Woodbender
Forums Enthusiast
I have been horribly remiss in posting updates to the very group that helped me bring her home. She told me in no uncertain terms that I deserve to be resoundingly pummeled about the head and shoulders with a swimming pool foam noodle. Claire is doing fine and since our last update here (good heavens - when was that?) she's allowing people to actually encroach on her personal safe space to give her scritches, she keeps tabs on me now in the bathroom (my personal favorite) and a couple months ago actually followed me to the door to say goodbye when I went to work. She has made wonderful gains but I feel in some areas we may never "get there". But starting as a quaking shaking puddle of fur when we got her home, I'll take every single cuddle I can get. She may never be a lap dog. She has taken to playing in the yard with us. The silly thing is a "morning person" and wants to bark and play at 4:30 in the morning when I take her out before getting ready for work. I'm like "shh,. shhh!" but also ecstatic that she WANTS to play with me.
This video is Claire Bear and childbride having a romp in the back yard. When Claire first came home this huge back yard terrified her at night. She couldn't see boundaries I guess. (her breeder dumped her in the woods with her puppies) So we put up a snow fence so her eyes would see a boundary at night and it calmed her down. The fence was eventually taken down and now she is playing. We found that Claire is much older than her adoption paperwork stated. Her new vet guesses from her eye "film" that she's about 9. But we feel from having had other shelties that she's a solid 10+. She gets winded very easily on walks and these spurts of playing in the back yard have her really panting. We exercise her as we can and don't push it.
This video is Claire Bear and childbride having a romp in the back yard. When Claire first came home this huge back yard terrified her at night. She couldn't see boundaries I guess. (her breeder dumped her in the woods with her puppies) So we put up a snow fence so her eyes would see a boundary at night and it calmed her down. The fence was eventually taken down and now she is playing. We found that Claire is much older than her adoption paperwork stated. Her new vet guesses from her eye "film" that she's about 9. But we feel from having had other shelties that she's a solid 10+. She gets winded very easily on walks and these spurts of playing in the back yard have her really panting. We exercise her as we can and don't push it.
