Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Sophie's Adoption! Thank you Universe!

Thank You, universe, for bringing me Sophie's 'Forever Family'!  The story of Sophie is a good one.  There is no way to tell this story in a convenient little package, so I will tell it in full.

Sophie was a dog we rescued for 'A Home 4 Spot', one of the many canine rescue agencies here in Las Vegas.  Usually we take in small dogs, but Sophie was special.  She had special needs and thus, came with a whole bunch of baggage that I had no idea how to handle.  I fell in love with her the first time I saw her and said to Tanya, "If we had the space, I would adopt that dog."

And then, the universe threw us a bit of a curve ball when Sophie's fostering needs became desperate, the organization needed someone to take her in.  We had already babysat her for a week so we knew her, and although we were apprehensive about having SIX dogs in the house, we decided that she had been in the care of 'the system' too long already.  We wanted to help rehabilitate her and find her forever family.

That became a 4 month ordeal for me.  I'm not sure I was ready for it but there it was.  Sophie's baggage was heavy, and I had to seek professional help in order to help me help her.  But in doing so, I more importantly realized that I needed to fix ME before I would be able to help HER.  I was part of her problem, and it just wasn't working.  We were unravelling each other.  It did begin to work in the end.  We both kind of stabalized together as the kinks got worked out, and I was finally able to reach her and bring us to a better working place.

Sophie and Otis
Still, since none of the conventional methods of meet and greets were working to find Sophie's forever family, I decided to write this blog (posted below), and throw the word out into the universe to pull them in.  I wrote this on September 5, 2014.... but I never posted it!  I didn't have any good pictures of her so I waited for a few days and it never got posted.

Of course, there were other balls in motion to find Sophie's family, but within a week of me writing the blog that I never posted, we had 2 solid hits.  The first one didn't work out, but the second one did!  A young couple who fit the profile of what we were looking for, and we happily handed Sophie over to begin her new life on September 16th, 2014.

Thank you, universe!  And thank YOU, to all of you who help us save the lives of these unfortunate animals.

Please see original blog below...



...

From the desk of the Mountain Man...
September 5th, 2014

Hello Good People.  I am submitting this to the Internet Universe in hopes of finding a special someone who is looking to adopt our foster dog Sophie.  Conventional methods of meet and greets have not worked, nor has word of mouth, or anything... and she is such a beautiful, eager to please animal, I would desperately like to find her a forever family while she is still in her formative training years.  So I am submitting this you, Youniverse, please help me find Sophie's forever family.

I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.  She is a sleek muscled, 40 pound, all-white boxer-lab-pitbull mix, short haired, with fawn colored freckles all over her body.  She is a very athletic 10 month old puppy with a lot of anxious energy, and she is extremely smart.  She is also a bit goofy looking with her big square head and jawline, widespread cockeyes and one bent ear.  Her voice is ranged from piercing high pitched (the anxiety overload pitch), to her deep, menacing growl when she's playing.  She is a very sweet, affectionate dog, and she loves her people and her pack.

Otis and Sophie Playing
We didn't really want to foster large dogs with all our little dogs, so Sophie was never on our radar as a foster.  But then through a turn of events we ended up taking her in, which expanded our pack to 6 dogs (!!!), 3 of our own and 3 foster dogs.  And as dogs do, they work it out in sometimes less-than-friendly fashion until each one knows their place in the pack.  Sophie tested them all and now resides somewhere in the middle of our pack, respectful of even the wee chihuahuas when they warn her to back off.  And for her size, Sophie's 40 pounds of muscle against a 4 pound chihuahua, they still play quite rough and get along very well.  She knows her place within the pack and is perfectly fine with that.

She has been in 'the System' since she was given up for adoption as a 3 month old puppy.  She has been bounced around alot, from the kennels to fosters and 2 failed adoption trials.  One of those fails was due to a cat that we never did a proper 'meet and greet' with, and the other one failed because not all the family was on board with adopting her.  No doubt, this dog will need work and time invested in stabilizing her energies to keep her balanced.  She needs proper training and she needs to be in a stable environment with good leadership from her owners, and a lot of exercise and mental stimulation.  

Other than the last 4 months she's spent with us, Sophie has never really lived in a stable environment nor has had any opportunity to really develop a good trust and bond relationship with humans, and I think that has greatly contributed to her anxiety and tension issues.  We learned quite quickly that those issues can be volatile.  There have been three occasions on my watch where she has randomly struck out at people on the end of her leash without warning and that raised the red flags for me.  And then one very unfortunate occasion where she bit my friend.

I mention this dog bite because I feel it needs to be mentioned, but it was my own damn'd fault for setting the conditions for her to fail.  Dumbass, human error.  I am not a trained dog-trainer, and I have never had a dog with these kinds of anxiety and trust issues.  And I KNEW that she didn't like my friend for whatever reason from other times he'd been over to the house.  But I was confident we could work her through it, and he was willing to help.  At the time, I felt I had the tools at my disposal to help her and get her to like him, so I had him over for a BBQ and beers on a friday night and set it up.  She was extremely uncomfortable with him being there and I should have listened to her because she gave us plenty of warning.  I was cocky about it.  Bless him for putting in his time in this uncomfortable situation, but it failed and he paid the price.  It wasn't a big bite, just a quick strike that never, ever should have happened.  She's just unsure of herself and without good, stable leadership, bad things can happen.  I underestimated her, and overestimated my abilities.

After that event I sought professional help to help me deal with her anxiety, and we stopped having friends over to the house.  Pam Watson of 'Paws-A-tive Dog Training' was kind enough to donate her time to me, and the agency, to help train me in order to reach this animal.  From then on, 9 weeks ago, Sophie's training became my full time job.  I need to know that the dog I am handing off to someone else is not a dangerous animal.  And I don't believe Sophie is, but she needs special attention to make sure she's at ease and not on guard.

Zuma, the Ten Pound Pom!
I am a believer that these things come along in life to help you.  Why I was attracted to her in the first place, who knows.  Sophie revealed things about me that I try to keep wraps on, that I myself am a bit unstable and volatile.  She came into this house and threw the harmonious balance totally out of whack for a few weeks until it all got worked out, and for a while there, I was out of my head.  She undermined my mental stability because I had no idea how to communicate with her and deal with her anxieties.  I didn't have the tools that Pam took the time to show me.  And unfortunately, she suffered my wicked side in those first few weeks and caught a lot of the blame for the chaos that was erupting as the biggest, gruffest voice in the dog fight.  I mean, she could easily kill any of the dogs here, and I just wasn't sure what kind of animal she was.  But upon further contemplation of the situation, I realized it was more of an alpha Pomeranian issue than anything else.  Our 'Ten Pound Pom', the professional instigator.  This is Zuma's house, and he doesn't like Sophie being here.  He ratchets the tension level to 11 in a heartbeat and the whole house explodes!  We now know that Zuma is the one we have to control and the rest will fall in line.

So Sophie has experienced my aggressive nature, and I don't really know if that has hurt our trust-relationship or not.  I learned one thing, that if I am to reach this dog, I can't be an aggressive person and expect to connect with her as her trusted leader.  I have wanted to give up on her several times, unsure whether I was the right person to be trying to help her.  But Pam really helped me get centered, and helped me get to a better working place with her.  I really do love her and I want to help her be a better balanced dog and find her forever home, so I have needed to be better balanced too.  Right now, no one knows this dog as much as I do and I am the most stable environment she's ever known.  So I am it for her, I can't give up.

We work on our relationship daily with walks and leash training.  She still pulls on me more than I'd like, but I am perhaps looking for more than she's willing to give me.  She's gotten so much better since I started training with Pam.  In the past few weeks she has really started to be a lot calmer in the house and I now know how to deal with her anxieties.  Even Zuma the Ten Pound Pom has occasionally started to come around and initiate play with her, now that he knows she's not a big vicious beast.  I have worked constantly at keeping her energies entertained when she starts asking, either working her physically or working her mind with commands and simple challenges to get her thinking.  She trusts me and loves to be with me, and has even begun to follow my lead into the pool for a swim which she just loves!

I am also happy to report that we have had company here this week for the first time in over 2 months.  Sophie was a little apprehensive about her at first, but after our guest showed Sophie that she was the 'treat lady', Sophie became her best friend.  We are working to build these positive relationships, and always working to help her be calm and stable to control her anxieties.  We have seen a great improvement in her, but she still has these uncontainable eruptions of excitement in the form of high pitched yelping, and that still drives me mad.  I have yet to find a way to snap her head back into balance.  She, and I, are still works in progress.

Sophie is a lot of dog, and she is a wonderful animal worthy of someone's time and efforts.  She needs an owner who will be willing to take her to dog training to establish a solid, stable environment, and foster a trusting relationship with her so she never needs to be on gaurd duty.  She requires regular exercise to work out her anxieties, deep massages to aleviate her inner tensions and trust issues, and she needs a lot of things to chew on to keep her mind occupied.  She is a very intelligent dog and wants nothing more than to please her humans.

So I am submitting this you, Youniverse, please help me find Sophie's forever family.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ
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2 comments:

  1. A pleasure, as always, to read Troy.
    Glad to hear it worked out for her.
    Cheers,
    Colin.

    ReplyDelete