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.