I’ve failed spectacularly this week.

I tried to adopt a dog.

I thought I was doing something good.

I thought I knew what I was doing.

And it all went spectacularly wrong…

Failure easy to say, hard to do. I’ve been committed to encouraging learning through failure for a while.

Things like, ‘fail fast’, ‘learn the lessons’, ‘come back better’ have tripped off my tongue (and metaphorical pen).

But sometimes the failure is so bad, it bites, deeply.

Goodbye Mishka, hello Tigz, goodbye Ruby, hello (and goodbye) Jam.

This story starts with my beloved Husky, Mishka. Mishka crossed the rainbow bridge at 13 years old in January (apologies, this is starting to sound like parts of the Husky subreddit).

Mishka was a lovely, lovely old girl, living her best life.

I spent a huge part of my life with Mishka, walking miles and miles.

We would also spend time doing not very much together. An important pastime.

I missed her terribly.

Hello Tigz. Within a month a new Husky from the Rescue had arrived, Tigz (short for Tiger Lilly). I was desperate to replace what I’d loved and lost.

Tigz is apparently 3 years old, with an unknown backstory. A stray found on the mountain that took 3 days to catch.

And who was there to show Tigz the ropes and become a new best friend? Ruby, the ancient Pug who’d been a partner in crime with Mishka for 13 years.

(Ancient) Ruby stepped in as an unlikely and occasionally uncooperative companion to a bouncy Husky for the next 5 months.

From a skinny, shaky, skittish waif a proud confident Husky emerged.

Did Ruby influence that? Who knows?

Then Ruby crossed the rainbow bridge to be with Miskha.

And it all went wrong.

Hello Jam.

Ruby crossing the bridge wasn’t unexpected.

I was emotionally prepared.

I knew what Tigz needed.

I was going to fix it.

Tigz needed a companion.

Very rapidly (driven hard by me) a beautiful Lurcher cross called Jam arrived from the same Rescue Tigz had come from.

She was energetic (highly), loving, got along with other dogs, a good physical match for Tigz, and it was going to be perfect…

But it didn’t quite work out like that.

Failure is fine until someone (almost) looses an eye.

There are many reasons why things didn’t work out.

A big one might be in the territory of them being too evenly matched and neither really having an off switch.

Not the fault of either dog, just my bad choice to put them together, probably too soon.

The idea of learning from small failures is fine until it becomes a big permanent failure, and someone (almost) looses an eye.

If there was ever an example of analysing every mistake and torturing yourself for; bad choices, poor preparation, bad assumptions, a lack of awareness, no humility and too much ignorance, I’ve lived it this week. There have also been a few tears.

I’m left thinking if there’s truth in the idea that ‘the harder you fail, the deeper the learning’?

So is there a happy ending?

Well, Tigz is ok. No permanent eye damage and it’s healing well. She seems to be returning to herself, going through a process of re-booting her Husky software back to factory settings.

As for Jam, she’s still looking for her perfect humans and forever home, with a bit more understanding of how she is.

In the words of people from the Rescue, “she will be ok, it’s been like a short term foster placement to understand her better”

In my view she will be a perfect loving dog in the right place – just not with Tigz (and her useless Human, me).

The absolute point of this post is to encourage anyone who is interested in a dog to have a look at Jam (and learn from my mistakes).

She really is a lovely, lovely dog and will make a loving companion in the right home.

Here’s a link. Adopt Jam / Hope Rescue