Dear dogforum,
I hope there's someone out there who can help us/ point us in the right direction. This year has been crazy for us. We've moved area, I've started a new job and we've had a new baby into the mix. The job offer came first out of those three, and we started plans to move to the Bristol area. We tried to buy a house, but 8 weeks in to the house-buying process, the purchase fell through. We were gutted. We tried to buy again, but this time, we were under serious time constraints as it was mid June and I started my new job in Bristol city centre in September. After several weeks of stressful and panicked house hunting, we admitted defeat and decided to rent for 6 months. In Bristol, if you have a dog, you can forget agreeing a rental contract. My mother agreed to take him on for the 6 months after seeing we were in a predicament (I must stress here that we in no way approached her, forced her or even asked her to take him, she offered her help freely and without any coercion). We took her up on the offer, relieved that our beautiful Patterdale terrier would be in safe hands. We dropped him off at hers and made the move 3 days later. Almost immediately, we started to receive texts saying she wasn't coping. She then started demanding we take him back and giving us ultimatums - i.e. "I'll put him in the dogs' home" etc. etc. We are now in the awkward position of having to find an alternative home. My question is:
Is there anyone out there who knows of any sort of temporary housing scheme for dogs whose owners are temporarily unable to have them, in our case, due to pet-free rental properties?
We're willing to consider anything - foster carers, long term boarding, even dogs homes as temporary measures as long as we can get him back! We are so upset that it has come to this, please help us somebody!
I hope there's someone out there who can help us/ point us in the right direction. This year has been crazy for us. We've moved area, I've started a new job and we've had a new baby into the mix. The job offer came first out of those three, and we started plans to move to the Bristol area. We tried to buy a house, but 8 weeks in to the house-buying process, the purchase fell through. We were gutted. We tried to buy again, but this time, we were under serious time constraints as it was mid June and I started my new job in Bristol city centre in September. After several weeks of stressful and panicked house hunting, we admitted defeat and decided to rent for 6 months. In Bristol, if you have a dog, you can forget agreeing a rental contract. My mother agreed to take him on for the 6 months after seeing we were in a predicament (I must stress here that we in no way approached her, forced her or even asked her to take him, she offered her help freely and without any coercion). We took her up on the offer, relieved that our beautiful Patterdale terrier would be in safe hands. We dropped him off at hers and made the move 3 days later. Almost immediately, we started to receive texts saying she wasn't coping. She then started demanding we take him back and giving us ultimatums - i.e. "I'll put him in the dogs' home" etc. etc. We are now in the awkward position of having to find an alternative home. My question is:
Is there anyone out there who knows of any sort of temporary housing scheme for dogs whose owners are temporarily unable to have them, in our case, due to pet-free rental properties?
We're willing to consider anything - foster carers, long term boarding, even dogs homes as temporary measures as long as we can get him back! We are so upset that it has come to this, please help us somebody!
