Hello everyone,
In September 2022 Andrea, a woman who had studied at my school, visited us and brought Luna. That day she was running around like crazy without paying attention to anyone.
At the beginning of 2023 Andrea gave her to us for a weekend and brought her on a Friday night. Luna was uncontrollable. Everything upset her, she tilled, she wanted to bite everything that made noise.
Since it looked like it was going to be very cold outside, we let her sleep in our room next to the bed. That night we spent hours trying to get her to sleep because with every light or noise, she started barking like crazy.
The following Sunday, we took her for a walk for several hours and when we returned home, she seemed like a completely different dog.
She didn’t seem to miss her parents.
From the first moment I was her favorite of the two. She kept an eye on me all the time and would get hysterical if I went far away.
Another weekend they asked me to take care of her because they had to go to Lisbon. They left her with me on a Saturday morning and I immediately took her for a walk so that she would be calm at home.
She rolled on a dead fish on the riverbank so I had to bathe her and she stayed out all day. Since she still reeked of dead fish, I didn’t bring her back in the house. It was the best decision since she behaved excellently in the garden and had more freedom.
It should be noted that Luna was purchased simply because they liked the breed and had seen it in a movie.
They had not investigated what physical and psychological needs that breed would have, which is a very serious mistake.
The consequence is that Luna, a Jack Russell, in great need of physical exercise and attention, is in a family where she is never taken for walks or paid attention to.
In addition, her family used to lock her every night in a dark room and many times during the day in a garage without giving her any attention. As a result, she developed an emotional attachment trauma, and she had a great increase of stress to be left alone and she would pee inside the house.
Due to this constant stress and all the tension that this generates in the dog’s organism, the pressure on the bladder increases giving a false sensation of needing to pee.
As you can imagine, after so much confinement and neglect, Luna ran away whenever she could, which resulted in her being beaten every time she was found.
You can see how traumatized and mistreated poor Luna was.
After investigating why Luna was the way she was, we were heartbroken that she was locked up in a house every day without going out, and when she did go out, it was because she ran away.
One day we took Luna hiking, it was her first time in the mountains. You can’t imagine how happy she was.
The first day we hiked 6 hours, almost 30km. The second day, 15km.
Luna only rested when she got to the car and when she got out, her energy was 100% again.
At the end of July when we finally bought the car, we started picking up Luna to take her touring almost every weekend. The bad thing is that she already knew that when we picked her up it was to go to special places, and she was crazy with so much energy and happiness.
In fact, when we went to pick her up, if we lingered to talk, she would start banging on the door in hysterics because she was so desperate to leave.
The first day we took her to Ponte de Lima, and she spent hours with zoomies.
Then we went to Sistelo where she rolled in cow dung, and we had to put her in a well and in the river to clean her up. There she learned to swim and from that day on swimming was her passion.
Luna was always doing one of her own, so when we went out without her, everything was extremely quiet and even boring.
We also took her paddle boarding.
Although at her home she was logically an uncontrollable dog due to the confinement, at my house she knew perfectly well that she could only be in the garden and which were the moments for walking, resting, playing, etc.
I was struck by the fact that from the beginning when we called her to take a picture with us, she was super obedient and even posed.
With us Luna was a totally different dog because she went out, received love and attention and most importantly, she knew that no one was going to lock her up or hit her.
The only bad thing that we still had not been able to change was that when she saw people with food, she ignored us, and many times she would disappear to go to places where people were eating. Luna had been very poorly educated since she was a little in that aspect and we didn’t know if we would be able to re-educate her.
On December 1st we went to pick her up and we planned for her to spend the whole month with us.
The first 3 days we let her sleep inside the house, and it was a bad decision because Luna became disobedient as she thought she could go in and out of the house whenever she wanted. Also, since she was shedding her hair, it was hard to clean up after her when she slept inside the house.
Another problem is that because of her emotional attachment trauma, she could not be alone in a room because she would immediately start crying thinking that we were going to leave her locked up like they did at her house.
In the end, we bought her a little house and a bed warmer so she could sleep outside.
The whole month with her was hard because a dog implies a great responsibility to walk it at least twice a day, give it attention, and, above all, much more cleaning than we normally do at home. But Luna’s behavior was so impeccable that it was worth all the effort.
It should be noted that Luna was always the sensation. Everywhere we went people went crazy to see her and hugged her. When we took her paddle boarding, even the maritime police took pictures of her.
In mid-December I had to go to Valencia and returned her to her owners. Hours later they showed up saying Luna had a swollen eye and that it was our fault. We told them that Luna was perfect when we left her (we had videos to prove it), but that they should take her to the vet anyway and we would cover the expenses.
There they got upset because “they didn’t have time to take Luna to the vet”. I was shocked.
The next day, the day I was leaving to go to Valencia, I asked how Luna was doing and they simply replied “better”.
When I wrote to Andrea a couple of times she didn’t answer and I understood that they had made up who knows what movie in their heads and were upset because it bothered them to have to take their pet to the vet.
It was a very strange situation because it was clear that Luna was in their way, but they still wouldn’t give her to someone who could really give her the home she needed.
I asked them for the keys to my house and when they brought them to me, their hypocritical smiles were very uncomfortable. We never understood what was going through their minds, but the only sad thing is the life that poor Luna would continue to have.
