Not bonding with our traumatized rescue dog

Hi Greencath,

Thank you for providing a home to Pixie. I understand that she is way too much trouble than you expected and I do feel for you. I have 3 rescue dogs and each of them came with some issues but fortunately not to the extent of Pixie and they all got over their fear/trauma from their past life.

The first thing I would like to recommend is:

DON'T USE a 30' LEASH!

When your dog is uncontrolable, especially when he is fearful, keep your dog close to you with 4-5' leash when walking. One of my dogs, Noah, never wore a collar or leash before we adopted him at the age of 1.5 yrs old and he was totally uncontrolable by jumping and turning around back and forth. Also, long leashes and retractable leashes could cause injuries for both dogs and owners so I would not recommend those.

Secondly, get Pixie familiarized your house and neighborhood little by little. I always take my foster dogs on a same route everyday until they get familiar with the neighborhood (dogs usually don't pee and poo on walks until they feel comfortable because releasing puts them at vulnerable posture).

Are you making her food available all the time? If you are, please stop that. Feed her twice a day at set times and if she doesn't finish, put the food away after 15-20 mins. If you are feeding her at set time and she eats well, try to feed her from hand, a few kibbles at a time. Take advantage of any time of interaction and give her a lot of attention as you feed her to gain her trust. Once you get her trust, she will become more manageable because she will then try to pay more attention to you to please you.

Last year I had a foster dog that came from a seizure of 26 dogs that were literally lived in feces ([url=http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/26dogsseizedfromrural_colu.html]26 dogs seized from rural Columbia County home | Oregon Local News - OregonLive.com[/url]). Beau was full of wounds by being attacked by other dogs and very fearful since he didn't know the outside world. It took me over 2 months but he did come out of himself, gradually but steadily. I tried not to overwhelm him and my 3 dogs were tremendous help since Beau saw how they interact with me and learned a lot of things.

Please look at the bright side of Pixie:

First of all, she is now potty-trained and sleeps in her crate at night! You guys did a good job!

She is not aggressive and/or a biter. Don't take this for granted. You will see in this forum a lot of cases of biting/aggression problems.

I am not an expert like kjd told you and it sometimes might be hard for people to understand what I write here since I am not a native English speaker but I would love to help you if possible. Lets face Pixie's issues one at the time. Patience, fairness and consistency are the key.

Thanks alot, ccmom, kjd, MaxHollyNoah.

Having support and good advice is huge when you are temporarily out of rope

Life with Pixie is 2 steps forward, 1 back, but there is progress, thanks for pointing it out. Like a puppy, people need praise too, I suppose! I shared your emails with my 14 y.o. daughter to help put things in perspective.

The foster mom told us to buy and use a 30 foot leash to give her potty privacy. We are retiring it in the wake of my accident, rightly as you point out, MHN! And trooper that Pixie is, she DOES potty on the short leash. So she has proven that she can adjust. Of course she also chews through leashes We have to leave them on, except in the crate, to minimize the recoiling/tug of war b/c she never wants to go outside, and is smart enough to know that leash = outside.

On the positive side, did I mention she's very pretty, black and white like a Husky with white muzzle, chest and eyebrows? And very soft ears. Some people think she may be a greyhound GS mix. She is very shy and cuddly (although sometimes neurotically so). A good match eventually, I hope, for our cat-loving household. We actually have a cat that acts more like a dog than she does

Thanks for the encouragement. I appreciate and will reread your replies.

Greencath- I just read through your concern about your rescue dog and noticed that you sound much more hopeful in your second post . We adopted a 5 month old border collie/black lab/other things dog in December of 2007 and had what sounds like a very similar experience to yours. I've had dogs for much of my life but had never had a fearful dog and it can be overwhelming. We have come a long way and while things can be stressful at times, it is also so rewarding to know that we are providing a nice, SAFE life for our fearful dog. It will take a lot of patience but it does get much better over time.

The other posts on your topic have some great advice so I won't repeat them but one thing that has worked really well for us is we have taught our dog a lot of tricks. This helped us bond with him and helps us to keep his attention when he is afraid. He is very afraid of loud trucks and will even stand and shake inside the house when garbage trucks or other big trucks go by. Now when he hears the trucks he will come to us and we just have him do tricks until the truck is gone. This gets his mind off what is scaring him and builds his confidence.

Another important thing to do is to make him earn all food that you give him. Have him sit in front of his food bowl and then release him before each meal. Have him do something - sit, wait, rollover, etc. - before every treat. Our dog has gotten to the point that he will not take a teat that is just offered to him without a request to do something. And if the person giving the treat doesn't request something, he will do something on his own (like beg or rollover) before taking the treat. He was very nervous about certain tricks we tried to teach him, in particular anything that involved putting something on or around his head. So instead of having him hold a treat on his nose, we put him in a down stay and put a treat on each extended paw and have him stay like that until we release him. Be creative!

Regarding the pawing and snapping, what worked with us was a firm, but not yelling, "no bite" or "no scratch" and then we walked away from him. I have also been pulled off my feet several times (no concussion, but some pretty scraped up knees and elbows) using a 30-foot leash. We stopped using that pretty quickly. We have started using it again recently when we take him to the beach so he can run a little free but that's it. MaxHollyNoah's suggestion of walking him on the same walk until he's comfortable and then adding to it until he's comfortable again worked really well for us.

Regarding the aggression thing, fearful dogs can become aggressive during adolescence so just be aware and address any aggression issues immediately. If you work with her every day to gain her trust, make her feel safe and expect that she will take longer than non-fearful dogs to get used to her new life, things should be fine .

One last, very important suggestion.... make sure she is wearing a tag with your contact info on it and get her micro-chipped. Our dog got loose twice in the first six months that we had him during a panic episode. The first time he got away from our pet sitter and was gone for 4 hours. He ended up coming back home because we had walked him so much in our neighborhood he knew how to get home. The second time he pulled out of his collar when a school bus drove by us and squealed its brakes. That time I just got down on the ground and called him and he came to me. Also make sure he has a collar he can't get out of when he pulls like a martingale collar.

Hope this helps! Fearful dogs can be a puzzle and you will make mistakes but don't be hard on yourself. Dogs are very forgiving .