Dandy's demons rear their ugly head...

We went to dog class on Wednesday night and Dandy wasn't into working for his normal Ziwi Peak treat, he instead wanted chicken! He was in a working mood and it was a great time for everyone. I noticed yesterday morning that his poop was pretty loose but, didn't think much of it and off to work I went. Because Dandy is so reliable with being left out and he has crating issues, we leave him loose while we are at work. In all the time we've fostered him he's been accident free while we are gone at work - that's 8+ hours a day during the week. For those of you who may not know - the reason Dandy was surrendered to New Rattitude was due to "chronic pooping & pottying in the home for at least 2+ years". So, we thought we were getting a dog that just needed bootcamp 101 for house training - that was not the case. We also know that there was a lot of mistreatment towards Dandy when the pooping & pottying were occurring, again, over the course of 2+ years.

Back to yesterday, when I came home from work, I opened the door and immediately thought uh-oh someone wasn't feeling well. I came up the stairs and found that someone had an upset tummy and couldn't hold it. Thinking it was probably Dandy (since he had loose poop in the morning) I called him and Catty in my most upbeat sing song voice and all I got was Catty who cleary had been asleep. I went into the living room and found Dandy cowering and shaking. I continued my upbeat tone but, lowered the volume of my voice to say "Hi Dandy boy, how ya doing today" and went and sat on the floor about 10 ft from him. I had grabbed some treats and continued talking to him, tossing treats towards him and calling him over to me. After about 5 minutes he was next to me still shaking but, wanting to be pet. We sat there for a long while together, me talking to him, petting him and giving him some treats. He was able to come out his dark place with this level of attention. Once the shaking stopped we sat for another 5 minutes or so and then I asked him if he wanted to go outside to go potty. We went out and he had more diarrhea and when he was done we spent some time on the deck with more petting and sweet talking. Once we came in the house I started cleaning up, continuing to talk to him, taking breaks to check in with him and offer treats to him for being open to wanting to connect to me and for wanting to be pet when he was clearly in distress. When my husband came home Dandy was worried again and we again went through the drill above of talking, treating and petting while getting Dandy to want to connect with us because we wanted to connect with him in a loving and positive way. Dandy had a good night's sleep and he was pretty close to being back to his normal self this morning which was happy news for everyone.

What we have come to understand with Dandy is that when he has a melt down he can spiral pretty quickly into a mess of worry and anxiety so, helping him out of that is what is key to helping him move forward. We all have baggage and set backs in life and Dandy is a little more loaded in these areas than most dog but, what makes him so incredibly amazing is that despite what he has been through he desperately wants to connect, move forward and trust that not all human's will do him harm.