April 12, 2016
Ben vs. Jen...for my dad
The way Maya reacts to Ben, it seems like she has been abused in some way by a male in her shelter life. She is also very freaked out by water and darkness, but that's another issue. Ben has been the one to give her table food (she LOVES chicken and we often have little scraps from the whole chickens we cook...don't worry, we don't give her bones) and made a point to do special things for her each day to try and earn her confidence that he is caring and won't hurt her. She is slowly getting better, but she still backs away when he comes close to her or reaches his hand out to her.
My dad has been offering us some advice on training her and encouraged us to give her some time to be fully comfortable with us before we try anything major. Plus, she's not running away or peeing all over the house, so it's okay to wait a little bit. But it's never too early to find what is reinforcing to her. She's kind of a picky dog and doesn't like the doggy treats we bought her. One morning we fried some bacon for breakfast and decided to see how Maya felt about it. Within minutes, I had her sitting for me. Yea for bacon!
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2 comments:
Ben might remember our German shepherd, Jessie. We got her when she was 8 weeks old and she was also scared by men. I don't think she'd been abused (although where we got her was certainly not going to win any awards as it was a one dog puppy mill), but she sure feared men. So it might be that for Maya, that she sees them as scary all on their own.
That doesn't change your approach, of course, but might give you hope that she'll get over it as Jessie did.
Can't wait to meet her :)
We got Cindy when she was 2 1/2. I don't think she was beaten but she was isolated in an outdoors kennel and had two litters of puppies before we got her. She took longer to warm up to Jim than to me. To this day (over 5 years) she doesn't go to anyone else (unless she is offered food) but is glued to us like Velcro.
Maya may never warm up to people outside your family but I bet she will be going to all of you soon.
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