Farewell Otis

Yesterday we had to give up Otis. It wasn’t an easy decision but he was getting a little aggresive when the kids would be playing. He would nip at the kids which would scare them. Then, on Saturday, we were at my parents house and Otis took on Callie, my parent’s dog. The big concern is what if it had been one of the kids or one of the kids had been nearby. Since the shelter’s close early on Saturday’s we had to keep him until 9am Monday morning. Of course, for those two days he was a really good dog.

Our biggest worry was that if we took Otis in to the shelter that they would put him to sleep. We felt that he didn’t need to be put to sleep but needed a family with older kids that could play with him when he wanted to play.

Well, I took him to the shelter in Spanish Fork and filled out the paper work and paid the money to impound Otis (I hate using the word impound). They have a policy at the shelter that you have to do all the paperwork before you bring in the dog. So after I filled out the paperwork I went and got Otis out of the car. I took him inside and they started to take a look at him. Then, one of the workers said that they think they may have a family for him. She brought out a guy and his granddaughter and told them about Otis. I sat there with them as they looked at Otis. They talked it over and decided that they wanted to adopt him.

It turns out the family has older kids looking for a mellow dog that would play with them occasionally. Exactly the type of family we thought would be perfect for Otis. The ladies at the shelter said that if the family wanted him then we could make the exchange and they would ignore all the paperwork and fees. So, since the family wanted him they gave me back the impound fee and said “Merry Christmas”.

It was really hard to give Otis up. We were amazed how attached we had become to the dog. However, the safety of our kids was more important. I was glad that as I was leaving the shelter that Otis was on his way to his new home instead heading to what could have been a early end to his life.

People keep giving us ideas for our next pet but for now we are going to go without a pet. We are glad Christmas is a couple days a way to help overshadow the loss of the dog for the kids. Andrew kept saying yesterday that he wanted to play with Otis a little longer before I took him to the shelter. Also after I got home Andrew asked me if we would get Otis back when he was older like when he was 6. I told him no and he started to cry a little bit. It was sad. However, with how everything worked out so well we feel we made the right decision.