the long road ahead.

Roxy has been making progress, that's for sure.  I'm making progress, too.  I can recognize situations that will make her anxious before they do it. I'm more in tune to things in the environment that might set her off. I now at least have an idea of how to combat some of the things we're dealing with.  These are all great things.

But she's still Roxy.  My special, fearful little girl. Who loves me and Rob to pieces but still isn't too sure about other people.  We met with Erica again for our follow up appointment a few weeks back.  Roxy seemed to remember her and knew she had treats, which was good because that meant she wanted to work.  We did some dog-dog work on the walk, and what was cool was we were in Erica's neighborhood where she knows where all the dogs are and how they will react to passerby's, so we can anticipate what we happen and plan for it. Good stuff.

But last weekend we were at our friend's house and there was an infant, a newborn there.... Roxy seemed like any other dog in her curiosity, nose in the air, smelling and trying to figure out what the new-baby-smell was... but once the baby cried, holy crap.  She was freaking out trying to get to the baby.  She wasn't being aggressive by any means, but she was obviously stressed by the noise of the cries.  All she wanted to do was get to that baby.  So stressed that, even after the baby stopped crying and she turned around, she noticed there was a cat behind her that she wasn't expecting, and she snapped at it.  And she's good with cats.  But she was so on-edge, it was ridiculous, and it seemed like nothing could console her. I felt so bad for her.  I mean, yea, lesson learned.... crying babies stress Roxy out, but still.  It made me realize how much further we still need to go.

buster's ball

Buster, my mostly 3-legged dog, loves nothing more than to play ball.  He will chase that ball until he collapses.

And once he does, he'll just lay there with the ball in his mouth squeaking it until there is so much slobber stuck in the squeaker that it just sort of makes a mush noise, instead of a squeak...

This dog is truly one in a million.  It hurts me to think that he had a family before and we have really no idea what happened to him.  He's a velco dog, he won't leave our side.  And he was house-trained since we brought him home from being at the kennel for 3+ months.  He didn't have a single accident.  He has manners (mostly).  His only flaw is that he thinks if it's on the counter, it's acceptable for him to get it. But we love him, and he loves us.