Doggie Drama

So to say the least, July was not the best month for the Colby clan. Even Jackson didn’t make it into August unscathed. So here’s the story:

After having to board Jackson for the first time recently, we started taking him to Doggie Day Camp once a week or so. We thought it was a great opportunity to get him better socialized with other dogs. He’d gone probably 5 or 6 times, always getting good comments on his little daily report card (and no, I’m not joking about the report card). So one day in July Bryan was going up to Boy Scout Camp and I had an all day departmental retreat for work, so I decided I would drop Jackson off at camp on my way in. Well around 10:00 a.m. I had a break so I checked my cell phone and there were multiple messages from the camp facility. My first thought was that he was sick or injured, which freaked me out, so I called right away.

Come to find out, Jackson bit one of the employees. This of course seemed really strange to me because he is such a gentle little guy. The lady I was talking to had a teenaged son who worked there, and he was the one who got bit. As soon as I called she was basically yelling at me that I needed to get them his proof of rabies vaccinations otherwise her son would have to endure a horrendous round of shots. She’s also telling me that she called my vet and they’d never even heard of Jackson. Oh, great.

Well here’s what actually happened: Jackson had been kind of aggressive with one of the other dogs all morning. Rather than put him on “time out” (which they actually do) they continued to let him play in the yard. Well he and this dog ended up going at it, and this young kid came up behind Jackson, grabbed him by his hind legs, pulled him away from the other dog and then attempted to grab him by the scruff of his neck, at which point Jackson bit him. The facility had a copy of Jackson’s shot records (required for him to even be there) but they lost them. And when they entered his vet’s info into their computer, they chose the wrong one on a drop-down list.

So in the interim, Bryan had to drive an hour and a half back to Gilbert to get the shot record, take it to the facility in Scottsdale where I met him to get Jackson, then I had to take the rest of the afternoon off to take Jackson to the vet (because I was totally panicked about why my dog would bite someone).

The vet told us that his reaction was totally normal, and that if someone is going to try to separate two fighting dogs, there is a correct way to do so, and grabbing them from the hind legs isn’t it.

Well at that point, I thought we were done. But oh, no. The next day I come home and find a notice on our front door that animal control had come by and we needed to contact them about a bite case. Great. Come to find out, whenever a dog bites someone and it’s reported, the dog has to go into a 10 day quarantine. Luckily for us the animal control guy was really nice, saw what a good dog Jackson was, agreed that the guy working at the facility was an idiot, and let us do an at-home quarantine.
Jackson wasn’t super fond of being grounded, but at least they didn’t have to haul him away.

And did I mention that was only part of our July drama? Thank goodness it’s August…