Dakota 13-138 [1]

Sponsored by:

Tina, Mike, Quila (12 years young!) and Reyka (2 years)

Please welcome Dakota to the RAGOM family! Dakota is a 9 year old red PB Golden who has spent her whole life working in a breeding operation being a mommy. She is ready to retire and begin living the good life. We took her to the Vet yesterday. She was heartworm free and her blood work was excellent. Dr. Jean said that she is at a good weight for a girl her age (65 lbs), has good teeth. and a nice coat. We're treating her for hook worms and some other parasites as well as an ear infection but these can be easily cured. We will be bringing her back in to be spayed next week.Dakota came to us a week ago as a very scared girl, having likely never left her home in her life, never ridden in a car, never been in a house, or interacted so much with humans 24/7. Our job is to help her turn this from a scary situation into a fun adventure.Already we can see her come out of her shell a little bit every day. She didn't know what treats were for so when we would offer her one she would sniff but then turn her head away. Of course our RD figured out this pattern quickly and would come over and scoop up the extra treat! Yesterday she still turned her head but brought Harley up short with a quick little growl when he got close. He backed right off and she proceeded to eat her first treat and gave us a big smile.We don't know a lot yet about the real Dakota - the girl who is just beginning to emerge. Here is what we do think we know so far:- Dakota is afraid of many things, loud noises, quick movements, unfamiliar objects. The one thing she is not afraid of is interaction with people. She must have been treated kindly in her past life as she has no fear of touching, petting, scritchies, etc. She's a real sweetie. We can see her growing in confidence, bit by bit, every day.- She gets along well with our resident dog (an eleven year old neutered male GR) and our two cats. She ignores the cats but has no problem with them getting close and they have no fear of her. From what we know right now we believe that she will need a confident dog in her forever home.- She has had no accidents in the house. Because she has been an outside dog we have been taking her outside every few hours.She does fine for 8 hours at night. We've been gone for 2 1/2 hours without any problems. She was very afraid of her kennel so we have given her free roam with our resident dog and she has not had any problems. She starts the night on a rug in the living room but ends up on her dog bed in our bedroom by morning.- She survived a house full of people over the Memorial Day Weekend, including 4 dog-savvy kids (ages 8 - 13). For now she has her safe places in the house but comes out when something interesting is going on.We know we're in for a lot of adventures over the coming weeks and we'll let you know all about them. Stay tuned!