Fight For Lola

Hi, For those of you who know me, you'll know that I am balancing a lot in my life. After getting Lola as a puppy in late February 2021, I got married, moved to a new place, and continued working while taking care of my mom part-time, who has dementia.

Well, it turns out that getting married after knowing someone for 6 months during an unprecedented worldwide pandemic is not the best choice. With a decent amount of life experience, I thought I could trust myself, but after one year, my relationship plummeted into a dumpster fire of sadness, fighting, emotional abuse, and substance abuse issues that made me feel unsafe continuing to live with my husband. To top it off, I came down with COVID myself, causing me to miss out on some gigs and other work that was going to tide me over this month for paying my rent and for training. Now I am determined to maintain my stability by keeping my apartment and doing my best to rehabilitate a highly reactive, traumatized, and developmentally disabled dog.

Lola was found in Fresno in a carboard box full of puppies who were not siblings. She was sick with Parvo (usually deadly), giardia, and very malnourished. At the time, the SFSPCA estimated her age to be 10 weeks, an appropriate age for spaying and adopting right away, right? Except no, after being hospitalized for her illness, which in early puppyhood can cause human reactivity, Lola was spayed a week later, and moved through the conveyor belt of adoption. However, when she failed to lose her teeth on time, the vets re-set their age estimate to 6 weeks younger! This means that Lola was likely spayed at the age of 4 weeks, imbedding in her experience a lot of pain and discomfort associated with human contact, a lack of hormones necessary for a balanced mind in female dogs, and overall a real shit start to life. Pair that with a first-time dog owner who faces constant conflict with an ill-matched partner about how to handle Lola's needs, and a shortage of available, aggression-specialist trainers due to the massive surge in adoptions during the pandemic, and you have our current situation: a dog and a human who are utterly miserable and anxious all the time, and unable to move through the world in a functional way.

Luckily, I have found an excellent trainer who has provided one month of training and behavior management services so far. She was the only one to provide me with the education that Lola's separation from her mother and litter at such a young age has likely caused developmental deficits, which explain her hypersensitivity to sights and sounds, and her constant trauma responses to unfamiliar objects, the presence of other people in our apartment building, sounds of walking in the apartment overhead, or sounds from the street outside. Lola has a long road ahead to become a happy, healthy dog, and continuing this training is crucial.

She is not a "re-homable" dog because of her severe problems and bite history, although I have spent hours and hours attempting to rehome her to someone more qualified over the past year. If I am unable to improve her behavior and well-being, as well as my own, I may have to consider behavioral euthanasia, because at this point we are both completely miserable, stressed, and unhappy. Continuing with this trainer is my only hope of improving this situation. At $500 per month, it is worth every penny, but not easy to maintain given the recent changes in my life.

Please consider supporting my fundraising efforts to keep Lola alive and happy so that we may both thrive together during this challenging time.