Rosie Update

So, while the torture of waiting continues, I figured it was a good time for an update on Rosie.

She is coming along nicely. There are still some things that freak her out. Still a no-go on trying for the car. We took her out to show her that Amos was getting in the car and once again she flattened out. I think she now equates my car with badness. I guess its a good sign that she doesn’t want to go in it because she doesn’t want to be taken away from her new home. I just hope that one day she won’t think of it as so scarey.

She stayed in the kitchen with me yesterday the entire time I was making eggplant burgers. This included boiling water and after they were mixed up, frying them in a pan. So, the kitchen has become MUCH less scarey for her.

Walks are getting easier, but you can definitely see a huge difference in her confidence levels when she is walking a path she knows well and something completely new. We mostly keep to the path she knows, but the other day some idiot had his dog off leash and was letting the dog run free. This dog makes Amos highly reactive, so we had to take a longer way around the block so they wouldn’t get too close. I hate it when ppl do that. Just because you think your dog is "good" doesn’t mean my dog will appreciate your dog running up into my dogs face and I can’t really stop a fight between an unleashed dog and my dog.

She’s still velcro dog with Amos. She goes everywhere with him… and really calms down nicely at night if he chooses to "put her to bed." There have been a few nights where he has stayed downstairs with her for about 5 to 10 minutes before coming up with us. It seems that on those nights, she sleeps through the entire night without howling or flipping food dishes. We are now also locking them in the kitchen and dining room together when we leave them alone and this has really helped her to chill out too.

My SIL brought her little Sheltie over to visit this past weekend. Shelties play SO different than Retrievers, but it was massively funny to watch. Rosie just loves other dogs and she was so good with Ranger. The visit actually helped bring Amos out of his funk a little and they wrestled for a while. I’m in the process of loading video of some of the fun, but its a big video so its taking a while to load… It’ll be on FB if you are a FB friend.

Finally, the stairs… we’ve found a few very high value treats that she really likes. ReadyWhip being her most recent favorite. This one seems to work the best because its easy to dispense a little of and doesn’t get stuck in her throat and boy does she love it. We’ve managed to get her almost all the way up the stairs, but she still gets freaked and then wants down. The problem right now is she doesn’t know how to get down… she doesn’t turn around and instead wants to jump down backwards. So, we’ve realized we have to do this together with one of us at the top and another right behind or next to Rosie.

I thought I would try putting the leash on her again to help encourage her up, but she froze again half way up. I went down to help her so she wouldn’t jump and left the leash up the stairs. Next thing I know, Amos has it in his mouth and is PULLING the leash up the stairs!!! It was so adorable, but unfortunately, it was chocking her! LOL So, we unhooked it and I managed to get her down… I think the biggest problem is that about half way up the stairs, it goes from being an open staircase to an enclosed staircase. It dawned on me yesterday, and I’m not sure how we can get her over that fear. So, we’ll keep working on it. Its been almost a month since she came home and she has come so far! We are hopeful that in another month we will see some more progress!.