Haisley has been on my section for about a month now and thankfully she’s made huge progress within herself and her inner confidence. When she first arrived at the rescue, I was shown a video of her trembling with fear all over when she was in one of our play yards for the first time. It broke my heart and I knew I had to meet her. After a couple of weeks she got moved over to me and she was still extremely shut down for the first couple of days, but luckily my dogs completely took her under their wing and showed her that she didn’t need to be afraid. She’s gone from staying in the back of her kennel all day every day, to playing with toys at the front, and from sitting in the corner of the yard fearing for her life, to running around with her friends with her tail in the air. It’s been SO lovely to see.
So even though there has been a lot of positive progress, Haisley’s fear of humans is still very strong and she still doesn’t choose to come close to me. If I ever need to pick her up or handle her for any reason, I have to get her in the back of her kennel where she’ll hop into one of the beds and freeze. She’s very good at letting you pick her up and do whatever you need to do, but it’s still a very scary experience for her so this is the main thing I’ve been working on with her.
Today for the first time I gave Haisley a bath and mini groom. I had no expectations, but she made me really proud. She was very nervous of course, but she didn’t freak out over the water or the hair dryer like a lot of scared dogs do at first. Instead, she just sat still and accepted everything I did to her with no fuss whatsoever.
Haisley is definitely a project dog and it’s going to take a lot of time and work to get her anywhere close to being a ‘normal’ dog. Her future adopters are going to need to have all the patience and understanding in the world, and most importantly, perseverance. She will get there eventually, but you can’t give up on her.. that’s the last thing she needs.