I mentioned my rescue dog in my last post so I thought I’d come on a say a bit more about her. She is a crazy Romanian rescue who was dumped in someone’s garden as a tiny puppy. She lived in a rescue centre in Romania for most of her life until she was 7mths which is when she was sent to a British rescue centre, which is where we adopted her from. She had only been with the British rescue for 2 weeks in a foster home when she came to live with us. She was a nervous little thing but who took to us very quickly thankfully. We’ve certainly had our ups and downs with her with regards to training. We were first time dog owners. I’d had a dog throughout my childhood until I was 18 but I wasn’t the main carer then so I didn’t really have much of an idea on dog training. Added to that we went into lockdown due to the pandemic when we’d had her for 2.5mths and so we never managed to get to any training classes until she was about 18 mths old. I turned to the internet to research dog training. We had a LOT to work through .
Firstly, she was terrified of the car. Drooling and vomiting on every journey. She was very nervous in the outside world on the street. However, we soon discovered that on a beach on in an open field, she was like a different dog, suddenly confident and excited. However, her excitedness was what got her into trouble in the end. Due to her tendency to panic at sudden noises, and try and bolt, we had to keep her on the lead at all times. Which meant we couldn’t allow her to play with other dogs, because even on a long line, it meant we were tied up in knots. We did allow play with a friends dog, but it was not helping anyone as by the end of the walk my hand would be ripped to shreds from the lead as she galloped about trying to chase her friend (who had a habit of running off miles in front). Sadly, we had to stop that play date in the end. We were ok if we found a secure field, but there is only one free one near us which they decided to lock for no apparent reason, and so she can never have any off lead play time these days. But due to no play time with other dogs, she is always so excited to see them when we’re walking on the lead. This creates an issue as she bounces around like a crazy girl and pings about at the end of the lead trying to get to them. I wouldn’t mind it if she just wanted a bum sniff like most other dogs. But she’d much rather ping around pulling my arm out it’s socket and tying everyone up in knots, and so we began avoiding other dogs at all costs. Which I’m sure doesn’t help her frustration.
Around September time last year we saw a massive improvement shift. She was walking past other dogs on the street quite well without the normal pinging around, we’d found a lovely very local field to walk round where we rarely saw any dogs so we had nice uninterrupted walks on the long line, almost felt like I had an off lead dog. Due to her being so relaxed at the field (and it only being a 2 minute car journey away) she had started to be happy getting in the car and had begun hopping in on her own accord. All was good. Then firework night happened and she had 2 solid weeks of local fireworks that sent her over the edge. Every night she was a quivering wreck in the corner of the room. This triggered her intense fear of bird scarers – which we’d always heard daily as we live in an area with farmers fields surrounding us. We hear them from the garden and even from in the house. She’d never been particularly scared of them until after firework night. All of a sudden she wouldn’t go to the field, she got scared of the car again as the car meant a walk somewhere where there were bird scarers (even though she still wasn’t scared of them in the garden). Her street walks got worse and worse and we basically didn’t know what to do as she was terrified to leave the house.
After advice from a behaviourist, we gave her a complete break from all walks and started doing “click the trigger” an “open bar close bar” when we heard loud noises. If you’re not familiar with these terms, click the trigger is when you use a clicker (or marker word) when a scary thing happens (in our case the bird scarer) and then feed the dog something very high value to them. So, for 2 weeks while she didn’t go out for a walk, every day when we were in the garden training/exercising every time we heard a bird scarer I’d say my marker work “here” and give her some nice chunky chicken pieces. Every time. In the house or garden. This meant keeping the chicken in my treat pouch at all times as I needed her to know that the sound meant something yummy. This worked well as she wasn’t scared at all by the sound in the garden, but she learnt that she needed to look at me when she did hear it. Open bar close bar is similar but it is more for longer noises. So when an aeroplane or helicopter goes over, or the church bells chime, I “open the bar” and feed her continuously tasty chicken or sausages. As soon as the sound stops, I stop feeding her so she absolutely knows the sound results in something nice.
After 2 weeks of that, she had started to look at me whenever she heard the noises. So we started, tentatively to leave the house again. Just walking the 10 minute walk between our house and my mum’s house (which is her other safe place). We still hear the bird scarers in both the street, and in mum’s garden, so I kept up with the click the trigger/open bar close bar. Finally, after a few months we seemed to be able to do a whole hour walk around the streets and through a few green spaces before even getting to my mum’s house.
We’ve just this week began to put her in the car again to drive to either my mum’s or to a local beach again so she can associate the car with somewhere she’s happy in. The guidelines for car training a dog is much much more slow and long winded, rewarding every time she walks towards the car etc etc. However, the way our house/driveway is, it really wasn’t working doing it that way and so we are trying it this way for now, as this is what worked before with the local field (before the fireworks put a stop to that one!) I will keep you posted as to how it goes.
Does anyone else have a rescue dog? Or any dog really? When we decided to get a dog I had such dreams of going for long country or beach walks, chatting to other dog owners, making new friends. But when you have a nervous rescue, it can be quite isolating at times. However, the love she gives me more than makes up for that and I wouldn’t send her back for anything! xx
Living Our Own Way 