Summer
Have a Nice Day! | 
 | | Barked: Sat Apr 14, '07 2:42pm PST |  | |  | | Heya Fudge!! I'll elaborate on my situation with Summer.
She was a 3 month old puppy when I adopted her, or that's what they told me. It seems accurate size-wise - she was about 20 lbs when I got her.
But already, she had had one previous owner, who gave her up to the rescue place (it's not a shelter, they only do fosters), AND they spayed her about a week before I got her, and she had a round of puppy shots. I got her the day I met her, so I wish I could have stopped the spay, but I didn't know about the trouble with vaccines, and I stupidly subjected her to the "boosters" when she turned about 5 months, and again last spring when she was about 15 mths old. She had the rabies vax, also the DHPP (is that how you spell it?) but separately.
I socialized her a great deal from the start - people, other animals, we even lived with a cat at the time (my old roommate's). She learned very quickly that Fester was boss, so she never messed with him. But when she turned about 8 months old, she started being leash aggressive to dogs. People she was fine with. It escalated as time went on, and up till about 3 months ago, I buckled down and contacted Magda. I'd learned about rabies vaccinosis about 2 months before that, but didn't know enough to really see the connection. The more I read and learned, the more convinced I was that that was what is wrong with Summer.
It's weird - she is such a great girl. She's a malinois, and they're so intense and focused and full of drive. And she is definitely that when it comes time for that! I thought it was a training issue - I would make sure she knew the difference between play time, walk time and sleepytime - and mostly she would get it. But then when it came to play time and walk time, her energy and focus would often be all over the place. She had the drive, but for some reason I couldn't often get her drive to work with me. I had problems harnessing that drive and plugging it into working with me.
But since I started on the remedy with Magda, I also employed a great trainer here, kind of about a month after we started homeopathic treatment. I work her hard, but I'm trying to be clear about what I am looking for. Meanwhile, my trainer Tyril is great - he understands that she is sensitive, and he knows the fine line with her - and she is responding great to the training. Since we started treatment, she's been getting better and better at responding to me.
Yesterday's incident was twofold: she saw her friend Diego across the street, so she leapt off the 10 ft concrete drop from the park to street level, dashed across the street to greet him. I right near had a heart attack. Thankfully, the street was really quiet... She's safe, thank dog... Then later in the park, she got into a tiff with Rosemary (who she's played with before, but Rosemary is strangely submissive, yet VERY pushy about being submissive, does that make sense?) and Summer suddenly didn't like what Rosemary was doing, and jumped on her back. Rosemary turned around to snap, and Summer went for her, grabbed her scruff and started shaking it like a toy as if to kill it... It was so horrifying. I screamed, grabbed her back legs and the other owner got his dog. It's a good thing Summer doesn't bite down hard... (I know this because she caught a squirrel once, did the shake/kill thing for about 10 seconds before she finally heard me to spit it out, and the squirrel escaped shaken but unhurt!)
But both incidents got me shaken up hard and I went home and burst into tears...
My trainer told me this morning not to worry... He said that for a dog who's only been through 4 sessions with him, she is responding really well to our advanced obedience commands. I'll proudly say that this morning, she held a strict sit/stay for two minutes in our off leash park, with dogs running up to her and jumping away, while I walked about 100 feet away from her... She broke her stay once, out of the ten or so times we practiced... I'm very happy with her!
I'm so excited to be treating her homeopathically as well as working on advanced obedience now - it seems as if she is finally discovering a clearer focus that she didn't have before through homeopathy, and with the obedience training, she is learning what to do with her new found clear focus better and better.
BTW, my remedy is Belladonna 30C - for all her symptoms.
She doesn't have any physical symptoms I can see - she's never had allergies, never had problems. She had some tummy troubles about once every two months BR (before raw) but since we've started raw, her stomach is stable. All her symptoms are of a mental/psychological/emotional nature.
Whew! That was a spiel!!  |  |  | |  |
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Dogster Obsessions: The Starter Kit for Dogs by Wildebeest
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