The Little Bear Dog Blog

Annie

When I was running my ‘Little Bear needs a friend’ campaign,  my attempt to convince Other Half that a second dog would be no more bother than one, I genuinely believed it. I anticipated a few weeks of settling in, yes. A few sleepless nights perhaps plus a little remedial training, but then I saw us basking in the joy of my first multi-dog household. Long leisurely walks, the dogs playing in the field, curled up together in their bed…

If this was a movie, this would be where the film would slip off the reel.

Nine months after adopting Annie, I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a rough ride. Her terrifying disappearance for three days; separation anxiety; the super strength off the scale reactivity to any dog within 400 yards; the ruptured cruciate; hip-dysplacia and arthritis and then the (not insured) TPLO operation to re-build her ruined leg. For six weeks post op she was my umbilical dog, only leaving her crate if she was tethered to one of us.  We took it in turns to sleep on the sofa for the first week and for the next two she woke us every 3 hours through the night. Because she hurt, or itched or was just plain old miserable on her own.

Just for fun she’s thrown in 3 monthly seasons and a phantom pregnancy to squash any cunning plans of getting her spayed. On the training side she’s a master of lunging out of a Halti and gets spooked by all manner of strange things. Today it was a man with a skipping rope, yesterday an owl. For the first two months I couldn’t walk her at all for fear that she’d pull me off my feet.

But…

Despite the traumas, we love her. I very nearly burst with pride yesterday as she did a 20 minute walk on a loose lead. This is the dog who pulled like a train! She grins back at me as we walk now, looking for her click and her treat for checking in and I smother her with praise until she grins and wags some more. She chose to watch me instead of barking and lunging at a dog earlier in the week and as she shied away from the scary skipping man today, she believed me when I said he wouldn’t hurt her.

I’m writing this, not because I want to catalogue her faults, far from it, I want to celebrate how much she’s achieved. Re-homing is traumatic for any dog, for a fearful dog who spent 3 days lost living off her wits, it’s even more so. Watching her squashed into Little Bear’s bed now, snoring the deeply contented snore of a dog who’s found her place in the world, I can honestly say she’s been worth it all.