A new Member of the Family

[Clover]

Captured at last. Lovely to meet you Eva. Be a good girl in class

[Daisy]

Thank you ladies. I've never had such a camera-shy dog. Rusty was bad enough - most photos were of his tail disappearing out of the shot - but Eva is worse. She grabs the nearest toy and start galloping round and round. I don't think the training classes include 'how to get your dog to pose for a photo'!

[Daisy]

Today was Week 4 of training. It was my turn to do the 'heel work' - walking quietly on a loose lead round the room and between the other 3 dogs. And she was restless, reactive, tossing her head and generally very unsettled. We made lots of guesses as to why but didn't really know, but she unsettled the other 3 dogs, two of whom have huge issues. It wasn't until we were doing an exercise with her on her own in the room that we realised 'somebody' had put her head collar on the wrong way and it was probably uncomfortable. He apologised to her!!!

At teatime I'd arranged to take her to the vets at the end of surgery to get her weighed and to give her chance to go to the surgery for 'fun' so hopefully when/if she needs to go for treatment it will be less scary for her. I wondered whether to cancel it, but in the end decided if she was too upset to go in the vets I'd just bring her back home. Well, she walked in really well. Got lots of fuss from the receptionist (who is also a dog trainer and recommended the one we're going to). She sat on the scales - just for a nanosecond, but long enough, and the vet let her into the consulting room, let her have a sniff round and gave her a fuss and a treat. Then another lady arrived with a cocker spaniel, so I took Eva to the far corner of the waiting room and she sat with her back to the other dog and although she turned round to look at him a couple of times she didn't really get agitated. So lots more fuss, and the yet another lady arrived to collect cat food and she made a big fuss of Eva as well. So all in all, she was a little star.

[Plantaholic]

Well done. Eva, you are doing very well

[Gemini]

A very good day for Eva! Well done to her, and to you Daisy

[Daisy]

Week 5: The 'fallout' from Eva being so restless and fidgety last week was that one of the other dogs, Charlie, was too unsettled to come into class this week. We felt really guilty, Eva didn't! Charlie has loads of phobias - he was left outside as a puppy with no company, no socialising, nothing, and his current owner is still working with him 5 years after adopting him. So yesterday she decided to leave him in the car for the group work and just do one-to-one with him and then stay on for the next class. One other dog was absent, so that just left Eva and Darcy - a daschund. Darcy is the dog Eva worries about most, so the trainer got Charlie's mum to 'handle' a very life-like stuffed Jack Russell. I wish I could have videoed Eva's reaction to the JR - it certainly took her mind off Darcy!! But she settled down eventually and wasn't too bad. We extended the one-to-one training we'd done last week to another level, and she 'got' it immediately. The salmon roll treats helped!!! So I'm just hoping Charlie will be ok for next week - the poor dog doesn't need Eva in his life!

[Plantaholic]

They are so human, poor Charlie, one day I expect they will be the best of friends

[Daisy]

Plant - Charlie would break your heart. He's a lovely choc Lab but finds life really scary and hard - even a patch of sunlight on the floor can stop him in his tracks, and not even his favourite treat will get him to move. The person who did this to such a beautiful dog needs shooting!

[Plantaholic]

How dreadful, I hope they were prosecuted, his new owner has taken on a difficult job, does he like being cuddled?

[Daisy]

Plant - I doubt if the owner (a solicitor, would you believe!) was prosecuted - Charlie wasn't starving or beaten, and it's much hard to prove mental cruelty to an animal.

[Gemini]

Poor Charlie At least he has a loving home now. Friends of ours have a rescue dog, cross between a greyhound and something else. A timid, gentle boy. It took a long time, several years, with his loving owners before he stopped being afraid of everything and everyone. He will always be timid, but he is so much better now. He doesn't like small adults, so we wonder if a child/teenager was particularly cruel to him.

[Daisy]

Gem - the difficult thing is there's no way of knowing why your friends' rescue dog is wary of children/teenagers. It may not necessarily be because they did something to him - it could be something as random as he got stung by a wasp and there was a child nearby. We had a Border Collie, Ben, who developed a phobia of our tiled kitchen floor because he got 'bombed' by a large noisy fly as he was trying to go through a door and the door shut to on him, making him panic. Then he slipped on the floor and wouldn't ever walk on it again. It was just the association of ideas that caused the problem.

[Daisy]

Week 6: Poor Charlie was still unable to go into the heel-work session. His owner (who deserves a medal for how patient she is with him) had stopped in a lay-by on the way to class to let him stretch his legs etc, and a man in a nearby house came out and started marching up and down right by them, clearly wanting them to move on and poor Charlie spooked again.

OH did Eva's heel work, and she was really good this week. Then they did another exercise with all three dogs moving round the room at once and she managed that, too, with only one frantic glance at little Darcy. I did the one-to-one bit, which is to teach her to concentrate on me rather than decide to do her own thing, but OH had gone into the kitchen to wash the cups up and she kept running between the 2 of us! It isn't often OH gets told to leave the dishes for someone else to do!!!

I commented on how calm the 4th member of the group is - a huge black Lab cross called Jack. The owner and trainer both laughed their heads off - apparently when he started classes he was ready to fight anything and anybody who moved and it took up to 3 people to control him. He will probably never be able to be walked off lead, but he's made such great progress and is clearly a happy dog.

[MillieB]

It is rewarding to work with rescue dogs. We have had five in the last 45 years .Well done on working with Eva.
Did anyone watch 'Rescue dogs to super dogs ' on Wednesday?

[Daisy]

Thanks, MillieB. No, I missed it - what did you think of it?