In September 2007 we decided to add a 3rd furry child to our family. Our family at that time consisted of 2 dogs (Emma – the rottie/husky mix and Izzy – the shepard/pit mix), and 2 cats (Mack and Penny). After a lot of talking, research and discussion we decided we would look for a weim. Weim’s are not a common breed in our area so we knew we would be in for a wait. On October 2 2007 my husband walked past the "for sale" board at work (we both work for the same company) and immediately called me to tell me there was a 1 year old weim on the board, he made the call and a time was set for us to go look at her.
As soon as we pulled into the driveway, we both fell in love – she was beautiful, a little on the skinny side, but beautiful. When we walked up to meet her, she immediately backed away and hid behind her then owner’s legs. I think we sat on the driveway for an hour while Misty inspected us. We got a very short history on Misty - the woman that had her was temporarily staying with her parents because she and her husband were separated, but she was going back to Iowa the next morning and couldn’t take Misty with her. We were told she was crate trained but they only crated her when they were going to be gone for more than 8 hours and never had any issues when left out, she walked very well on leash, she was registered (not important to us) and they got her to breed her. The initial introduction to our other dogs went very, very well – she didn’t seem to mind them and they didn’t seem to mind her….we made it over the first hurdle. Em & Izzy sleep together in a big crate, but we decided to let Misty sleep with us that first night to give her a chance to relax. Other than her trying to wedge between us in the middle of the night, we all managed to sleep well that night. That first evening I realized we didn’t have any vet records in the paperwork we got with Misty – not a problem, the woman’s dad worked for the same company we did, I would just call him the next day. This is when we started to realize that Misty’s story was not quite right. It took a month for us to track down a small portion of her records. The only information I could get out of the previous owner was the name of the last vet Misty saw, but at that point we would take whatever we could get. Even the vet that last saw her would not give me any information over the phone (I just wanted to know when she was due for vaccinations) without written permission from the previous owner – that took another 2 weeks. The records were finally faxed to my vet’s office, so I never saw them.
Back to the 2nd day of Misty’s new life with us, we crated her that first day alone since she was new to our home and we didn’t know how she would handle being alone right away. We came home to find her blanket shredded, her nose was extremely swollen and bloody, her paws were scrapped up and swollen also. When we took her out to go potty, she would barely move off the patio, do her business and immediately headed for the door. Emma & Izzy are used to going outside when we get home for work and running around for awhile before going in for dinner, we had to make Misty stay outside. She would just sit next to Tim’s leg, shaking. Over the next week we continued to crate her using whatever kind of crates we could find in hopes of finding one she was comfortable with – she got out of every one, literally bending metal, chewing thru heavy gauge wire (we made a big crate for Em & Iz so they could sleep together), scraping a hole thru ½ inch plywood with her nails. The decision was made to let her free roam and see how she did. We couldn’t continue to crate her knowing she was going to hurt herself everyday.
The first day of free roaming didn’t go well either. We pulled in the driveway and heard this frantic barking. As we walked to the door we thought she was going to come thru it. It sounded like a 200 lb man was running up to the door and trying to break it down. We found out that day that Misty is a counter surfer, a dumpster diver and a paper shredder! That night the non-stop, panicked pacing started. She didn’t want to be touched, the more we tried to calm her down the more frantic the pacing was. She started pottying in the house. We didn’t know what to do to help her. This all continued until early December. We were at a loss and there was no one to turn to give us ideas to try. We couldn’t find anyone in our area that knew the breed well enough to help and we could tell that "ordinary" training just wasn’t going to work with her like it did for our other dogs. We couldn’t crate her knowing she would hurt herself and we couldn’t let her continue to destroy things in our home.
My husband was heartbroken – you could see Misty had a wonderful soul, we just didn’t know how to help her – and we decided that we would need to give her up. We knew we couldn’t turn her over to our local animal shelter – they would just put her in a kennel and that would stress her out even more. We ended up doing an internet search to find a weimaraner rescue that could possible rehabilitate Misty. Needless to say, there are none in WI, but we found GLWR and Tonette. We emailed back and forth with Tonette (we wanted to know how their process worked, what would happen to Misty etc.), we even talked on the phone – we filled out all the paperwork and faxed it back to Tonette. Good news – Misty was accepted into the GLWR rehoming program. It was a huge relief to know that Misty would learn how to be a good part of a family. We waited to hear back from GLWR on transportation for Misty to the facility. Unfortunately (now fortunately for us) the transportation portion of Misty transition fell thru just before Christmas. We were both relieved and nervous.
We talked with Tonette to get some ideas how to help her and told her that we would like to give it another try with Misty before setting up transportation arrangements again. With a lot of reassurance from Tonette (and cell phone numbers, home phone numbers etc), we dove in again. We had come to the conclusion that we could not work with Misty the same way we worked with our other 2 dogs – you can see when dealing with her that she is a thinker – she seems to think everything thru before doing anything. Tim decided to take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off to see if the extra "puppy time" would help Misty’s anxiety – we were still hoping there was some way we could get her to turn the corner so she could stay with us. We were supposed to have my husband’s family (about 30 people) over Christmas day. This was not going to be a good situation for Misty and her anxiety. We made it thru Christmas – Misty did ok, a little anxious but she made it thru.
After that next week, we got a bunch of different toys (giving her 2 or 3 different ones each day) and off to work we went. Much to our surprise, nothing was destroyed in the house and she didn’t potty while we were gone. It has been a very slow process with Misty, but she is heading in the right direction. We can now touch her face, she will snuggle with us, she is learning how to be a puppy and play like a puppy, she wants to go outside and actually plays with our other dogs now. She is still dealing with anxiety, but all of us are learning what helps and what makes it worse. And we have stopped the crating until we can get the anxiety under better control. Misty is even letting her silly side show more often.
Nothing we read or researched prepared us for Misty. No book will tell you "you are doing the right thing, it’s just going to take more time" like Tonette did. We will probably never know what really happened to Misty in the first year and 4 months of her life before she came to us, but a ton of patience and unconditional love has slowly proven to Misty that she is home. We are thrilled to say that, with Tonette’s help and reassurance, Misty will be with us until her end has come. We are very thankful we found GLWR and everyone that has been so helpful.
Lori & Tim
Wisconsin
