After fighting my landlords to allow me to have Itty I made the decision to move out of my current apartment to a place that will hopefully be safer for us. My landlords gave me permission to keep her right after I brought her home but I’ve been dealing with my downstairs neighbor threatening us since November. He has continued to show how scared he is of her by acting irrationally and has threatened to kill her twice since November.
While I fully expected that people would be nervous around her, since pit mixes are constructed as inherently dangerous or aggressive dogs, what I didn’t expect was him trying to get her to react every time we were around. Not only forcing us to completely avoid any place he is in the building but adding to my own anxiety while living in this building.
Getting Itty was the best thing I’ve ever done for my own wellbeing, outside of deciding last year to live on my own instead of finding a new roommate. Having her around has allowed me to work through my anxiety and be more functional on a daily basis. She’s come so far since I got her and we are almost ready for her to pass her Canine Good Citizen exam. She’s turned out to not only be a great dog but so helpful to me personally.
As she’s progressed through her training, I thought that the passive aggressive behavior would stop if I gave it time and for a bit it did but at the end of January he yet again started acting out towards us and it made me decide to start looking for a new place to live. I thought it would be really hard to find a new place to live but instead I found a great apartment that is a little bit bigger not to far from where I’m living now. I picked up the keys last Friday and will be moving all of my larger things next week.
Not only did this landlord help me make sure the apartment was mine, he even said in the spring they may put up a fence so Itty has a place to live. It will take a bit to get everything back to normal once I move but I’ll be happy to be in a building where Itty and I don’t have to deal with violent behavior or worry about living in unsafe conditions.
I didn’t want to move and I’m doing it on almost nothing, as I am living on very little right now as a grad student, but I think this move will be the last one for a long while. At least until I know what I’m doing after I finish my masters.
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