Before I begin, thank you to everyone for all your kind words. They were so very appreciated after such a rough day.

Telling this story will be hard - as I am still uncertain where things went wrong.

And I know as a share this story some of you will be angry; some may be uncertain how they feel. But I’m hoping that there’s at least one or two of you out there that can sympathize with such a hard decision and will be supportive.

[that night's journal entry]

We found Libby back at the end of January. She was maybe all of 8 weeks old at the time…and cute as a button in all that fluff.

But I also noticed that she seemed void of any personality – which I thought was odd for a pup but wrote it off to the adjustment of living in a house with a 125 lb Bullmastiff, a cranky old cat & 2 new humans to figure out. I knew time would help bring it out.

We laughed at her constant grunting – even in her sleep. We thought it was cute when her little front paws could barely reach the seat of the couch – stretching with everything she had to climb up.

And as the first few months with her passed she became quite the lively, little puppy.

Always happy, always smiling – running around & around the backyard with the neighbors small dog.

As she settled into the routine of our house she became more & more curious as to what laid beyond it.

There were lots of quick darts out under our back fence, down the embankment & as she got bigger, hops across the binjo ditch ready to explore the rice patties behind our house.

It became such a regular ordeal that we finally bought a stake & a 15′ long dog lead to put in the backyard. And she was content.

Whereas Moo loves being indoors, Libby loved being outdoors.

She really loved to be outside – even if that meant just laying down on the back steps watching & waiting for anyone who passed by.

And it was around this time that the “Libby Alert System” was born.

She was a Jindo mix and Jindo’s are highly intelligent, territorial guard dogs who form a deep bond with their owners - something we knew going in.

“Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo!”

That was the alert.

The minute you heard it you knew someone or something was outside: the farmer working his fields, the cries from the daycare a few dozen yards away or one of the neighborhood cats walking past.

At first it was constant. There was no filtering system in place – no way of knowing when to bark & when not to. And it seemed that every 5 to 10 minutes (when she was outside) we’d be getting up to “reset” the system.

She was a guard dog. You can’t just yell at a guard dog to quit barking – that’s their job, it’s what they do. So we began to teach her the good people & things from the bad.

“Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo!”

We would walk out saying,

“Show me, show me! Where is it?”

We’d get down to her level, follow her line of sight, point at the farmer (for example) & say

“I see him. I see him. He’s a good guy, Libby. He’s a good guy. You don’t need to bark at him. Thank you for letting me know he’s there.”

The goal was to acknowledge that she had done her job & correct her when it didn’t necessarily apply. And over time, it worked.

Not 100% completely…she was, after all, still a puppy - but we were making definite progress.

She grew up playing with Maggie, was learning how to live with a cat, playing with the neighbor’s kids, the neighbor’s dog – even the other neighbor’s dogs. She was walked every day, taught to sit on command, taught to hold on the leash, when it was bedtime - all attempts to properly socialize her.

And for a while everything was fine. Granted, she wanted to pull & pull on the leash…but overall she was fine with seeing other dogs, other people, other children – seeing cars & big buses fly past us, no big deal.

But about 2 months ago things began to change.

[you can continue reading here]