New Tricks, Same Dog.

So Colbert has picked up on the eternal game of fetch that occurs in our home between Max, Buela, D and I.

He likes to chase our red Kong around the living room. D will roll it across the floor and Colbert will bound after it, alternately pouncing and prancing to get it. Of course this means restraining Buela and Max so as Colbert can get versus those two.

Rising of the Phoenix...

I say Phoenix because Colbert may be ready to move on from our home. He has come so far, and yet still needs more work, we took him and the others to the James Island Dog Park and then on to see the staff at Pet Helpers for an update. Everything was sublime at the park, but once he saw K and got a whiff of the shelter itself he reverted to him oldself from October.

K thinks that she has a home for Colbert with the father of the woman who adopted one of his siblings. Also his 3 other siblings are still at the shelter without human socialization beyond potty breaks, food, and visitors. Which we know is the best they can provide with all the other animals at the shelter. But they do need more interaction in a normal household with stable dogs and loving humans. There also is a Golden that has issued with being touched due to prior abuses.

On a more happy note, enjoy the pictures from today at the Dog Park.

I wish these could be back dated.

Standing up on the console tween us on the way to the dog park.















"put your head on my shoulder..."















Watching the world go by...

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So we have had Colbert for just over 3 months now. He immensely enjoys herding Buela around the house and even gives Corona a reason to run and play. He is still wary of me while he will sleep curled up next to Donovan on the love seat.

I remember waking up one morning to someone licking my foot - no weird thing in this house, both Buela and Corona love feet. However this was more than just a few passes on my toes, this was my entire foot right up to my ankle. Then I wiggled my toes and off he ran. He's becoming quite the goober.

Here is the email and D sent out recently with updates and anecdotes:

Anyway, Colbert has made leaps and bounds in progress since bringing him home in October. He's kind of hit a plateau this month. He's become a apart of the daily walks with the rest of the dogs. When I first tried walking him it was via the body harness, which provided no means of training him how to behave on a leash. When I put a choke chain on him, he fought vigorously before we even got out the door. I let that get the better of me, so I gave up for a while on trying to get him out on walks. The shelter worker with whom I dealt said that he busted an eye vessel when she tried to put him on a leash.

After a little while I got the idea in my head to use a harness and a choke chain simultaneously. That way I could get him used to the feeling of the choke chain but use the harness to control his tantrums without worrying about him hurting himself. It worked great. After one session of using both devices he was ready for the choke chain solely. He did the usual struggling in the beginning of the first walk, and even less on the second. He realized very quickly, as the choke chain is designed to do, that it's in his best interests to figure out what to do in order to not get choked. Now he's almost as good as the rest of them on walks.

He's grown more comfortable with me than with Wendy. He still avoids her as he did the both us in earlier months. He does many things now that show he's on the right track to becoming normal. He's at my feet right now, sleeping. He'll choose to sleep next to me rather than in the corner of the room as he used to do. Earlier today and on other occasions all of the dogs will take a nap on the love seat that I'm sitting on while watching TV. So he's choosing to be next to me and/or around the pack rather than separated and isolated. Good sign.

Everyone who sees him always remarks as to how cute he is. Wendy and I went to Magnolia Gardens last weekend for a dog walk for cancer research. He got so many compliments with his big Corgi ears, big Corgi smile, and little Corgi legs. It'll be hard to let him go, to return him to the adoption center. I'd love to keep him, but the purpose of fostering him was to rehabilitate him for someone else. If I did keep him, then we'd be testing our limits of how many animals we could handle if we desired to foster again. And that's what I originally wanted to do was to foster dogs that needed special attention, fix them, and return them for adoption. If I keep every dog that I foster, then I'll reach the limit of how many dogs I can handle and then I won't be able to help any more dogs. So it's necessary to return the fostered dog so that I can foster another one. That's how I'll maximize the number of dogs I can help.

Taken to anchoring his snout on my arm while riding in the truck, as the one picture shows. He'll maintain that for however long the truck ride is. It's cute.

After the piddling on the dining room floor got old we have decided to start working on house breaking. This involves putting his harness on in the morning and getting everyone outside so they can all piddle on the lawn. So far so good.

Also, after having him walking with the clan on his said harness for about a month D thought it might be time to try our favorite training device - the choke chain.

Colbert has spent less than 48 hours walking with a leash and chain combo and walks beautifully, like he has been doing it his whole life. Versus the tugging and yanking and ungangly-ness of the harness. He is adorable and spends 95% of his time on the leash staring up at D while his big purple tongue hangs out.

Riding in the truck standing on the center console.
















Enjoying the sun in a giant field.

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What lately has perplexed us most is that Colber has no qualms in getting up close to us in the truck. He likes to check out the windows and bury his nose into the crooks of elbows, but the favorite is (like Buela) to stand on the center console and watch the world go by.

Meanwhile, when in the house, coming near us is like a stealth mission and unless we have food we are to be avoided.

He still likes to hide under dog beds and pillows, though we have removed the large dog bed so that forces him to hide in plain sight with the collection of three smaller beds. I have also watched him nose the couch cushions to the floor so he can use those to hide his nose. This morning when D got out of the shower Colbert wasn't under his usual pillow. D thought nothing of it until a little blonde Corgi head popped up out of the blankets and pillows of our own unmade bed.

The fur on the tip of his nose is slowly growing back, developing a velvet quality and the patch of foot pad has healed beautifully. Which means he is back to roughhousing with our crew. Even Corona, the standoffish chichi mix is goading him into playing with her. Must be because he isn't as rough as Buela and is smaller than she is. You can't imagine how funny it is to see a usually reserved princess dog start clapping her forelegs to the floor and pawing at his little bear cub face. I feel like I have to have the camera permanently in my hand because the by the time I get the camera and turn it on all the action has stopped and the pups have all gone back to sleeping in sun puddles. I will have to work harder on my reaction time.

Happy faced Colbert

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Per D.....

So, a significant milestone happened today. Over the past couple of weeks, when wrestling on the floor with the dogs, Colbert has become less and less evasive and more willing to get near me. While my hand is touching another dog he will get right up to it and sniff it, until I would direct my hand at him in a playful manner and he would back up. Then he stopped moving away and would just let me flail my fingers at him. He would always be tense while I would scratch his head after cornering him to prevent his escape.

Anyway, today we were all playing on the floor and he let me scratch his head without running off. He even responded when I scratched him at the base of his tail—contorting his body in the standard way a dog will when you find their sweet spot. He's so happy when he plays with the other dogs.

Playtime is over now, and he's back under his little fort: a dog bed that he wears as a hat. He spends most of the time underneath something. Last week he even walked with it on top of him to his food bowl until the bowl was underneath the bed as well and then began to eat...while under the bed.

I'm anxious to see how much more he improves with more time.

-D

Our house guest this weekend: My co-workers beagle; Charlie.















One of many 'forts'.

Friday we went to Wannamaker Park.

After a short walk around the neighborhood with Colbert catching on relatively well. We went for the short drive and walked the mile long paved trail culminating in a short stint at the dog park. Walking on a leash with him is still a struggle, as he is still looking for a way out versus looking forward to see where he is walking. The result of all this struggling, besides a very tired puppy, is that he unfortunately ripped an piece of the pad on one of his toes, into a flap, about the size of the top of a pencil eraser. We have wrapped his foot up in a piece of paper towel with some bandage tape. The vet's office is in our future...

D thinks that Colbert realizes that we are giving affection and he knows his name and such, and that now is the time to start making him come to us instead of us going to him and petting him through his anxiety.

Colbert will now huff at the the other dogs in play as well as stand in the middle of the floor while decimating a rawhide. Otherwise his usual actions are running from one safe spot to another in order to hide under a dog bed. He particularly likes Max's dog bed which is large enough for him to hide under completely and light enough to run around the room wearing it as a cover. Friday night he used it to eat his dinner in peace, I wish I had a photo of him wearing his dog bed, draped over his bowl, while he ate his dinner.

He still sleeps under D's spare pillow between the bed and the nightstand. We call it his fort.

The Hand

Family Portrait.















Lucky Puppy.


So as posted before, Colbert likes to observe play time with Max and Buela. This morning, as D was wrestling with them Colbert tried to get in on the action. However when D reached out to Colbert he would back off but still huff and bark...with an actual onomatopoeic "woof". It truly was cute. When D was patting Max during this episode, Colbert would come up and sniff at D's hand and arm. But again back away when D reached solely out to Colbert.

Apparently during the afternoon, Colbert got comfortable enough to nearly quasi-play with "The Hand".

Last night.

His bald spot.















Colbert likes to hide under dog beds, especially in corners. That whole ostrich with his head in the sand mentality.
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Yesterday, Colbert went to the vets to be neutered, I was expecting a drugged up, relaxed, and groggy Colbert, much like Buela was back in March. However, he was quite alert, which of course makes sense because his neutering was less traumatic than a hysterectomy. I will let D tell the story about what happened at bed time:

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So the little guy is slowly coming out of his shell. When he's downstairs with the rest of us and we're watching TV he'll constantly travel back and forth between his two favorite safe spots. He doesn't hang out under the dining table much anymore. I think it's him showing his desire the be with the group but not fully ready yet, so this is as close as he can manage.

When I'm on the floor playing with the other dogs he'll come up and join as long as I ignore him. When I say his name or reach out my hand at him, he retreats.

Last night had a strange turn. So it's common for Buela to walk all over us while in bed and often lick our faces until we wake up, so that was my first thought as I awoke to something crawling around my head. But it turned out to be Colbert, and he was burrowing under my pillow. His standard position to take whenever he lies down is to bury his nose under something or in a corner. Because of that he's rubbed off a little patch of hair on his snout. So he was under my pillow, then decided to move over to W's, then back to mine, then on top of W's, then tried to go in reverse on top of mine, until I finally picked him up and placed him beside the bed and the night stand. I took a pillow and laid it on top of him so that he'd have his face buried. And that's how I found him when I got out of bed.

Hopefully this shows that his rehabilitation will progress faster and in abrupt advances rather than imperceptibly slow.

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A question from D's Dad: so does he ever just let you pet him for a while? or does he always move away? how about eye contact?


He avoids eye contact when I kneel down to approach him as he frantically looks around for an escape route. He lets us touch him in that he tolerates it, but I don't know if he's enjoying it( he gets terribly tense and his body will be rock hard- W). Whenever we're petting him it's when he's cornered or while we're holding him, so if he had a way out, he'd take it. Which makes him visiting us while we were sleeping last night all the more unexplainable.

He was panting vigorously the whole time as though we were forcing him into a stressful situation, but nothing made him get on the bed and he even left the bed and then got back up. His behavior is well beyond my interpretive skills. (His body wasn't tense last night when I petted him, he was just hiding under pillows -W) If Cesar (Milan) didn't get already get a torrent of emails, I'd ask him about it.

So many methods I read about online of other people's feral or abused dogs that they've helped are not applicable to Colbert. Those stories I read are of either a domesticated dog who was abused or of taming a feral dog who has never been abused. Colbert is both abused and feral, so it's a doubled level of difficulty. At least he's showing improvement and he gets along well with the other dogs.

Barking!

Colbert sleeping, his bum in in the corner with his tail wrapped up along his body, his head is under the green dog bed.
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Today Colbert barked for the first time, it was while he was playing with his consummate playmate, Buela. It took me a minute, lying in bed at 6 am, trying to figure who that was because it didn't sound like any of the other pups. It makes me so happy that he is relaxed enough to bark and play with them, I just wish he would consider getting closer to us.

Contrary to what I just said, this afternoon he was walking towards me, possibly to flirt with Max or Buela, he got with in a foot of me until I turned my head at the movement. - sigh

At this point in time he has found himself another cubby hole to hide in , he did a ferret double over move to get in there and has buried his head under a dog bed while wedged between the wall and a bookcase(see the above picture). I can hear him sleeping now because he is doing the same huffing and whining that Buela does when she's caught something good while dreaming.

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Sunday night, I brought everyone into our room for bedtime. I also brought the last bits of rawhides from an open bag...I figured 6 or 7 pieces and 4 dogs will work out just right. In about a half hour or so Colbert growled at Buela when she got too close to a rawhide that was a foot from the open crate he likes to lay in. I got up to find Buela a different rawhide to go after, only to realize that all of them were gone. These were 4" x 4" rawhides, even the most anxious, bored, and hungry ACD couldn't have eaten all of them in 30 minutes. So I checked on Colbert to be sure he at least had one and to swipe the one in front of the crate for Buela. That's when I realized that Colbert had retrieved every last rawhide and was hoarding them under the cushion in the crate.

Time will only tell - however I have heard of dogs being in homes for years and still hiding things like food, toys, and anything else that they think will get taken away.

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In the mean time, this is my newest favorite forum: AUCADO.