About Tova

Hello, I want to apologize in advance for the long post but this is in no way a short story and I very much appreciate your time. I have a female spayed GSD, Tova, she is 4 years old as of March 22'. I adopted her as a 10 week old puppy from Craigslist in 2018 with no papers and have loved and cherished her ever since. She is my baby. I met my now husband shortly after and we became a little family! He is military so we moved to MO from TX. We noticed some stomach issues, she has chronic gastroenteritis. We're not sure what causes it but it seems to be stress induced or any new introductions to foods, as she isn't the type to eat toys, socks, sticks, ect. She has been hospitalized about 3 times due to that so we have her on a pancreatic enzyme. When she does have a bout of gastroenteritis she is usually having bloody stool or bloody vomit and is generally lethargic and just pretty sick. We get her in to the vet for emergency fluids, antibiotics and an anti inflammatory that coats her intestines to help them heal quickly, put her on a bland chicken and rice diet for about a week and slowly reintroduce her dry food. That does the trick. We also noticed that she didn't particularly like my niece (7 at the time) and would nip at her from time to time. It was never any more than that, just what seemed to be a hearding nip if she was being too loud or running around a lot. My niece isn't very respectful to dogs but that's another conversation�'�| We then had a baby in November 2020. This is where it gets more complicated. Tova has always been a pretty anxious dog and is protective of me around new people but she has acclimated pretty well to changes. When my child was 4 months old, she screamed (assuming due to gas) and Tova went up to her and nipped her in the face. No blood was drawn and the baby was fine. After this we decided to separate the dogs from the baby just to prevent any further problems and of course to keep everyone safe. We were scared at this point and were trying to figure out a way to make it work. We met with our vet and a dog behaviorist in KC to figure out a safe way to acclimate Tova to her new surroundings. We tried to meet with a trainer but she refused after hearing the story and suggested rehoming.. We didn't want to do that if we could avoid it. We started with desensitization training and everything seemed to be okay. My child was then starting to crawl. We would only let them interact with extremely close supervision as the behaviorist recommended slow and patient desensitization. She tried to nip (unsuccessfully) maybe one more time but then everything was fine, she seemed unbothered by my child. We also had friends kids over to further help the training. It was going extremely well. Cut to recently, my child is walking now, screaming, loud, and just a full on toddler. And it's been fine for the most part. But a few weeks ago she nipped at her again. No marks or blood but it scared my child, and I'm sure it didn't feel good. And a few days ago my child tried to feed her chicken over the gate and accidentally bit her, this time broke skin slightly but no bleeding. It again scared my child. I don't want to rehome her. I love her to death. But we are starting to consider having another child and we feel as though it's a huge risk if we still have Tova. I don't want anything to happen to my child or to Tova. As much as it absolutely kills me.. I am thinking she would be better off in a home with no children... No loud or unpredictable stressors. She is great with other dogs. She likes our cats and does well with them for the most part but can sometimes be too much with them and scare them off, she's never bit them or anything. Seems to like cats that are more used to being around dogs. Our cats were previously outdoor so they're a bit more skittish. This is the hardest thing in the world for me. I've been putting it off for so long but talk about a new baby means I can't avoid it any longer.. Tova has medical needs and may have stomach issues from time to time and I just want to make sure she goes to someone who can afford those potentially surprise expenses. And most importantly who will love and appreciate her as much as I do. She's the absolute sweetest dog. She loves hard. She is the best. I won't take her to a shelter because I know how anxious she gets and it could potentially cause her gastroenteritis to flare.

Johnson County
Warrensburg, Missouri