We are very transparent here, sharing our happy times as well as our challenges with you. Some people think that having a senior dog rescue and sanctuary is all about cuddling old dogs all day. Well, no. That would be nice but that’s not the reality. We wish we had more time to do that and so do the dogs!
We want to share a challenge with you that we’re having now which is consuming a great deal of our time. We brought Vellie here almost two weeks ago. He was surrendered to the shelter by his owner who only said that he growls at children. The shelter performed a behavior evaluation on him and determined that he had issues with resource guarding. We didn’t think that was a big deal. Olive and Ransom have this issue, and it’s easily managed. But Vellie has much more going on than just resource guarding. In fact, we haven’t seen him do that yet! What we’re seeing is much more concerning. He is exhibiting a lot of fear aggression. He crawls into corners or into his crate and won’t come out. He gets on the sofa and won’t get off. He growls, snarls, and wants to bite if approached. We are quite perplexed by his behavior because he’s otherwise very sweet and affectionate. We think it may stem from how he was treated in his previous home. We met someone who knew him and his owner several years ago, and she confirmed that the owner used to get angry and scream at him. No wonder he’s fearful!
We have a lot of work to do to help Vellie, and we hope he can overcome this. When we first met him, we were sure he was going to be highly adoptable. He’s adorable and healthy! So you can imagine our disappointment that we won’t be able to place him up for adoption now or maybe never. If he and others don’t get adopted, we cannot rescue more needy dogs.
We’re using a multi-prong approach to help Vellie by giving him lots of exercise, doing training and relaxation exercises with him, using calming aids, and counterconditioning using high value foods. He was supposed to see our vet for the first time yesterday but unfortunately, we were unable to get him out of the crate and had to cancel. We’re hoping to reschedule soon and maybe our vet will also have some additional suggestions.
We will keep you updated on Vellie’s progress. Please send positive thoughts to him and to us. Thank you.
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