Millie's been spayed...

Millie went through the spay without any issues... I had to kennel her going because I didn't want the previous experience repeated in the car and warned the spay clinic staff about her origins and personality... 

At pickup time, the staff attempted to get her out of the steel kennel and she started screaming... So they gave her a pain shot for the 'ouchies' they anticipated... I did get my first Millie tail wag as she heard my voice talking to her through the front of the kennel (smile... and the pain killer started kicking in)...

I brought her home and gave her a quiet, serene and warm place to recuperate, checking in on her every hour or so... Thank goodness for modern medicine or else this might have been a difficult time to get through...  While she was still 'feeling the warm fuzzies' from the pain shot, I sat with her at least an hour and a half, massaging her, cooing to her and saying her name, hoping I had laid a bit of a foundation for her later to connect with me once she started feeling better...


It seems Millie knows little of the usual canine manners... Nor is she familiar with the dynamics of a pack either... Both of these are problems when you try and assimilate a puppymill puppy into your life... I'm not speaking about dog obedience and responding to commands or being simply potty trained - I'm talking about canine manners and proper 'dog-speak' amongst themselves... 

A screamer usually sets themselves up for being a target when there is another dog around... Most people want to take their pup to the dog park and have their children play with the dog in their lives... So the dogs don't have all the proper dog obedience commands you'd like them to... But it is critical that the dogs can relate to each other as in "Hey, how ya doing?" language... If a dog is scared of you, and doesn't relate to other dogs to integrate themselves into the pack, they are setting themselves up for failure in life without even knowing it... Many of these things are taught to pups from their mom, but if the mom is also a puppymill puppy herself, she can't teach what she herself doesn't know either...

Millie not only has problems with humans and shakes when picked up, doesn't come when called because she doesn't trust you, etc. --- she can't relate to even the most easy going and loving Chi we have here (and he does pet therapy so he's used to handling all kinds of situations and experiences from both dogs and humans alike)... We all have expectations of what a 'normal' dog should be and when our new puppy from the petshop falls so short of the usual expectations, anyone with an ounce of compassion internalizes this realization as a failure of them to provide the proper training... 

How can a dog be a dog when they don't know what being a dog is all about?... Let alone the hierarchy of a canine pack and those dynamics as well... Puppies should be ingrained instinctively (and usually are when the puppies are born and raised by reputable breeders)... But when we humans interfere with the natural order of things and turn canine birth into a production line of puppies, we screw it all up... We're not Mother Nature and don't fix up our mistakes because dollar$ are more important than doing things well and the correct way... 

Next shipment of puppies goes into the belly of a plane and off to some petshop for the new buyers to deal with the ramifications of a inferior product, hyped up with 'purebred papers' and higher price tags... If you don't have poor health issues to deal with (or death in many cases), and your new petshop puppy survives to grow up, all kinds of psychological and behavioral issues surface along the way... If not addressed, these dogs usually end up aggressive, under-socialized and/or destined for the shelter system where someone else gets to deal with the problems the puppy millers created...

As many 'red-listed' Chihuahuas that I have pulled out of the shelters (red-listed means they're walking towards the euthanasia table if a rescue doesn't pull them from the shelter), Millie is by far one of the worse cases I've been challenged by... She doesn't have a clue how to learn to be what she is supposed to be... While she wants to be in tuned with humans, her fears overcome her desire in this regard... With role models around to observe and watch in the other Chis, she's clueless as to how to do things differently to find a friend or two...

Thankfully, I don't value things based upon their price, for if I was an owner who'd just paid a pretty penny for this pup from a petshop, I'd be feeling pretty ripped off by this point if nothing else!