Baby Steps for Francie

Fresh on the heels of getting a successful home for Seamus/Buster, in my "out to save the world, one dog at a time" zeal, I decided to hone in on my training efforts with Francie, the young white pitbull at the shelter. All we know about her is that she's very smart and loves to snuggle, but she also tends to freak out and grab her leash with her teeth (which my poor thigh still bears testimony to from nips several months ago). She is absolutely ball-obsessed and INTENSE in everything she does. For example, Francie doesn't just drink water--she DRINKS water, frenetically lapping up everything in the bowl, splashing and dripping, as though she hadn't had a drop of water in the past week.

Because of Francie's intensity and unpredictability, I can't bring Francie home to foster. Until I know more about her, I don't want to risk my family, Cabana, our cat, or our home. Still, I felt I could do more for her than just taking her for a short walk and playing 20 minutes of Chuck-It with her until she was too pooped to go after the ball anymore, whereupon she would lay down in the dirt and gnash the ball into shreds.

So yesterday, I asked for permission to take Francie offsite, to give her a change of scenery, see how she behaves in the car, and eventually, in weeks to come, maybe I could even take her to my house for an hour or two. After all, how a dog acts in a house is what potential adopters want to know--is she house trained, does she get on furniture, does she chew shoes, can she be left on her own, etc. We don't have any answers to those questions right now, so how many people are going to be willing to adopt her? Although I guess it only takes one.

Francie was okay in the car, definitely not as stressed as Seamus had been. I put her in Cabana's usual spot in the back of the car. Looking in my rear view mirror, I could see the top of Francie's back convulsing and convulsing. I thought she must be vomiting, the way her back was undulating like crazy--is she car sick? No--she was just humping the dog bed. Humping and humping and humping. What's with that?!

I made Francie a purple front-clip harness, to keep her from yanking the dickens out of my arm. At the shelter, Francie tends to pant and pace. If she's within 100 yards of the Chuck-It area, she pulls like a draft horse to get over to it. She doesn't sniff, rarely wags her tail, and can't seem to relax.

The road in front of the shelter is super ugly, not many good smells, and lots of trucks. I took Francie to a nearby lake with a pretty path encircling it, where we ran and walked for 2 miles and then did a bit of training (sit, down, come) with a retractable leash. Francie heeled very nicely in the harness and seemed generally happy and calm to be away from the shelter. Good things!

That was yesterday. Today, I decided to change things up a bit with Francie. Again, I ran/walked with her for 2-3 miles, then we stopped at the park where I always take Cabana. It was raining, which was ideal because it meant the fields were totally empty. Since there's still a lot I don't know about Francie, I didn't want other dogs around to create potential problems.

I thought Francie would look at the big green field, full of soft grass, and think, "Wow, this is awesome!" But instead, she was tentative. She stuck close to me, even though I had put a 10-foot drag line on her so we could do some recall work (with me still holding the drag line, just in case something made her bolt).

After about 10 minutes of walking on the field and practicing "come", I let Francie have the frisbee that I had been holding. I didn't want to bring a ball since Francie is already so ball-obsessed, but I thought a frisbee might be a nice alternative for her. Holy guacamole, was I wrong!

Francie took the frisbee in her mouth, and it was like a switch went off. She became frenetic, growling and thrashing. She wasn't being aggressive toward me, yet I couldn't tell if this was her way of playing or exactly what she was doing. But it was undesirable behavior, to say the least. I got the frisbee away from her and hoped we could go back to just walking calmly...toward the car! But Francie started biting and pulling at the drag line, which suddenly became exceedingly long and cumbersome and impossible to pull away from her.

The one thing that has always made Francie stop this kind of behavior is a squirt bottle. A couple squirts of water in her face, and she stops whatever she was doing--so I ALWAYS have a squirt bottle with me when working with Francie. And I had a squirt bottle with me now--but maybe because it was raining, the squirt bottle tactic didn't work! After all, she'd been "squirted" by rain all morning.

Suddenly, I was vexed that no one else was at the park, since no one would hear me calling pitifully for help. Finally, I had to unclip the drag line, drop it and everything else I was holding, grab Francie by the collar and drag her to the car.

(Sorry this post is so long. Thanks for hanging in there with me!)

In retrospect, I don't know if it was the frisbee that triggered something. But what I do realize is that Francie is a dog who has done nothing new in the past 60-120 days (however long she's been at the shelter, I don't know how long she's been there). She's been looking at the same four walls for 23+ hours a day! I was being overly ambitious in exposing her to new things. A car ride and a 45-minute walk would probably be more than sufficient, and I should have been much more gradual in doing more. She's just so muscular and athletic, I thought she could handle and would be craving more physical activity--but I forgot to consider her mental capacity. Some dogs may have been fine with what I did, but since I don't have any idea what Francie's past was, I should have been taking baby steps, not leaping vaults.

I learned a lot today, and thankfully, I don't have any new teeth marks on me. And I've made it through to try to save the world again tomorrow...or not.