Update on Freya

It is now just over three weeks since we first brought Freya into our home and we have signed the adoption papers.

# Are the dogs fully integrated and able to be left together? Absolutely not!

# Has it been plain sailing? Not at all! 

It has been hard work, taking huge amounts of patience, careful management and time.

# Was it worth it? Absolutely!

Integrating a new dog in the home can go really smoothly and happen relatively quickly or take a long time, depending on the dogs involved.

Freya is an incredibly nervous girl and having lived in a garden for most of her life she had no idea that it was OK to be in the house. She still has moments of absolute panic when she bolts from room to room. She has never been outside on a lead or experienced many things.

She is gradually getting used to lead walking. We have good days and bad days depending on her stress levels.

Being in the house, in various rooms can cause her stress - which affects her lead walking.

Her lead walks can cause her stress depending on how busy they are - which affects her stress levels in the house! 

A balancing act always requiring careful consideration of her stress levels.  Something even a highly trained experienced professional can occasionally forget when it is your own dogs, with emotions involved and being eager to integrate them!

Lovely polite communication between the two females

Two days before we were due to sign her adoption papers I had a panic, a small meltdown culminating in a phone call to a behaviourist friend saying it isn't going to work! 

The night before had Freya running from room to room, bouncing around and narrowly missing bowling Jack over. Jack got a fright and air snapped!  This happened twice in the same day.

The reason for the increase in Freya's bolting, panicky behaviour?  

Increased stress levels with no opportunity for down time and.........entirely my fault. 

The previous two days she had met quite a few new people, been to new places and met new dogs.  If I had been speaking with a client I would have advised them to give her a rest day, keeping things quiet and calm allowing her stress levels to drop.

Because I wanted to fully integrate her, I didn't do this and full of cortisol from the previous two days, Freya bolted in panic several times when someone moved in a room.

Something else to take into account

I have talked about positive and negative bias in dogs a few times. Spudsy has a positive bias and Jack has a negative bias.

Spudsy sees something new and wants to investigate, expecting it to be something exciting. 

Jack freezes, expecting the worst! 

Freya's panicky behaviour causes him anxiety, expecting her to attack him. He has been attacked when on lead by dogs and a cat in the past!

So, we have gone back to using stair gates at key moments. Spudsy and Freya are pretty relaxed around each other and Spudsy is not at all phased by her panicky behaviour, even when she leaps onto the sofa narrowly missing landing on Spud!

Jack and Freya are back to being either side of a stair gate, being fed chicken, to rebuild positive associations. Slow, baby steps!

Never be afraid to ask for help or advice :)