Abusing My Dog

[Anarchy]

Re Homing
If you do seek to re home the dog, please do some due diligence.

Council run, and some charity including SPCA run "shelters" euthanize as matter of policy, others quietly act as collection points for product testing labs...

My ex was heavily involved in trying to prevent crap like that happening, and it can be extremely difficult for outsiders to find out where it does happen.

a suggestion would be to put a small advert up in somewhere frequented by the sort of people who are likely to give a loving home to an animal, such as a health food shop, a veggie cafe, or if there is a particularly caring vet nurse at the local vetinary surgery - speak to her, there are often quiet little networks who take in and care for animals which were sent to be euthanized.

Your reasons can be as simple as "I haven't sufficeint time for her, I don't get the time to take her for adequate walks or play with her..."

I'd post a link to a social media site that my ex and some of her vegan friends run, but I'd be blowing both our covers.

 

[cherryblossom]

All I can say is WOW.......hahahahaha

I'm intrigued to know what point you found so funny?

 

[Ghostybear73]

@cherryblossom, the idea that people think animals and children are always better off never going back. See, most animals that are surrendered are euthanized our put in foster cared that house too many animals and get 're-abused. Out here in the states the foster system for children are oftentimes worse than their original situation. The OP here is asking for help and acknowledges what she id's doing is wrong. That's half the battle so automatically saying that a person that is trying to get help should never be allowed that and putting the animal in a potentially worse situation, up to and including death just makes me wonder more about the horrors of mankind, thus the "WOW". The hahaha it's me trying to keep some sense in me rather than lashing out because to me that is better and it is what I am learning.

You may not see it as a success for me, but I do and I'm sorry if this success is offensive to you.

This is just my opinion as everyone else here had been allowed.

 

[greenleaf]

It's wierd, I have seen lots of people come on talking about being abusive to other people and although they are told, as this poster is being told, to get help immediately, they are still supported.

I don't think people who talk about abusing children are supported here, in general; emotionally, a lot of us feel similarly about companion animals. This isn't saying that if we had the choice of rescuing a dog or rescuing a kid, we'd rescue the dog, but both are situations where the victim is helpless, often loves the perpetrator, etc. so our feelings are similar.

I really don't think that this forum could support a child abuser who also had ptsd, I hate to even think about what it would do to people here. Totally twists all sorts of emotional knives.

Perhaps if the person had somehow totally stopped being abusive, and did not discuss it on the forum... I think their issues might have to be separated and they would have to take responsibility for their actions, and getting help for those issues, *elsewhere*.

I'd view not talking about being abusive, to abuse survivors, as part of taking responsibility for their own actions.

 

[Ed Norton]

It's all very sad. I think that it's not the dog who should go to the pound though. Hopefully, she has the ability to find a good home for the dog.

 

[Eleanor]

Years ago in the U.S. when the movement against child abuse started they made a bumper sticker:

You can't beat people better, and children are people too.

I would add animals to that as well.

The reason for this is pretty simple: Fear shuts down learning. We can be conditioned to BE afraid. We can be conditioned to do specific behaviors in a fear state. But the more FEAR is turned up the less thinking can be done. Same with RAGE (anger.) Anger makes us stupid, or rather, ignorant. We hyper focus and miss all kinds of important information about the situation when anger takes over and we are fighting for our lives. The trick is to condition better responses and more possible transitions at lower levels of the activation of these emotional systems.

"Simple" PTSD (HAHAHAHAHA) is, a lot of the time, when FEAR gets stuck in full on because of trauma. Reconditioning through exposure therapy, processing the experience into memory (EMDR) and/or rehabituation of responses at lower levels of activation (just nervous..or apprehensive) seems to be the way out. It is more complicated if, like so many here, the trauma was repeated and in childhood, but the basics are the same.

As a general rule, people need to think of themselves as better than they are in order to get better. That is, we need to have a clear idea in mind of ourselves as better than we are right now in order to work our way towards that. Oh, sure, occasionally people get better by happy accident, but I think that's probably kind of rare with adults. Mostly we have to have an image of ourselves in mind that is better than we are now, and then practice toward it. Kind of like swimming. We start out unable to swim. We see other people swimming. We imagine ourselves swimming. We get in the water. We sink. We get water up our noses. We try again. We are confident we can swim because other people can. More water up the nose. Eventually we get the behaviors all coordinated and, voila! We swim. Sometimes we have to invent swimming. That's when it is hard.

@Ed Norton - This is why I disagree that any kind of retributive punishment (like 90 days in county) is likely to be helpful. Confinement escalates anger and habituates resentment as often as not. I totally get your angry response - the times I've lashed out most at my sufferer was when he focused his anger on our kids or cat. (He has never been physically abusive - but has been verbally and emotionally abusive when he is in an episode - who isn't?) I go ballistic when I see someone abusing an animal or child (anyone really.) It is one of the few times I do. (I was trained not to "do" anger at all... which is more of a problem than you'd think... but that is another thread.)

I was at a horse training clinic once and the trainer asked the students "What is abuse? When are you not training, but merely abusing the horse?" Confusion from the group, several suggestions, beating, threatening etc. About what you'd expect. She set the bar lower. She said: "When your horse is confused and you don't help them out. That's abuse." I wasn't sure then I agreed, and I'm not exactly sure now. But what I can say is that I'm pretty comfortable with defining "Anger that is misdirected" as abuse.

There was another thread where we talked about the appropriate use of violence. And I really liked @FridayJones explanation (I think it was you!) that when someone is attacking you, you meet that attack with as much force as necessary to stop it, and no more. Socrates said, we shouldn't trade harm for harm. If we do it never stops. Oh, it might re-direct the other person's aggression, but it won't interrupt it or cure it. It'll just go someplace else. Toward someone weaker, or get turned back on themselves.

 

[cherryblossom]

You may not see it as a success for me, but I do and I'm sorry if this success is offensive to you.

Not at all, I was sincerely curious as to which comment your post was referring to. That was all. Nothing more.

 

[Ghostybear73]

As sad as it is the statistics show that oftentimes the abused becomes the abuser. It is sad in all ways as @Ed Norton said.

If you read my initial posts I still maintain that she needs to find somewhere else for the dog. I never condone abuse, but I do feel as though a person who is crying out for help deserves that opportunity.

I am glad there are so many understanding people here on this site, that agree the dog needs to be taken out off the situation, but the person crying out for help needs all the good advice they can get

 

[Eleanor]

@greenleaf, I hear what you are saying. And I think I get it. And no, this is probably not the best place to talk about abusing. And it is REALLY REALLY hard for survivors of abuse to... think about the state of abusers. And probably for a LONG LONG time, maybe ever, they shouldn't. I don't know. It gets back to the discussion in the thread about "who is mentally ill here?"

In defense of the OP it is not like this was a thread celebrating abuse. Or asking to be let off the hook. But when the ONLY response to guilt is suicidal impulses, and someone asks for help... That's a not a particularly gray area for me. The OP is obviously not a sociopath, and does have remorse. And... no one here - as good as people here are - is "without sin." I've gotta think we've all, sufferers and supporters alike have harmed (sometimes intentionally) others. And we all could. And we all try not to. And... you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.

 

[bell]

Holy crap. This thread has turned into moralizing over the whole point of this forum, helping other people.

Anyone notice that the OP hasn't come back here to post? Given the circumstances and the responses, it was brave as hell to make the first post on this thread.

Yes, abusing anything (even yourself) is bad. We all agree. But can we all stop raining hellfire on the OP for a bit so that we can encourage her to get help, not scare her into never admitting the truth of her behavior again and not getting the proper help she needs?

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@Eleanor,
So what if 90 days in jail doesn't "help" her. Murderers are sent to jail for life for purely punitive reasons as there is no hope for helping them. You do wrong, you deserve to be punished. Or are you saying because she is mentally ill that she doesn't deserve to be punished?

 

[Ghostybear73]

Yes @bell I not only noticed, but I went to the helpdesk because I knew this was going to happen. I was told it shouldn't cause problems amongst ourselves, or something like that, but it always does with sensitive topics such as these.

I hope the OP is reading these posts