Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I have to post it somewhere.
About a week ago we picked up a little puppy from the SPCA. They said he's a whippet cross short-haired pointer, but I don't really see either of those breeds in him. Don't care, he's adorable. Decided to call him Pippin.
We already have a rescue greyhound, Pete and they can be touchy at the best of times, so we just fostered initially, with a plan to fully adopt if things went well.
Meet and greet was pointless IMHO. The shelter is 3 hours away, so poor Pete had a 3 hour drive before finding himself in a noisy dog shelter with a 3 month old puppy. He was so stressed that I don't think he even really registered the puppy was there. Anyway, the point is apparently just to make sure they aren't going to attack the other dog on sight, so we were given the green light to take the puppy home.
The drive back was uneventful. Pippin puked on me twice, poor thing. Obviously never been in a car before. Pete just seemed to be happy we weren't in the shelter anymore. Had a few pee stops along the way, where we let them interact on leash a bit more. Pete was fine. Gave him a sniff, and then pretty much ignored him.
We did our best over the next week to do all the things you're meant to do. We both work from home, so they were never alone unsupervised. We watched Pete for signs of stress, and separated them when he'd had enough. We also had a section of the bedroom where Pete sleeps cordoned off, so the puppy couldn't get in there, but Pete could. We started crate training the puppy, and fed him in there away from Pete. We went on 1:1 walks with Pete, and kept him as closely as we could to his normal routine. We did our best to prevent Pippin playing with high value toys. We did everything we could think of, and everything suggested online.
Things seemed to be going ok initially. When they were outside, the greyhound was fine with him. When we were inside though, it was a different story. It just started with Pete looking really uncomfortable when the puppy was around. Stiff, whale eyes, lip licking etc. Then he started growling if Pippin got too close to him. Usually at that point we'd separate them. Last night though, Pete was in one corner of the room, and Pippin was in another. It all happened really fast, and we're not sure what triggered it, but Pete lunged at Pippin and chased him out the room nipping him the whole way.
So the fact that he did that without a growl first, and the fact that it's gone from ignoring him, to uncomfortable, to attacking tells us that Pete is probably not going to accept Pippin. Like, we could keep trying but we run the risk of Pete injuring Pippin.
So my today my partner is taking him back to the shelter. We're hoping the fact that it's at least familiar to him, and his littermates are still there (they were born there) will mean it's a little less stressful for him.
We're devastated. I can't stop crying. He was only here a week, but we fell in love.
I dunno. Send good vibes please
