Our Days Home Were Coming To An End

If you are not caught up on my blog at this time, GO BACK NOW! Nothing is going to make sense moving forward as I talk more about the friendships and all the messiness with our pup Balto coming back to us.

So we had Balto at our house along with our 3 other dogs, and our 2 babies. I was nervous at this point considering I was told that he bit 2 people and I had 2 brand new babies! Needless to say, we kept Balto separated from our girls. Balto spent most of his time in our finished basement where he was being kennel trained. We of course brought him out to feed him and take him outside so he could run and play. Truly we never saw ANY aggression from him whatsoever.

This was just not ideal for our family, however. We had SO MUCH going on! Our good friend and dog trainer (she trained our pup) Kate Bucci came to our rescue! She came and picked up Balto to keep him for at least a week until we could find him a foster home or a new home period. Unfortunately, this did not work out either and he ended up back with us then over to a foster home which ALSO did not work out.

Everyone said they saw the aggression and were just not comfortable keeping him. I was beyond myself. Tim and I were so stressed out at this point we didn't know what to do. The thought of having to put down one of our pups was making us absolutely sick! I ended up making 2 appointments for Euthanasia (I'm not proud of this!). But we were running out of options. Tim was doing all of his research for an aggressive dog trainer who specialized in dogs like Balto. I wasn't sold yet but I told Tim I would consider it and meet with this dog trainer.

My parents came to watch the girls and we went to meet with Ryan. He convinced us enough that he could "fix" Balto and that it was not as bad as we think. I broke down crying when he started talking about pricing. $3,000 to train Balto. I hadn't even had my other two dogs and we were going to drop 3K on a dog that wasn't ours! Then on top of that $50/day to board. As I'm standing there with tears running down my cheeks because Gracie was so close to having ANOTHER heart surgery Ryan said to me that he'd wave the boarding fee and just do a flat $3,000. He also said he would have Balto listed on their rescue so we could adopt him out quicker.

I'm such a dog lover and I couldn't say no to saving Balto's life. So we paid the 3K and we left without Balto, which was hard for my husband. For some reason, Balto was very attached to him. I must say I did feel relieved when we were leaving because I knew we did right by our pup.

By this time it was November and I knew we had to be getting to Gracie's surgery. We didn't know EXACTLY when it would be but we knew our days home were coming to an end. We made sure to enjoy the time we had. Gracie was becoming a little wild child, trying to roll over, smacking her toys in her bouncy and giggling uncontrollably at her daddy!

I was able to finally get my twins-in vs. twins-out picture which I was waiting for!! The best part was, we were at home and there were no wires attached to Gracie.

We had another appointment to check up on Gracie and at this point, nothing had changed besides her gaining weight, which we loved! I still was bringing Paisley with me for these appointments as she wasn't super mobile yet. She could roll from back to front and vice versa. If I wasn't able to bring Paisley I honestly don't know how we would have made it to EVERY appointment.

Our extended family decided not to do a Thanksgiving dinner because of covid and all of the risks so we decided to make our own dinner at home with our girls. It was special to celebrate just with our little family.

I made cornish hens because there was NO WAY I was going to be baking a turkey! We had a bunch of sides and sat down together. Our close family face timed us and we all got to see each other on thanksgiving. We sent out little pictures of the girls in their thanksgiving outfits and before we knew it, it was time for the littles to go to bed.

We use to always to Friendsgiving, and by always I mean like 2 years in a row! LOL! We also were not doing that this year which I was sad about. Friendships were a complete and utter mess, especially after the last debacle. I'd see my friend very rarely and when I did it was beyond awkward. She'd come to see the girls and leave before my husband got home. The tension could've been cut by a knife!

As for my other best friend she was virtually MIA. I didn't hear much unless I checked in. She was basically in her own world. They'd hang out together without me, which was no surprise as I had much more important things to do. It was no secret that the friendships were starting to fizzle, and if I am being completely honest I was relieved by this. I felt like I was always giving giving giving and getting very little in return.

I still had my few other very loyal, good friends who had my back every step of the way. To this day I am so grateful for them! Somedays i'd wake up to a $5 venmo or a $10 gift card to dunkin donuts from my twin momma friend. I always thanked her but I don't think she knew just how much it meant to me that in those moments she was just thinking of me and how she could make my day a little bit brighter!

By the end of November not much had changed, we had no ER visits, just normal follow ups to make sure Gracie was still stable. So this meant we'd be able to go get a Christmas tree once black Friday was over! I was so excited to take the girls for their first year, we got them super warm baby snow suits and bundled them up. Our good friend Uncle Mandrow came with us since this has been a tradition of our for a few years and we picked out the perfect tree.

My heart hurts writing this as at the time I did not know what I know now and that is that we wouldn't be spending Christmas at home as a family....

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