Molly's Story...Part 2 ( of many)

Good Morning!

I hope you all are sitting on the edge of your chairs waiting for this blog entry!

So......to continue on Mollys Story

After getting Molly home, she was very shy which was understandable as she was the only dog for 8 months and now she has 2 strange dogs sniffing her. She was in heat as well which was causing Rufus to go nuts. He is neutered but he doesnt know that! ;) She seemed to fit in pretty well. Rufus and Amber accepted her into the "pack" and she seemed happy.

As the days went on....she started to come out of her shell in not such good ways. She stole something off the table one day, a high value item, I think if I recall it was half of my cheese steak sub. I went over to try to grab it and all of a sudden this vicious lion, or so it seemed came at me and nearly bit my hand. I stood back for a second, in shock and realized that we may have a problem. Now, this could have been a freak 1 time event...she is not trusting of me, I am not sure of her....so, lets see if this happens again. I began hand feeding her kibble from that day on...to get her used to the fact that my hand is not evil, and it gives her good things. It went well for weeks. I began to sit on the floor and put the kibble in the bowl and hold the bowl and she would eat it fine with no aggression at all. I felt we may be getting somewhere. So, it was a good few weeks and all seemed to be coming along, at least with the food. She was never aggressive to the other dogs, even from day 1. She would let them come right up to her while eating and they all seemed to understand each other. 

This was the first "group" picture I took of the 3 Dogeteers! From left: Amber, Molly, and Rufus 

There came a day, another random out of the blue incident occurred where she stole another item of value and this time she took it onto the couch and started to just tear into it like a hyena. As I approached her, I could hear her growling at me and she was doing the dead stare into my eyes. She meant business. This time however, I was prepared.....I figured that instead of yelling or causing more stress to the situation...I ignored her for the moment and went into the fridge and got a piece of lunch meat which was WAY more exciting then what she had. She jumped off the couch, leaving the stolen item and came tail wagging into the kitchen to get this much better piece of HAM! So we did this...over and over and over......the TRADE GAME is what we called it. You give me your item and I will give you mine. Once she walked away from what she originally had it was no longer the "hot" item. This worked..and still to this day....she will randomly steal things but NOW, she will wag her tail and show me the item as if it was a game in her head now too...Look MOM, Look what I just stole! Along with this resource guarding training, I also taught her the commands "drop it" and "leave it" which honestly are two of the most important commands to ever teach a dog ;)

So.....we move on to crating her. She was not 100% house trained when she got to us, so as a rule...pup is crated when we are not home to avoid accidents in the house. She never liked it, and would really get frustrated with going inside. We were giving her special treats which worked ok but she was so tense and upset and I could tell she was not in any way happy about it.

I remember one day....as I was walking into work I get a call from Elvie. He is yelling and I could barely understand what he was saying...but then it was clear. He said.......I tried getting Molly into the crate and she jumped up and tried to bite me in the face and I swear to GOD, if she ever tries that again she is OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!! 

Oh shit........

It seems when I think one problem is over, another one is about to begin and NOW I am thinking...What did I get myself into??? 

To be continued........