From Carra's (formerly known as Carrot) forever family...

We learn something new about our Carra, every week. She came from a hoarding environment, about 50 dogs in the pack and she lived that way for about eight years and 9 months of her life. She is a senior with a lot of spunk and getting more active as the weeks go by. After all, the many years of needless stress and trauma, we are happy she experienced a complete 180 in her care with her foster family and in over the past three months, Carra has settled in just fine with us and has us both wrapped around her little paws, all of them!

Funny. She is, and she has an adorable personality all her own. She is a Golden Retriever/Collie mix and has the attributes of each. Her ears are ¾ and when they stand, our young grandsons compare them to “Yoda ears”. Her paws are totally Collie, very “dainty” as our Vet says. Her papers show she is a GR-Lab mix, but the Vet says absolutely not. She has medium fur length and “several colors”, when in the sun and not. In the sun, she has highlights of “true Golden” and is light sandy colored. In the house, she is more of a dark sandy-rusty color, all probably due to highlights with age. Her face and nose is Collie. She is smart, quiet, loyal, patient (does not beg) and after a few “hello barks” at people, she is instantly a friend. Not so much with other dogs. Before we adopted her, she was bit across the face by another dog and had to have stitches. We tried to introduce her to our kid’s three year old GR, but Carra was not interested or friendly. We may try again later.

While we don’t walk her off-leash around our cul de sac area, as there are woods on all sides, we let her run and romp when we are in the yards with her, as she does not run off. When she runs..she gallops! When she slows down, she will move into her “prancing mode”. Where she learned this we will never know. But it is indeed, funny to watch.

She knows her yards and realizes there are natural borders up against the woods. She gets interested when she hears or senses movement (squirrels, deer, etc..) but only stands alert, nose straight out, tail up and right paw raised just off the ground. If it’s “nothing in her mind”, she just moves along to another spot in the yard. She has taken to running and “diving” in to the yard and finishes her “Olympic moves” with several roll-overs from left to right in the grass. She “smiles” as she performs these maneuvers. We have tried to teach her to chase a ball, but due to the way she was raised, we don’t believe she knows what a ball is for or that it can be fun. It’s a challenge in progress!

Her vocabulary understanding is improving. We don’t have a detailed history on her of course, but we learned early-on that someone taught her “no”. Fortunately, we have not had to use it very often, but she stops doing whatever she is up to, when the word is voiced. She is also re-learning, we believe, basic commands like “stay”, “come”, “ride” and “walk”. She reacts positively to phrases like “let’s go for a ride”, “…for a walk” and more; so she is responding to the single words she knows in the phrases. As she is such a smart dog in just about every situation, my wife and I were very troubled early-on with her behavior when left alone.

The first couple of weeks we had her (adopted June 18, 2011) we would go out for dinner or to the store and when we returned we found the following: lots of drool on the bay windows in the living room, on the deck doors and across the wood floors in the kitchen. This happened twice and we could not figure it out. Our son suggested that we set-up one of the video cameras, as that’s what his family had to do with their dogs when they were acting up. We did. What we learned was so devastating for us and so emotional for her that we just did not know what to do. The video showed that the moment we shut the door to let her out, she began to whine, bark, drool, pace and pace across the living room, around the kitchen and back to the landing at the top of the stairs. She headed to the front door and began scratching and continued the actions along the trim below the bay windows. Oh my God! We passed along the information to our kids and they suggested we talk with their dog trainer. The trainer understood Carra’s background we received form RAGOM and asked several more behavioral questions. “Separation Anxiety”, was at the top of the list.

She was out of her “pack environment,” and she was void of “human contact”, although that could not have been much living with 50 other dogs. The trainer suggested we read “I’ll be Home Soon: How to Prevent and Treat Separation Anxiety”, by Patricia B. McConnel, Ph.D., as it would provide some solutions. We read. We followed the instructions and it’s working. It started with a de-conditioning process. We had to recognize the “triggers” that started her anxiety—that caused her to know we were leaving. For Dave, it was putting on a cap and picking up the car keys. For Judy, it was picking up her purse and her car keys. Although, there were times we did not go anywhere in the car, it was simply heading to the front door to exit our home. She is a smart dog and she knew what we were about to do. That’s why this was so frustrating to us, as how could such a smart dog not “get it” that, although we left our home, we were coming back to her. Of course we now realize that in the pack environment, if the human contact was so sparse, how would she know? We started off with the combination of triggers and heading to the front door, but would not go out. We would simply turn around and stay in our home. All of these steps are repeated up to 12 times a day. The next week, we did the same only we went out the door for one minute and then returned. The next week, two minutes; the next week, three minutes and so on. After two months, we noticed favorable improvement. Yes, two months, which may seem like a long time, but considering she lived in her deplorable, abusive situation for eight years and more, two months was very good. Today, after nearly three months, we have reached a time of letting her alone for about 5 and half hours and it’s climbing. We have parked at the end of the cul de sac and walked into the yard, up the back deck stairs and peeked in her. After five hours, she is now sleeping at the top of the stairs. The drool, the pacing, the whining is gone. We feel so fortunate, for the sake of one book. We did not use any drugs for the process.

She gets along with our grandsons, ages 9 and 6; once she meets our friends, she will greet them as a friend on repeated visits. When someone new comes to the door or walks in the yard, she will bark a bit, but it’s more of a “hello bark” and not vicious in any way.

Weight. Oh my gosh! When she was rescued, RAGOM’s Vet recognized what eight years-plus of pack living and very little exercise, did to her weight. Fortunately, again for her foster family, they proceeded with the Vet’s suggesting to start her on a diet. When we met her, she was just shy of a chunky 70 lbs. There were no demarcations on her hind end, just a very cute wiggle when she walked. When we adopted her we were advised to take her to our Vet within a few days. We did and our Vet agreed, the diet would continue. Exercise to the degree needed was probably new to her..but she loves it! Her walks consist of many times around the cul de sac loop, three to four times a day and many runs through the yards. She enjoys the outdoors and her walks and runs and even likes to walk the decks as she listens to nature. She especially picks her ears up when the Sand Hills Cranes fly over as they squawk and chat amongst themselves. We have taken her into the Vet’s for a monthly “weightwatchers” check-in, and we continue to feed her 3 cups of Hills r/d Diet Food. At this writing, her hind end marks are back and she is a stylish 56 pounds, just shy of her goal weight between 50 and 55lbs. We live in Minnesota, but if we lived in warmer climate, it would soon be bikini time! She still has a cute wiggle! She also sits more, runs more and longer and is able to leap tall bounds, well at least is able to raise her front paws up the to the kitchen counter as she searches for food, during the wee hours of the night!

Oh yes. She does. At least she has but it’s not all of the time. Up until the date we adopted Carra, we had been over ten years without a dog, as our Alaskan-Siberian Husky of 15 years, crossed the Rainbow Bridge in the year 2000.

When we travel by car, we like to prepare a treat cup for munchies along the way. Dave had prepared the treat cup with an assortment containing salted peanuts, Reese’s Pieces and Candy Corn. When Dave was about to leave in the morning, he started to picked-up his coffee, keys and looked for the treat cup. Knowing he prepared it the night before, he could not understand why it was not on the kitchen counter. He walked over to the dining room table and as he was walking back, he noticed the yellow plastic top from the cup..where else?—but tucked inside a fold on Carra’s bedding! Upon a further search, the empty cup was also located. I held the cup up and showed it to Carra and she lowered her head and turned away. Oh did she know! I said she was a smart dog! Well, it was of course my fault as I should not have left the filled treat cup so close to the counter’s edge. She did this again another time, but the little bag she grabbed was filled with dog food. So now, the counters are checked each night just to make sure there are no treats available to her.

Sleep time: We let her sleep anywhere she is comfortable. We have two special areas in our home, with quilts as her bedding. She likes them both, but occasionally will sleep in the middle of the living room or at the top of stairs, just to keep a watchful eye on our activities, we believe.

She will also sleep in Dave’s home office. She will usually find the most confined area in the office, whether under the desk, or along side of the desk as she can surround herself with whatever might be on the floor. In other areas ion our home, she still will find an area that she is protected in, like up against a wall or a door. The Vet says this comes from her living in the pack of 50 where sleeping space was probably quite limited. She is gradually coming out of this as we see her sleeping in the middle of the living room when we are watching TV. We encourage her to join us and she appears to like this alternative.

How does she treat us? I don’t think we could expect more from a child. She is our friend and she treats us that way. She is loving, always wants and allows us to pet her. Her Foster Family told us she is a “man’s dog” before we adopted her. That she is. Dave is retired and is with her more during the day than Judy, who works. Carra is Dave’s shadow. She will sleep in his office or right outside the office door. She is never more than a stride away from him and always has to have him in view. When we return, she gets very excited to see both of us. And, Bobbi Jo...you and your family were correct. She will bark for Dave, when he is on the lawn tractor and is out of sight. When he comes back from the outer yards and she sees him, she will just lie down and be quiet. Too funny!! When we walk her, she gets more excited to walk with us than just pulling and going for a walk. She loves to make the decision which direction we walk and we let her do so. She will “talk” to Judy when Judy returns home from work, but does not talk to Dave, but shows affection by rubbing up to him. She is a kisser!!`

Her name: Her official name on the RAGOM website was “Carrot”. Dave believes that she may have named by a young child, due to her color at the time when she was very young. Sweet then, but we did not like the name, “Carrot”. On our way home after adopting her, we looked in the back seat and called her “Carra”. She responded just fine and that’s her name, forever-to-be.

Eating: Carra is still on her diet. It’s going very well with her 3 cups of food a day, her many trips around the loop and running in the yards for exercise. Although the diet is good for her, we know she continues to be hungry as she licks clean her food bowl when finished with the solid food. Her Vet said she could have no more than 50 calories a day for treats. So we have learned she is quite fond of “Charlie Bears” at 3 calories per wafer and Milk Bones at 15 calories per bone..but we cut these in half, so she “thinks” she is getting more treats during the day. We believe it's more treats than she ever had in her lifetime.

She is nine years old now, and Carra, Judy and I and one of grandsons all share birthdays and our anniversary on the Fourth of July! She likes us and she likes her Forever Home. We see that in her every day. The feeling of course is mutual.

Spoiled? Of course.

Loved, definitely.

She deserves this at this stage of her life.

Dave & Judy