Bear

Bear is our newest foster dog.  He's a border collie cross, and we think he's approximately one and a half hears old.  Today is his second day living with us, and I decided I wanted to share our experiences with him, so I finally started a blog.  I will try my best to keep it updated, but I'm not very good at this sort of thing, I've never even kept a diary!  I'm hoping to make this a habit though, the animals we foster are pretty interesting, and I am looking forward to sharing their stories.

Bear has had a challenging life.  He was rescued in April 2011 as a feral puppy, about 3 months old.  He was full of porcupine quills and not used people at all.  The woman who fostered him did great work with him, and he learned to trust people and enjoy their company.  You can read more about Bear's early life, and see cute baby pictures here http://pooohbusters.blogspot.ca/2011/04/even-feral-dogs-deserve-chance.html  Bear was adopted into a home, where he lived for a few months, but it didn't last, and he was surrendered back to Pound Rescue.  We aren't sure what his experiences were like during that time, but he was not the same dog when he came back.  He was terrified of people, especially hands, and would not allow anyone to touch him.  Even moving him to his new foster home was a terrifying experience for him, he was traumatized by the car ride, the people handling him, and the leash.  He made a lot of progress in the next several months, his foster mom, Tiffany, is a dog trainer who uses gentle, reward based training, and she made a lot of progress toward teaching him to trust people again.  He will now take treats from people's hands, is quite happy to be around people, and will play with people and even give kisses sometimes.  He still won't let anyone touch him or put a leash on him, but we think he's getting close!

Bear's foster home recently found out that they're expecting their first baby, and they had to make a very difficult decision.  They love Bear, and want to keep working with him, but they didn't feel that he would adapt well to the chaos of living with a new baby.  They made the decision to move him to a new foster home, and since Tiffany and I use very similar training methods, she asked us to take him in.  We have a pretty quiet home, with no kids, and our dogs are laid back and easy going. My partner, Ellis, is somewhat of a fearful dog charmer too, so I'm hoping he can work his magic on Bear!  We visited him several times to get to know him and help to make his move to our home a little less scary, and this weekend he moved in!  He's adapting very well to the change, better than any of us had expected.  He's definitely showing some stress - he's had a few accidents in the house, he's kind of jumpy, and he's been a little inappropriate with our dogs - but it's already improving.  We've been doing everything we can to help him settle in, and I think it's working.  He's eating well, playing, and he's comfortable enough to sleep near us.  He's met the cats, and has been pretty well behaved with them - we're monitoring those meetings though, just to be safe.  He's even gotten up on the couch beside me a few times!  I've been feeding him from puzzle toys, to keep his brain busy and help reduce his stress, and that seems to help a lot.  He already seems to be enjoying our company, if we leave him alone he sits and waits for us to come back, and he occasionally tries to guard us from our dogs - we'll have to work on that!

Anyway, long post, I know.  I wanted to get his history on here though, I expect that my regular posts will be significantly shorter :)