Whilst everyone was gathered to witness Violet's transition, Rina wanted to play. Holding her favourite squeaky toy, she looked hopefully up at everyone, silently begging them to give her just an iota of attention.
Alas, it wasn't so. What with birthdays, work, another pregnancy announcement. Rina was becoming more and more neglected. It wasn't for the lack of understanding. They kept her well fed. She slept wherever she wanted. It's just that they never had time to brush her, take her for walkies, even give her a flea bath now and then.
And it hurt Rina.
Deeply.
So much so that suddenly, without warning, she started turning nasty. Snapping at the postman, chasing the paper delivery girl. Even growling whilst she was eating her food.
Yes, she'd trained herself to have the Aggressive trait and it was making life around the family VERY uncomfortable indeed.
But worse was to come.
Because of Ginny's pregnancy, she was awarded maternity leave and was home alone with Rina when the worst possible scenario happened.
Alerted to Rina's obvious 'distress', the 'social worker for pets' Esteban Owen, arrived to chew out Ginny.
He tore shreds out of her, listing all the wrong things she and the rest of the family had done.
Already in a hormonal state, Ginny was pushed to the brink with this devastating news. And she took it very badly.
Rina in the meantime, stood by, confused at all the yelling and screaming.
He gave Ginny an ultimatum. Either they give up Rina for good.
Or she goes to a facility for badly behaved dogs and is retrained. *
Her choice.
He was fair but extremely disappointed.
"Please remember," he said as he turned to walk out the door, "she's aggressive now, and you've got that new baby coming up soon. I shudder to think of what would happen if Rina was ever left alone with the baby. I could be wrong. But I don't want to be the one to run the risk."
With a heavy heart, Ginny agreed with him and let him take Rina away with him.
Rina trotted out of the house and jumped into the car to await her fate. To her, it was just another adventure. No biggie really.
Whilst indoors, Esteban tried to reassure Ginny that everything will work out just fine.
He left the house, climbed into the car and turned to Rina.
"Come on girl," he said quietly, "let's go shall we?"
Ginny watched through the window as the car drove up towards the hill.
She burst into tears when she saw that Rina had turned around and was looking out of the rear window of the car.
Rina's toy box, and food bowl were a sad reminder that Rina was gone......
... maybe not permanently, but she was still gone.....
She didn't know how she was going to break the news to everyone.
She really didn't.
*please note that this does NOT happen in game. Once the social worker turns up, there's no plea bargaining at all. You can't even talk to the social worker, the option isn't there. They take the pet and that's the end of it. But because I've got a real soft spot for Rina and don't REALLY want her to leave. I've left an option open for her to 'return', by making up a separate saved game so that I can always return to the original saved game prior to her departure.
