Dorie 12-103

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Profile

Sponsored by:

Barb and Ken K.
"In memory of Cassie 07-424"

 

This dog came into RAGOM from a commercial breeder and has not been adequately socialized to humans. RAGOM requires that any adoptive homes contain a physical fence (due to the risk of escape); another fairly confident medium to large sized dog to role model from (everything is new and scary for them); no children under 10 years old in the home (normal kid behavior scares these dogs). Our goal is to find the forever family for these dogs and our experience leads us to use these criteria.

March 29, 2012

Dorie 12-103 is one of the young females that was rescued over the weekend from the Missouri commercial breeding kennel. At the tender age of 1-1/2 she has already whelped at least one litter of pups. She was still producing milk when we met her on Sunday. She is on antibiotics so she doesn’t develop mastitis and Rimadyl for the engorged pain. We are watching to make sure she doesn’t get an infection and she appears to be drying up which is good news. I’m very happy to report that she does eat with some canned food added to her kibble. I add the antibiotic and pain meds to the canned food and she is eating the pills, thank heavens. She’s very petite and skinny after whelping and nursing pups. We’ll be working at putting some meat on her bones. She also drinks water, which is the first milestone we watch for with these scared dogs.

She is very skittish and when not resting in her kennel, she paces and watches to see where the humans are to make sure she is out of reach. We leave a trailing leash on her so we can safely catch her and she is limited to only two rooms of the house. For the past couple of days, I have been stepping on the leash so she has to stop, I sit on the floor, scoot over to her and scratch her neck and ears. She’s starting to get used to my doing this. She doesn’t relax yet when being petted, but her eyes don’t look as fearful as they did at first as she’s learning that I’m not hurting her. Dogs from commercial breeding kennels are very scared of people, new places and objects because they’ve never been anywhere, seen anything or had any human socialization. Her job has been to live in a kennel run and produce puppies to be sold to brokers who sell to the pet stores. We can’t get back the socialization that she missed as a puppy and while she will eventually get better and become someone’s loved pet, she’ll always be more skittish than your house-raised dog. But, she can learn, she can go to obedience training some day, develop self-confidence and grow into the dog that she was meant to be.

We have ventured outside a few times wearing multiple leashes and equipment. She is so skittish that if she were to slip her collar, I’d never catch her in my fenced in backyard. To keep her safe, she wears a halter with a long lead and a rope slip leash with additional leashes attached to make it longer. I hold on to both leashes as we walk around the backyard. She isn’t relaxed with me following behind attached to her and the leashes. She hasn’t been comfortable enough to do her bathroom duties while leashed to me outside. It’s more like she’s pacing and sniffing and can’t figure out why I’m always 15 feet behind her. She keeps moving to get away and I keep following. After a while, I reel myself up to her, sit down and again scratch her chin and ears. She has met the other 6 dogs in her foster home, done the dog sniff and greet, but hasn’t yet started following them around or playing with them.

I want to thank Devon who took the beautiful picture of her headshot in the crate on Sunday. My cell phone picture of her in our lower level isn’t a good picture, but I wanted to try to show a standing up picture and she is very unnerved by the phone pointing at her. She’s a very gentle, scared girl. More to come as she starts to settle in.

At a Glance #12-103

Golden Retriever Born: August 2010
Female 45 lbs

Status: Adopted

Profile

Sponsored by:

Barb and Ken K.
"In memory of Cassie 07-424"

 

This dog came into RAGOM from a commercial breeder and has not been adequately socialized to humans. RAGOM requires that any adoptive homes contain a physical fence (due to the risk of escape); another fairly confident medium to large sized dog to role model from (everything is new and scary for them); no children under 10 years old in the home (normal kid behavior scares these dogs). Our goal is to find the forever family for these dogs and our experience leads us to use these criteria.

March 29, 2012

Dorie 12-103 is one of the young females that was rescued over the weekend from the Missouri commercial breeding kennel. At the tender age of 1-1/2 she has already whelped at least one litter of pups. She was still producing milk when we met her on Sunday. She is on antibiotics so she doesn’t develop mastitis and Rimadyl for the engorged pain. We are watching to make sure she doesn’t get an infection and she appears to be drying up which is good news. I’m very happy to report that she does eat with some canned food added to her kibble. I add the antibiotic and pain meds to the canned food and she is eating the pills, thank heavens. She’s very petite and skinny after whelping and nursing pups. We’ll be working at putting some meat on her bones. She also drinks water, which is the first milestone we watch for with these scared dogs.

She is very skittish and when not resting in her kennel, she paces and watches to see where the humans are to make sure she is out of reach. We leave a trailing leash on her so we can safely catch her and she is limited to only two rooms of the house. For the past couple of days, I have been stepping on the leash so she has to stop, I sit on the floor, scoot over to her and scratch her neck and ears. She’s starting to get used to my doing this. She doesn’t relax yet when being petted, but her eyes don’t look as fearful as they did at first as she’s learning that I’m not hurting her. Dogs from commercial breeding kennels are very scared of people, new places and objects because they’ve never been anywhere, seen anything or had any human socialization. Her job has been to live in a kennel run and produce puppies to be sold to brokers who sell to the pet stores. We can’t get back the socialization that she missed as a puppy and while she will eventually get better and become someone’s loved pet, she’ll always be more skittish than your house-raised dog. But, she can learn, she can go to obedience training some day, develop self-confidence and grow into the dog that she was meant to be.

We have ventured outside a few times wearing multiple leashes and equipment. She is so skittish that if she were to slip her collar, I’d never catch her in my fenced in backyard. To keep her safe, she wears a halter with a long lead and a rope slip leash with additional leashes attached to make it longer. I hold on to both leashes as we walk around the backyard. She isn’t relaxed with me following behind attached to her and the leashes. She hasn’t been comfortable enough to do her bathroom duties while leashed to me outside. It’s more like she’s pacing and sniffing and can’t figure out why I’m always 15 feet behind her. She keeps moving to get away and I keep following. After a while, I reel myself up to her, sit down and again scratch her chin and ears. She has met the other 6 dogs in her foster home, done the dog sniff and greet, but hasn’t yet started following them around or playing with them.

I want to thank Devon who took the beautiful picture of her headshot in the crate on Sunday. My cell phone picture of her in our lower level isn’t a good picture, but I wanted to try to show a standing up picture and she is very unnerved by the phone pointing at her. She’s a very gentle, scared girl. More to come as she starts to settle in.

Updates

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Hi everyone!

Dorie 12-103 now named Ava is such a sweet little girl! Ava is our second puppy mill girl we have adopted from Ragom. Our Rosey, who passed away last July would of wanted us to help another one like her.

Every step Ava makes is huge! She is very happy and her confidence is growing. We start every morning with our one mile walk. She can't wait to go. She runs around the house with her favorite squeaky ball in anticipation of her adventure! She almost jumps into her harness. We have passed many hurdles. Ava comes in and out of the house without coaxing her. She used to run from us in the yard, now she comes up to us and, lets us hug her! She loves to play, we have made a routine that around 4:30 PM {before dark in the winter} I would throw the ball for her. She has a clock in her head - when it gets around that time she starts squeaking her ball. If she is outside she will wait on the front step for me to come out. If I'm not home, someone else fills in!

She has gained weight. We feel muscles instead of her boney little frame. Ava loves to pile her toys from one room to another. She entertains the other dogs watching her! Ava now goes up and down the steps freely. We tell her nite nite and many times she is ahead of us and her fur sisters. She is very cuddly, sometimes she crawls up on the bed between us, and just snuggles in. We already have our Gracey who sleeps at the end of the bed. She is pretty sneaky!

I have included some pictures of Ava. As you can see she loves her other sisters!

She house trained very fast. I can't remember when she had her last accident. Ava also has been out of the fenced in yard and stayed with us! We love her very much .Thank-you for all that you do, our little Ava was saved because of you! She is a very special little girl. Adopting a puppy mill dog is very rewarding. It is heart warming to see all of her progress. Her long tail wags all he time, we have even caught her smiling! We will continue to help her become the strong, happy, carefree Golden that she deserves. She is our joy! Our Adrian has allot of fishing and swimming skills to pass on to her!

Thank-you again! Thank-you also to Konnie and Leon, her foster parents, for taking such good care of Ava until we found her. You kept her safe and loved!

Diane and John
Adrian,Gracey and Ava

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Dorie has moved to her new home and she is one very lucky girl.  She is doing extremely well in only two short days.  We drove her to her new home to help with her transition and it was so fun to watch her be so brave.  She walked around the living room and met her new fur sisters again.  Her new mom and dad and human sisters are all very gentle, patient people that have fallen head over heels for her.  Her new home is on a lake and yesterday, she ventured into the lake with her new dog sister.  She is going to be so happy and we are thrilled that her new home is so perfect for her. 

Saturday, June 9, 2012

We now have three puppies (Benny 12-223, Gus 12-224 and Albert 12-225) at Dorie’s foster home and she LOVES them. We were all outside today and she was playbowing and jumping around. Puppies weren’t quite sure what they were supposed to do about it, but Dorie was sure happy. Her tail was wagging the whole time. It’s fun to see the puppy in her come out. I took a number of puppy toys outside for the puppies to play with and Dorie picked each one up and carried it to a spot she picked out and surrounded herself with the toys. She does that in the house too. She builds her own little spot with blankets and toys.

 

Dorie is more relaxed in her foster home now. She likes to be petted and have her ears scratched. She has even come up to me when I’m sitting down outside. She’s not spending her time outside running in frantic circles and can instead be found closer to the house and relaxing. She’s made some big strides over the past couple of weeks. We were going to go to the RAGOM event today but decided to stay home and play with puppies. Amazing to me, Dorie does not appear to be scared of loud noises at all. My husband likes to watch westerns and Dorie lies on the couch and doesn’t appear bothered by all the gunshots. He’s also been working on the house and the noise of saws, hammering, etc. don’t seem to phase her at all. She’s a very sweet, gentle soul that is starting to blossom.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Foster mom finally bought a new camera so we can start doing more timely updates and pictures on our sweet Dorie.   As you can see, she is a very pretty, adorable, little female.  She is also as sweet and gentle as she looks.

Dorie is now spayed and will never again have puppies.  She did pretty well at the vet’s office.  We carried her into the office in her kennel.  I was too nervous to risk losing her if we tried walking in.  We brought along one of our resident dogs as a support dog and once inside, we let Dorie out of her kennel.  When it was time to walk into the backroom to be prepped for surgery, she followed the resident dog and walked past a bunch of people into the backroom.  She was a bit freaked out the next morning when the staff tried taking her outside on a sliplead.  She isn’t crazy about having her neck pulled.  She does much better on her harness that we use with her at home.

Dorie is getting braver with us.  She loves her treats and has realized that if she doesn’t come up for a treat when her name is called, another dog will eat it.   She loves chicken and popcorn.  I sit on the couch and call each dog’s name (there are five here).   The first few times were so cute because I’d call Allie – give her a treat, Spirit – give her a treat, Dorie – hold out a treat and Dorie would look at the treat, look at me, but not come forward.  Allie would eat her treat.  After a few times of that, when it got to Dorie’s turn, I’d call her name – she’d look at the treat, look at me, look at the other dogs, and nose her way up so she could get her treat.  Now, she rarely misses her turn.

I made the mistake of getting a little too comfortable with her.   We still use a trailing leash on her in the house, but I don’t think we’d need to.  She lets us walk up to her without bolting and really enjoys being petted.  In fact if you are lying on the couch or sitting on the couch, she’ll walk over and nudge you to be petted.  With this improvement, I thought it would be fun for her to get to go outside with just a couple of trailing leashes attached to each other instead of her long rope so she could run and play.  Ha.  She enjoyed it, yes.  But, she also figured out real quickly just how far away from me she needed to stay so I couldn’t pick up the leashes and walk her back into the house.  An hour of me lying on the ground surrounded by popcorn which she would sneak up and eat, but kept the leash out of arm’s reach, I’d pretty much given up thinking we’d both be sleeping outside for the night.  There are some negatives to having ¾ acres fenced.  You can’t catch a dog that doesn’t want to be caught.  My husband decided at midnight that he would put up some wire fence to cut off a section of the yard so the yard would be smaller and she’d have less room to run.  We had the back door open and his pounding on stakes to hold the wire fence, scared her.  She was running and running around the backyard and I was so worried she would decide to go up and over the fence.  Thankfully, she didn’t, and instead ran into the house to get away from the pounding.  Mission accomplished and lesson learned.  

Until I can easily get to her outside in my fenced yard, I don’t feel comfortable taking her on walks outside of the fenced yard for fear that if she ever slipped her harness, I’d not be able to catch her.  We’re starting to go on walks inside the fence.  She’s an absolutely delightful, very sweet girl and will need a very patient, gentle home with a fenced in yard, another dog, and people that want to help a scared dog learn to live the Golden life.