Abbie Chatfield has made the heartbreaking decision to rehome her almost one-year-old puppy Daisy.
The FBoy Island Australia host, 29, announced the sad news on her It’s a Lot podcast on Tuesday.
Abbie asked her fans and followers to ‘please listen to the full episode before commenting’ in the caption of the video she shared to Instagram from the episode’s recording.
‘Today’s episode I’m really nervous about recording. I’m scared about the backlash because I feel really sick about the whole situation,’ she began.
‘I’m going to be honest because I know that the decision I made was the right decision for me and everyone involved.
‘I’ve had to rehome Daisy.’
Daisy is a one-year-old cocker spaniel the media personality adopted into her family in April.
‘I’m going to cry,’ Abbie said as she began to explain her decision.
‘Daisy is my puppy. I have an older dog, Mr. Walter, who is eight, and I have Daisy, who is one-years-old in a week or two.’
Abbie Chatfield has made the heartbreaking decision to rehome her almost one-year-old puppy Daisy
Abbie Chatfield’s one-year-old puppy Daisy (pictured) now lives with the sister of a good friend in Brisbane
‘I’ve had to rehome her because of Walter and his traumas and the way they’re manifesting. So before anyone gets into my DMs, I’ve spent six months agonising over this.’
Walter suffers from anxiety caused by his previous owners.
‘I’ve tried my absolute hardest and I never thought that I would give up a dog, ever,’ Abbie continued on the podcast.
Abbie, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Sydney, said she’s ‘tried literally everything’ in her capacity to find a way for her two dogs to get along.
Before she adopted Daisy, Abbie said she has never heard Walter growl.
‘Adam (my boyfriend) calls him a sugar loaf. He’s a blob of a dog,’ Abbie said, adding that since she began her romance with the Peking Duk front man that relations between her two furry babies had improved significantly.
The dogs have been getting along better since Abbie began her relationship with Aussie musician Adam Hyde, because they each have a human, but she said their inconsistent schedules are confusing for them
Although Walter has never bitten Daisy or been overtly aggressive with his sibling, Abbie said he fiercely guards his time with her.
‘It got better when I started dating Adam because there were two of us and Daisy had Adam and Walter had me. But when Adam’s away, then I think Walter’s anxiety doubled because he got used to having Adam around,’ she said.
‘Adam would go to do a gig and in those three days, Daisy would be asleep in a different room and Walter would have night terrors. It’s like he’s got shell shock.’
Abbie explained that dog trainers and her vet had told her Walter was ‘resource guarding’ his owner, which is the kind of behaviour dogs display when they’re protecting their favourite ball or bone.
She said he would growl at Daisy and now regularly pins her down because he’s jealous.
‘I had a 10 minute shower and he did it three times. She stands there completely still, shaking. She’s not doing anything to him.’
Revealing the sad news on her It’s a Lot podcast this week, Abbie said that as Daisy (pictured) grew older and became better behaved, Walter’s tolerance for her became less
Initially, Abbie believed the problem would resolve as Daisy grew out of her puppy phase and got trained out of some of her ‘annoying behaviours’.
Those included ‘liquid pooing’ all over a flokati rug and destroying multiple couches.
‘She got older and she was less annoying, but it seemed like his tolerance for her got lower as her behaviour got better,’ she said.
‘In hindsight, I stupidly thought that having a puppy at home would make him more playful and therefore happy.
‘Because he was really anxious, particularly after the abusive relationship I went through last year, he got really bad from being around that.’
‘I love her more than anything and she’s done nothing wrong,’ Abbie continued.
She likened the relationship between the two dogs to that of King Charles and Princess Dianna.
‘She’s Lady Di – and she has an evil man living at home – and that’s Walter,’ Abbie joked lovingly.
Abbie detailed how she’d relocated to the Northern Rivers when she first adopted Daisy to give the duo time to settle into their new dynamic, to no avail.
She’d also sent Daisy to boarding school while Walter remained at home with a dog sitter during her travels to the US, and had engaged a dog trainer and vets for expert advice.
‘When she went to boarding school, he was melancholic. It’s like “do you like her or not?”‘ she said.
‘Side note: If you’re thinking of getting a puppy, my answer is don’t.’
Unfortunately, Walter’s jealously of Daisy isn’t something that the TV and radio host said she can resolve, and she didn’t want to put either dog through the ‘trauma’ of co-existence for years while she ‘figured it out’.
‘I knew puppies were hard and this is not the reason at all why she was given up,’ she clarified after speaking about how difficult it is to raise one.
‘I just don’t have the skills, the capacity, the understanding of dogs [to fix Walter and Daisy’s relaitonship]. I’m not a dog trainer.’
Abbie added that if she was being selfish, she would have kept both dogs.
‘If I was being completely selfish, I could’ve kept Daisy and done two separate 40-minute walks a day instead of a two-hour walk each day. I’m so sure that I’m the best dog parent.’
Please no one DM me because I’ve been crying over this for months since I started making the decision to get rid of her.
Abbie spent a significant portion of the 45-minute recording detailing the lengths she goes to for her dogs, including curating obstacle courses for their daily hikes.
‘The reason I don’t really drink anymore is because I don’t want to be hungover for Walter,’ she said.
‘I would rather make sure they have a two hour walk to go creek hopping, beach hopping, or park hopping.’
The decision has taken a huge emotional toll on the popular TV and radio host, who said that until the day she gave Daisy to her new owner, now a couple of weeks ago, she was ‘scream crying in the shower’.
‘I’ve raised her and gone through the hardest parts of her puppyhood. I’ve done all the hard work with her. She is the best dog.
‘She sleeps with her arms around my neck. I can’t train that trauma out of him and all I can do is give him a safe place to live.’
Abbie said that she’s rehomed Daisy with a good friend’s sister in Brisbane, who drove to Sydney to pick her up.
The TV host and podcaster said that she can’t train her 8-year-old dog Walter out of his trauma response to sharing his mum with a younger puppy
She packed up all of Daisy’s things and made lists of all her food and activity preferences for her new owner.
‘A few weeks on I am 100% sure this was the right decision for both dogs, but I am heartbroken,’ she penned in the caption of her podcast post.
‘I already feel like a failure but I truly believe that it would have been purely selfish to keep both of my angels in a house that they are both merely enduring not enjoying.’
Abbie’s 491,000 Instagram followers rushed to her comments to praise the decision and offer kind words of support and encouragement.