I think my dog is depressed

Yesterday morning I brought Murphy back to Pittsburgh, after his two week vacation living with my parents.

This photo was taken on Sunday night, before he realized that I would be ripping him away from his wonderful new life with my parents - that's why he still looks happy

So yeah, I think Murphy is pissed at me.  Or rather, depressed that he's back to his old life after two full weeks of glorious attention.

You see, Murphy is alone a lot at our house.  DH and I both work, and so Murph stays home.  We try to take him on walks in the evenings, but it definitely doesn't happen every day....

And then he went and stayed with my mom.  Who lets him sit on her lap for the entire 2 and a half hour car ride home. My mom, who takes him for walks every single day - one in the morning and one in the evening. My mom who generally only works in the mornings, so she's also around a lot more and so he wasn't alone for hours upon hours each day like he is with us.  Now that I'm processing all of this on paper (or.. err... electronic paper???) frankly, I can't blame him for being mad that I brought him back here, especially since - to make matters worse - there's a pit bull living in his house right now.

Even when I went to pick him up, he wasn't very excited to see me.  He was down the street and I started walking towards and he just wagged his tail a little... he didn't even try to come and see me! It wasn't until I got closer to him that he started walking my way, but even then, he seemed tentative.  It's enough to break a doggy mommy's heart.

What can you do for a dog who is depressed?  We're trying to give him lots of love and attention, but it's back to the grind of daily work so he's still alone a lot.  He doesn't want to eat his food, even when we put cheese and cereal and pizza and anything else we can think of in his bowl.  We even took him for a walk last night and I hope to take him for another today, but something tells me that it's going to be awhile before Murphy as we used to know him will be back to normal.

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