We're all afraid of Amores Perros

the journey of Journey, my dad's (so far) un-adoptable dog

I thought I’d left my dog drama in 2024. Surprise! This year is opening with EVEN MORE DOG DRAMA.

Whooo boy. It’s literally all I can think about.

So this is Journey. She is loving and affectionate, and has an adorable, giant face, which is one of the things I most love about pit bulls. There is nothing more satisfying than holding it and giving her a big kiss on the forehead. I like it even more than holding sleeping babies.

She’s quite a gal.

Journey has been my dad’s dog for the past three years. He adopted her about three years ago with an ex-girlfriend, and Journey stayed with him when the girlfriend left. When my dad sold his house, he insisted on renting a place afterward with a yard for Journey. Because of this, he lived in both worse and more expensive conditions than he should have.

Now, unfortunately, he’s had to move into a senior housing community, and Journey has not been able to follow him.

Honestly, this was not a surprise to anyone. Journey is not leash-trained (not even I can handle her on a leash), and though she’s a sweetheart and seems to love any human she comes across, she’s 70 pounds and can get kind of jumpy and rambunctious when she’s excited. This is obviously a liability in a place where fragile seniors are roaming the grounds, and though my dad fought mightily to insist that she was an “emotional support dog” (his designation), the administration did what they must and said no.

After an exhausting two weeks of moving two years ago to an unsuitable rental that was chosen, basically, for the dog. We laugh because we can’t cry.

So now, here we are. Am I mad at my dad? Yes. He knew this was coming well ahead of time and he did not move to solve it, fully convinced he’d be able to get a “yes” from the apartment administration if he just made his case forcefully and sympathetically enough. Now, it’s a literal time bomb: Journey can stay in her old backyard where she currently is, panicked and alone, until the 6th, which, incidentally, is when freezing temperatures are set to hit central Texas. Every animal shelter and rescue operation in the area has been contacted, and none of them will take her; they’re full, and can only refer us to the other shelters that are also full.

Does being mad get us anywhere? No, except to maybe an only briefly satisfying state of righteous indignation. Now that that’s done, we’ve got to figure something out, since saying “I told you so” is not a solution.

So after blissfully being off of Facebook, I created a new account (I couldn’t get back into my old one without sending a copy of my official ID to them, which I am NOT doing) just so I could post about Journey in animal rescue groups. I’ve met, in this way, people who know Journey. They love her, they adore her, they wish her the best; they just can’t take her.

The problem is that everyone on these groups is an animal lover and has pets, and Journey may be, from what her vet told me, “animal-aggressive.”

This doesn’t mean that she’d definitely attack other pets — maybe in her old age she’s mellowed out, or the behavior observed in her before was due to something else, like fear in a specific situation — but who wants to make their current pets a laboratory to find out?

It’s had me thinking of the bleak Mexican film Amores Perros. In it, a hitman has a large family of adopted dogs in his dingy, dark apartment. He adopts a dog that had been wounded in an illegal fight, and nurses it back to health. One day, he returns to his home and finds that the dog has killed every single one of his other dogs.

It’s not a fantastic ad for pit bull rescues.

I saw that movie the summer before I went to Mexico for the first time. “Are you sure you want to go to Mexico?” my dad asked me after it was over.

So, here we are. The plan at the moment is to start a GoFundMe to pay for temporary boarding, hopefully tied to a training program for Journey. My dad might not be the best planner, but he is pretty good at finding support when he needs it. I doubt she’d get to the point where she could live with my dad, but I hope at the very least that it would make her more adoptable.

And of course, dear readers, if by some miracle you think you can take Journey or know someone who can (she’s in Waco, Texas, and there are people willing to transport her a few hours in any direction), please do speak up. There are a lot more grave injustices in the world than a dog becoming homeless, but in the end, we’re called to give the help we can.

Journey where she belongs, chillin’ like a villain.