[Curls]

I really admire your patience and dedication with this dog. Perhaps chat with your vet and see what she thinks. Does the rescue have a groomer they use?

 

[ShyDog]

She's such a lovely character, it's just incredibly rewarding to see glimpses of it coming through 🥰 though I have to admit we've had a few moments of weakness where we considered adopting another older/more confident dog as a companion for her to speed up the process, as she really does change when another dog is around...

We have left a message with the vet to get back to us - I think I'd like to avoid taking her there for the trim itself as I'd like to avoid too much negative association with vet/car for now, but hopefully they can give some advice as you suggest.

The rescue had their handler do it and apparently she was always nervous so they just did them as quickly as possible, and she couldn't run away while in her kennel...

 

[JoanneF]

As part of the desensitisation for nail clipping, you can clip dry spaghetti to get her accustomed to the sound.

 

[ShyDog]

Thank you that's a great idea! I'll add that to our desensitisation steps for sure

 

[CachetheBC]

It is not the destination, but the journey that matters.

Thank you for sharing your journey, it is so heartwarming, it has brought back so many memories, (and a few tears - and that is okay) of the most amazing journey I traveled with my abused rescued boy. It is not a straight forward path, there will be successes, celebrate them no matter how tiny they may be, there will be setbacks, (keep trying!), much like the layers of an onion, as each layer of hardship slowly peels away, there may be more struggles to overcome, but keep trying!! Believe in yourself, believe in your pup - you can do this and your lives will be so much richer for it.

Charlie came to me with a history of abuse, the scars on his body, the damage to his trust was unimaginable, the fear in his eyes was unmistakable, (and heartbreaking) but still he held out faint hope that his future would not be a repeat of his past. Earning his trust was a monumental task, it took a good two years for him to finally truly believe that life doesn't hurt, and it can even be fun. The first time I saw him play in the yard with the other dogs, several months after I adopted him, brought tears to my eyes.
Charlie was with me for only 10 short years, but during that time he gave me his heart, he gave the gift of his trust, we shared a bond that words cannot describe, it was a connection of the heart and the soul, that one needs to experience to understand the depth and breadth of it. He asked for so little, just a chance at a second chance, but gave me so much!

 

[ShyDog]

Honestly thank you all for responding, supporting and sharing your own stories!

It feels very therapeutic to just make these little updates keeping track of her progress (we do also have a journal of her day-to-day activities - we are very extra as dog parents). And it's so wonderful to hear from people who have been through it and know how rewarding (and challenging) it can be! I'm glad Charlie found you and learned that life could actually be a pretty wonderful thing ☺

 

[ShyDog]

Some big steps this weekend:

1 - for the first time ever she was brave enough to try her soft dog bed! The first time we introduced it the unstable surface seemed to really unnerve her and she's only been comfortable with blankets on the floor. Since trying it she's spent almost the entire day lounging quite happily 😂
2 - she met my partner's family and their 4 (!!) terriers. A long pack walk on the common, followed by them coming back to ours for lunch and she did amazingly well hanging out in her safe space observing everything - she didn't show any noticeable stress signals and we were very impressed
3 - she came extremely close to moving from her main safe zone to join us in the other room 🥹 didn't quite make it in the end, but she spent 5+ minutes "psyching herself up" going back and forth between safe space and door... Hopefully soon she will be ready to go the rest of the way 🥰

 

[ShyDog]

Bit the bullet and took her to the groomers for her nails and she was amazing!

We did visit them first without her and talk to them about her and see what their set up was, plus our friend recommended them. When we popped around they turned off anything noisy and introduced her to their own mature, calm dog who definitely helped her a lot. She didn't enjoy it but she also didn't shut down and they were very gentle + efficient with her. Felt like I blinked and she was done - which seems much better than me faffing about for 5+ minutes per paw due to my own inexperience with nail trimming 😅

Now to continue with DS/CC with a bit more breathing room (and a back-up plan if we need it in future).

 

[CachetheBC]

Wonderful to hear things went well with the groomer.
Kudos to the groomer for understanding and working with you and your girl.

 

[ShyDog]

Our girl's world is slowly starting to grow 🥳

• she now loves both of her soft dog beds (one in each room) and is definitely getting deeper sleep now as well (we've noticed her making the most adorable little huffs/woofs in her sleep, which she didn't before 🥺)
• she's gained a lot of confidence with my car and jumps in on her own now without needing the ramp - less sure of my partner's car but we didn't plan for that to be the dog car and just intend to do a bit of training in that car with the ramp so we can use it in an emergency, but otherwise we will stick to mine.
• out on walks in new places she's loving life (even when she's out without a buddy dog). She's bright, happy and thoroughly enjoys all the new smells. Still occasionally nervous on dark evening walks so we do these as a "pack" when we can as she seems happier when both me and my partner are there.
• she's now met a lot of our friends' dogs who have helped her confidence in slightly more "scary" places and her bravery in general seems to be benefitting from this
• she still isn't ready to actively move to join us in a different room, but if we are in the same room and sat nearby she will often sit/get up and move towards us or give us "a look" when she wants a bit of attention, so she does clearly enjoy it (on her own terms)
• she has created her own little routine in the evenings once we sit down on the sofa (and she knows we aren't likely to move for a while) where she will explore the rest of the downstairs a bit before deciding which bed she wants to stay on for the evening
• she's also now comfortable enough to spend time focusing on her kong/more difficult chews rather than giving up easily if there isn't an instant reward, we hope to start gently challenging her with new "puzzles" (e.g. treats in a folded/rolled towel etc) now her brain seems to be able to unwind enough to focus on these things

 

[Curls]

Congrats on the progress. This much give you such a feeling of accomplishment.

 

[Madra Anamchara]

@ShyDog , you must be doing something right. Good for you and good for the lovely dog. You both deserve a pat.

 

[ShyDog]

She makes it feel very easy as she's so sweet and willing - the most stress we get is just reminding each other not to ask too much of her on the days she's doing particularly well 😅

 

[ShyDog]

Brave girl update: we had two successful multi-night visits to family over Christmas and New Year!! We gave her lots of breaks away from people but she also did happily settle in the same room as other people during quiet periods - and we made sure nobody tried to give her any attention other than dropping the odd treats near her. Both visits we had other dogs around to keep her company which I'm sure helped a lot.

She seems to be really growing in confidence with her daily life at the moment. We rarely have spooks on walks now and when we do she recovers very quickly. She reliably takes treats, even in new places, and her recall is consistent enough that we can let her go off leash in places she knows well - which she adores. She is full of zoomies!! It's so lovely to see her run around and be happy. Her network of buddies at our local park has been amazing and we have been able to practise recalling off other dogs + polite greetings (i.e. not too bouncy) with their help. If anything since she's been allowed off lead she's actually been less excited by other dogs though (except her bestie lurcher friend who she's in love with) and has actually been better at ignoring them than we anticipated.

She's still less engaged around the house (and the houses we've visited) but we've progressed to being able to ask her to move a couple of steps off her bed and sit to put her harness on for walks. She also will often get up if we are in a different room and move to the doorway to watch us better. Which for her I think is pretty huge progress given she's mostly only known kennel life and a lack of free movement.

 

[JoanneF]

That's a fabulous update, good to hear.

 

[ShyDog]

It's fun reading back on this thread and realising how far she's come now. Still a way to go but compared to those first few weeks she's so different now 🥰

So much progress has been made it's actually hard to list it all at this point 😅 but primarily she's starting to move around downstairs much more freely, approaching to sniff us at random moments during the day when we're downstairs (not just when we are sat down in the evening), allowing us to introduce her to novel objects, much more comfortable with the garden + door, joining us from the other room, settled well when being dog-sat by our friends for a weekend etc

Our biggest win is her being more comfortable with the garden + garden door now. We stopped working on it for over a month as we realised we were pushing a bit too hard, and since we've come back to it she's come on leaps and bounds. A great reminder that less is more when it comes to training, especially around anxieties.

Also very happy about finding a new toy that she actually wants to engage with! Since she loves her lickmat so much we got her a soft spiky ball to cover in liver paste that she could lick and chew to her heart's content. Needless to say she's a big fan and is starting to get the hang of the fact that it can move away. We've progressed to being able to gently roll it to her a little bit and she's not spooked by us interacting with it.

Feels like a happy, confident girl isn't so far away now.

 

[Madra Anamchara]

@ShyDog , this is so great to hear. And yes, you have learned one of the primary things about working with dogs like this: less is more. I remember how utterly thrilling it was when a shut-down dog would, for the first time, come and bump my leg with their nose, or do some other thing for the first time that showed huge progress. Good for you, and good for this beautiful dog.
One thing I did with a couple of the dogs I fostered was keep a sort of online journal in a forum thread, logging the progress, and I found that people liked to hear the updates.

 

[LinzandBragi]

@ShyDog How are things going? I just picked up my first adult rescue last weekend and I"m experiencing some of the same problems that you were. My previous rescues were under 5 months when rescued, so I didn't have any issues with fear or bonding. My new rescue shuts down any time something startles him (which is almost EVERYTHING), or when we're training and he gets frustrated, but also on walks if I end up faster than him and pull forward on the leash. I'm feelings incredibly frustrated and sad. I know I need to have patience, but I'm just not sure what I need to do. I know I need to give him time, but how do I not reinforce some bad behaviors and fears, while letting him decompress and learn to trust me? This is a very unexpected issue as the foster family that I picked him up from didn't give me the truth about him and how he behaved, so I was completely unprepared for these problems.

 

[ShyDog]

@LinzandBragi hey! I'd totally forgotten about this thread so thank you for bringing me back ☺

I'm happy to say things are overall going pretty well at the moment. Our girlie is nicely settled in her day-to-day activities and is much more resilient to occasional changes/variations. She is also more open to us introducing her to new objects/toys for enrichment. It's still slow going and takes a few "sessions" before she will reliably interact with a new thing, but it's much better than when she used to leave the room if we brought something new in 😅

We've even managed to go on a couple of hiking holidays with her and she had a blast exploring all the new walking routes! Out on adventures in nature she's a totally different dog, much more confident and inquisitive. She's now able to navigate past joggers, cyclists and groups of people without freaking out (as long as there is adequate space of course) - she has learned how to safely put distance between herself and these things without needing to run away completely so can stay off lead in more situations now ☺

She initially found my partner to be triggering/intimidating but now she is equally comfortable with us (if anything we've put so much effort into making him extra rewarding she prefers him over me now 😂).

It took us a few months to start reaching this point, the first month or so was hard. I feel your pain, it's so so tough when it feels like everything sets them off, but patience really is key. At first we didn't do any real "training" as we wanted every interaction to be confidence boosting for her. We just repeated the same few tricks she knew and made sure she was always "successful". We were also extremely lucky as our neighbour would bring her dog to walk with us (multiple times a day) to help us out and give our girl a confidence boost. Truly not sure how we would have managed without her...

So overall lots of positives! However we are considering (now we've had a good period to settle and see how she progresses) discussing anxiety medication with the vet as there are areas where we can't seem to get beyond a certain point. Primarily she still isn't confident moving freely around the house and we really want her to feel comfortable in her environment. So we will discuss with vet/behaviourist at some point soon.

Rather long-winded update but hopefully it will reassure you slightly that with a lot of patience you can make progress! Just focus on the teeny tiny baby steps ☺ we rewarded pretty much everything she offered at first because the world was scary for her and it was hard enough just to exist around us - we tried not to worry about bad behaviours etc. We also gave her a ton of space and still do have to treat her more like a cat as she's just not as "people-friendly" as regular dogs and that's okay. She's got her little pack of trusted humans and that's all we need.

 

[ShyDog]

For those still following this thread of mine, we've had some recent breakthroughs since dog-sitting our friends' dog for a week. Having another dog to demo for her really is the most helpful thing for our girl to build new behaviours!

We can now get out to the garden solo - with minimal encouragement from us - and just enjoy hanging out there, sniffing around, chewing sticks, being a dog! It's really lovely. Sometimes we even get to enjoy playful zoomies with the humans 🥰

She still doesn't exactly move around the house without motivation (i.e. treats scattered around) but she has now successfully managed to find treats around the whole of the downstairs, where previously she would get stuck at thresholds. I think this has massively helped her to gain confidence re: moving from her "safe zone" to the garden and back without us needing to guide her.

She has also had an unexpected week of paw handling progress after she cut her paw pad. She has taken to this extremely well with the help of liver paste and today I was able to put on her bandage in the morning, and remove her bandage in the evening, on my own without holding her while she sat like a perfect angel and didn't ask for her paw back at all while I was handling it. This is an extremely big bit of progress for her as she has always been sensitive about paw handling and now she's allowing me to do it while it's uncomfortable 🥰 so proud of her

We are hypothesising that a lot of her stationary behaviour around the house stems from growing up in kennels and never having free roam, more than pure anxiety at this stage. We noticed even with another dog in the house (who gave her a huge confidence boost) she still would mostly remain in her zone. So although I think anxiety medication could still be helpful (and we plan to discuss in our vaccination vet visit next week) it may perhaps not be as impactful as we initially thought. Her general progress is still continuing so perhaps we just need to rethink some of our activities and conditioning a little more before committing to managing the side effects of medications. Though we would certainly still consider situational medication for stressful events (e.g. vet visit, fireworks night, etc)