You’ve just lost your dog and are so sad you can’t think straight, so messed up you can’t seem to get it together to put his water bowl or toys away, You’re simply no longer yourself, you find, which is why the transgressive thought comes flittering across the brainwaves of your grief-shattered mind:
Since having a dog has made you what you most fundamentally are — this being Dog Person — how soon is too soon for you to think about getting another one?
When our young and healthy English Springer Spaniel died of neglect in boarding, my husband and I were forced to confront all parts of this complicated question. We were each so devastated by the loss that we isolated up in the country at our weekend place, not really able to stay out of bed, both too distraught to go back to town to pick up our work, our lives and soldier on.
Our four kids — all either off at college or living on their own — couldn’t really understand what bad shape Jack and I were in. Neither they nor our closest friends were at all prepared for what we then very impulsively did. On the Saturday afternoon five days after our dog died, we went to the local human society and adopted a rescue, a 14- week old border collie-greyhound mix we named Thiebaud.
What? our loved ones asked, do you get even the beginnings of how sorry you’re about to be? How could you? is what they didn’t say aloud, at least not to Jack and me. How could we? How could we not only go out and get a new dog, but go get this dog, one so unlike a purebred English Springer Spaniel he seemed to belong to a different species.
And truly, Whistler had been more than a pet to us: he’d been the lynch pin securing us in the dog-walking friendships we’d made in Washington, DC. He’d also bonded us to one another in our large and complicated blended family, in which Jack and I were each step-parent to the other’s two kids. To replace our dog so soon seemed at least insensitive to our children — you what? as one of our kids asked, And if something happened to one of us, you’d, what? be on the next adoption plane to China?
A dog should be properly mourned, our family and friends advised, and what we’d just done was callous or disrespectful of their feelings about our dog, profoundly misguided or at the very least confused… [There’s more to come as I finish this….]
Shelters have dogs of all breeds, including purebred English Springer Spaniels. These dogs sometimes end up in shelters because an English Springer Spaniel dog breeder, or someone who had English Springer Spaniel puppies sale was not able to find a home for all the dogs. These people are sometimes called “backyard” breeders. These are people who make some easy cash by breeding purebred English Springer Spaniels over and over then try to make easy cash by posting English Springer Spaniels puppies for sale in newspaper classified ads. Remember that most of these backyard English Springer Spaniel dog breeders don’t know about breeding for favorable health and temperament qualities, and they don’t know how to raise a properly socialized litter. Many of the English Springer Spaniel dog breeders wean litters from their mothers way too soon. Sometimes, a backyard English Springer Spaniels puppies breeder turns into small-time puppy mill to increase their supply so you can find English Springer Spaniel puppies for sale all the time in order for profits to grow.