Just another brain dump….Our dogs just feel like they played such a big part in our life together. I had [BABY] but we didn’t have children together. But we had the pups and they’ve all been wonderful spunky little things.
[L] bought a dog right shortly before he moved in with me. A beautiful little Border Collie Australian shepherd puppy. He named her [BEAUTY]. We had so much fun on the trip out to get her. We drove over an hour and talked the entire way, It was a very happy and exciting trip. We got lost with no cell signal on the way to this little farm to pick her up. It was sooo much fun. We truly had a blast.
He had to work that night and was going to leave her up at his house in a crate while he was working. She was so little and sweet and snuggly there was no way I wanted her to be alone on her first night away from her mama and littermates. So I, of course, insisted she just stay the night with me. He agreed. and I think she (maybe) spent the night at his house a total of two? times before he moved in officially. She was such a sweet but very very energetic little pup.
[L] had been working late nights. He had started to get very angry when he was woken up. He knew I had a child, and now we had a puppy, and he knew what he was getting into working at a bar until 3am most nights (after cleaning). He wanted to be able to sleep until 2-3 pm without interruption and he started to get downright nasty whenever he was woken up. Rude and hurtful…..
One morning about 11 am I went in to take [L] breakfast. We had fought the night before I was trying to be sweet and make up. When I went in I had my hands full so I didn’t close the door behind me so shortly after I went in both the puppy and my son came running in. They jumped up on the bed, he was grumpy and frustrated but trying to hold it together because I was being nice by waking him up with breakfast. [BEAUTY] was being extra wild. She was 9 months old and a herding dog, of course she had a lot of energy!! So, he yelled at her to get off the bed, she didn’t, so I ordered “[BEAUTY] off!” and he kicked/shoved her with his foot.
Her leg got caught between the foot board and the mattress. It was the most horrible sound I had ever heard, she “screamed” I don’t know how else to explain the noise. We rushed her to the vet, on a weekend, and her femur was broken all the way up by her hip joint. I don’t believe his intention was to hurt the dog, just push her off the bed because she wasn’t listening (the true significance of this comes later). There was no way to cast it, she needed surgery to pin in back together. She had emergency surgery the next day. $1600. I loved that dog, my dad offered to help us with the deposit on the surgery. She healed and was doing well.
A few months after she was all healed up from her surgery she was back to her energetic self. She was almost impossible to contain, she climbed our chain link fence like a ladder and would simply hop the fence next door to go play with their two dogs. We would call or whistle and she would hop the fence and come back home. We had to monitor her time outside so she didn’t get bored and wander off but we could see her in the neighbors yard from the window, and they didn’t mind her coming to visit their dogs at all. One day I heard that horrible “screaming” noise again, I instantly knew what it was. I went running into the bedroom, woke [L] up and went running outside. [BEAUTY] had been outside without me knowing and had been hit by a car. She didn’t make it. I was holding her crying by the time he finally made it outside…. Her gums were completely white. She kept licking me. There was a little bit of blood but clearly she was fading fast….. I agreed with animal control that she wouldn’t make it and needed to be put down. She wouldn’t have survived long enough for emergency surgery. I loaded her up in the back of the animal control car and that was the last time I saw her. We had her cremated.
From then on I assumed [BABY] had let her out when I was in the kitchen I was racked with guilt. How could I have missed it? How didn’t I notice she wasn’t under my feet? towards the end of our relationship, once [L] started to resent [BABY] he would blame him a 3 year old at the time for her death. He would use it as one of the horrible things he said about my child, which he often did once I cut off contact between the two of them. (I’ll write a seperate post about that later. )
Some time after we got our next dog [TWEEDLE-DEE] we had a conversation one day about [BEAUTY] how well they would have gotten along, how they were opposites in so many ways. We brought up the broken leg and how horrible it was, how I had finally finished paying that off. He never paid any money towards that surgery. He made a comment that still gives me goosebumps. It was before he had ever hit me but looking back it was one of the scaries red-flags, and I didn’t miss it when it happened, I just was too dumbfounded to respond. He said it was my fault [BEAUTY] had broken her leg right? that I had pushed her and that’s why I was so adamant on the surgery and why I freaked out so much, because I felt guilty? he stated it all as a question but like he was telling me he knew…..
I was sooooo horror struck. I just said no, I just loved her and couldn’t imagine putting her down over something like a broken leg…..but I was soooo confused. I remember what he had done pushing her before she fell and her leg got caught. I just hadn’t ever said anything; because obviously he must feel guilty and that was never his intention to actually hurt her, I was sure. No point in placing blame on a horrible accident…… but months and months later he had twisted this on me, and tried to say I was the reason for the broken leg….. He was actively twisting this story to blame me….. Stating it as a fact. Like somehow I would have just forgotten or wouldn’t be brave enough to call him out (which I wasn’t) but I certainly wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t do. It was scary, It really made me start to question things more, the lies he told that I didn’t have energy to argue with. But this too of course I quickly put out of my head and moved on, but it was one of those defining moments that often creeps back in later.
Years went by, right before [L] went to jail for the last time, we were having a very open conversation because he was sober, he was in therapy, he was working through things….. and we were talking about all of the horrible things he had said about [BABY] in the past. We talked about his resentment and where it came from and we were having a truly good honest conversation and finally, after years of me feeling guilty, he admitted to me he was the one that had let [BEAUTY] out that morning and then gone back to bed. She was bugging him while he was trying to sleep. All of those times he blamed [BABY] he knew it wasn’t even true. It was just a way to hurt me.
[NAME REDACTED] 