for 3 months worth.
When Panda was a few months old he developed a cherry eye. This happens when the muscles holding the tear duct are week and cannot hold it in place so the duct moves and becomes visible and very enlarge. I started to cry the first time I saw it. I made Panda a vet appointment for the next day. Bill, the vet… a saint, said that Panda would need surgery to repair the eye and his hernia had grown and would also need to be fixed. He also told me both problems and the separation anxiety were most likely caused by bad breeding. I was overwhelmed, heartbroken and couldn’t stop crying.

I was so mad I started looking into the breeder and finding out as much as I could about her. One tool I had was her website. I hadn’t looked at it much before then, only at Panda’s puppy pictures. I found out Panda’s liter was that dogs 3rd in a row from his mom within about a year and a half. That is almost a litter of puppies every 6 months. (Jaw in the floor.) Breeding a dog back to back is not only very dangerous for the mom but it produces week puppies. And the kicker was the dog was pregnant again…. A fourth sets of puppies, that poor dog!
I got up the courage to right a letter of complaint to the breeder. I was still thinking maybe she didn’t know what she was doing. (Ha!) I would give her one last chance to right her wrongs. I had two pages of my complaints, fact and studies on how she caused the problems. In the end of the email I said I thought she should refund me the money I gave her for Panda because I would now have to pay much more than that to fix what she had done to him. I never expected to really see anything from her but a few people had pushed me to ask.
I got her response the next morning. She said she had never had a complaint before and all of her puppies had always been healthy. She went on to say that I (and apparently veterinarians and scientist) was wrong about everything. I caused all of his problems. Oh, and the kicker? If she would have known what a bad dog owner I was she would have never “given” Panda to me in the first place. (Pure shock!)
I cannot put into words how mad I was. I was steaming! I think her response shows how guilty she really was by trying to put the blame on me no matter how farfetched it was. I wrote her an email that said I would do anything to try to give Panda a chance at a normal life that she had tried to strip away from him. Her game was up, what she was doing was illegal and unethical. I would do everything in my power to make sure she was shut down!
And that is just was I did! I started digging. I knew I would need proof, a full name, phone number and address. Thank god for the internet and that I am a scrap booker so I hold on the little things. I still had the map to her house from when I had gone and gotten Bear, the phone number she gave me was scribbled on the top. Using those I got an address. She helped me out by having a website show her own bad breeding habits.
I called animal control of Whatcom community as soon as they opened. They put me through to a woman who had been working on a case against Panda’s breeder. They had been trying to shut her down for some time but didn’t have enough to go on. I had the final pieces to their puzzle. I had her website and address, two things that helped them out a great deal. They were able to shut her down very soon after that. They even sent me a little photo of the litter of puppies the mom had right after being taken into custody. The breeder gave up all rights to her dogs and the right to own any future dogs. I was not the only one who had gotten a dog with a hernia and many her others puppies later developed cherry eyes. Further abuses were also reported which explains why Panda is so easily frightened.
After this things seemed to be on the up for my boy. We have had our dips, maybe even some valleys, but I feel like he is moving onward and upward. He had surgery to correct his hernia and cherry eye. You can’t even tell they were ever there!

He may never be the “perfect” dog, I am fine with that. He is who he is and I love him for it! I do not for a second regret getting my Baby Bear. It has been hard sometimes but I know I did what needed to be done. We are both better for it! ( I only had to wipe a few tears :)
A little more about my boy?
He loves his mommy more than anything in the world