I know I have been attacked by German shepherd dogs three times in my life. I really can’t remember the first two times except that my mother told me I was just a toddler the first time, aged between two and three years old, and as a result I developed Alopecia, and my hair fell out in huge patches, and I started to be terrified of dogs. I don’t remember anything about the second time either but the sound of a dog barking would terrify me, or a dog running towards me would leave me rigid with fear. I reached the grand old age of about 25 without any major incident, I was married, living in a northern English city, at college, and working to earn some money to pay the rent and subsidise my student’s grant. My job was in a play scheme for disadvantaged youngsters, and at the end of every day I had to close up the place before going home. It was OK, but this particular evening, I was just locking up the club room, which had two doors. There was a flash of brown fur shot across the room, and grabbed me by my arm at the elbow and held on hard. It was the caretakers dog, a German shepherd, and the caretaker thought I was an intruder. My sleeve was ripped right off, but fortunately the animal had been trained to just hold, and not really attack, so I was OK. Just hysterical! However this experience only reinforced my fear of most animals. I went on to have four children, and they all had small furry pets, mice, hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, and although I made sure these animals were looked after properly, I could never ever bring myself to pick up or pet any of these animals. I even developed quite severe asthma, which became very bad when my younger son used to sneak his pet rats into the house, and allow them to run around his bedroom and sleep in his bed with him without asking me. The day I discovered this, and insisted he moved them out to the garden shed, I had to call the local hospital several times as I was having a severe asthma attack every fifteen minutes or so, and panicking like mad.
Move on many years, all my children have now left home, I am now 68 years old, and my husband is 70, and completely out of the blue, and without asking or discussing it with myself, he has adopted a year old, very lively, stray dog from an animal rescue centre, and he will not brook any discussion at all with me as to why I feel I can’t cope with it. I don’t think he can either! I can not be in the same room as it and I just do not know what to do. If I am in the same room it launches himself at me, and lands on me. He nips, and barks a lot of the time, chews anything within his reach, and has already ripped a hole in my warm winter down lightweight jacket. He constantly demands attention, only I am scared of him and I don’t like him, and I don’t like the way he smells. (It’s just a dog smell, but I don’t like dog smell). My lung capacity has dropped by 25% in 2 weeks, and when I told my husband he said “I wonder why that is”!
I don’t know what to do. My husband has never wanted a dog before. Fortunately I have quite a large house, and I am just about living in my bedroom. I am due to go into hospital for major spinal surgery on 3rd Jan 2019. I don’t want my husband to take me because it means the dog will have to come as well.
I have been unwell for quite a long time now, and all of this is not helping my recovery. My husband has cancer and it’s serious. I have a feeling this will wear him out also!
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