Day 515 Leonitis - Leo and Callie....reunited! Today was a pleasant day at the facility. The chaos of yesterday is behind us and today we just had to hang out with and take care of the dogs. All the dogs had a great time today and were very playful, they seemed to be relieved that things had calmed down some as well and they could get back to concentrating on playing hard. One of our wonderful Volunteers, Joyce, cooked an entire turkey breast just for the dogs so everyone got a chunk of turkey with their evening meal and I walked around this evening before I left and gave everyone another little slice. They were all quite happy except for little Sprocket who turned up his nose at the turkey but ate the hot dog chunk I offered him. With Mikayla now in her new home we are reacquainting Leo with Callie so I thought Id tell you a little bit about Callie today. Callie found her way into our local shelter as a stray. She became very scared at the shelter and was deemed a rescue only dog and put on the urgent list due to her aggressive behavior. When I met her, she acted like she wanted to eat me, lunging and growling and snapping at me, but I could see it was just fear. Fear aggression is pretty easy to read in dogs and is the most common form of aggression. Some of the signs of fear aggression is head held low, ears pinned back, hackles up, nose wrinkled, showing you all of their teeth, tail tucked or held very low, body in a semi crouching position etc. Often they will lunge forward towards you barking aggressively growling and snapping then immediately retreat back a few feet and continue to growl. They will hold their bodies sideways to you rather than facing you straight forward etc. Callie was doing all of these things. Will this dog bite if you pursue it? The answer is maybe...definitely if cornered. The goal of a fear aggressive dog is to get you to go away and leave them alone. I actually passed on accepting Callie into our program because I didnt think taking her from one chaotic environment to another was going to be good for her since her fear was likely due to being in a high stress environment. Our facility is much less chaotic than the shelter, but I thought it would still be to stressful for her to come here and I didnt want to do more harm than good for Callie. I did however tell the rescue coordinator at the shelter that I thought she needed to go into foster care asap and that I thought she would make a complete turn around in just a matter of days. Well, the rescue coordinator was not going to let me off the hook that easy and took those words to heart and took Callie home with her that very night to foster. Sure enough, in a matter of days, Callie had become a happy outgoing dog again. I had no idea she had done this and after a couple of weeks she called me and said, I have a dog I want you to meet...Ill bring her to you. This is unusual...the shelter doesnt normally bring dogs to you..you usually go to the shelter to meet the dogs....I was curious to see who she was bringing. She brought me Callie who ran in and jumped in my lap. I recognized her immediately and smiled and said....Yea...Ill take her...Im such a sucker for a happy outcome. I wish I could take credit for her turn around but it was all the wonderful rescue coordinator at the shelter who saw past Callies fears and saw her potential and took a chance and brought her home with her. Talk about dedication to your job! Callie is a young girl, likely around a year to year and a half old. She is fine with everyone and is just a happy, energetic puppy. Loves to play with the dogs and loves her people friends too. Shes done a complete turn around from that snapping, snarling, terrified dog I met at the shelter. Now we just need to find her a home of her own! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are thankful every single day for all of you out there who follow our blog daily and who support us here at PAWS. We are blessed to have such wonderful supporters! More tomorrow!
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:43:00 +0000
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