Meet Shasta

This is Shasta.

She's pretty cute, right? Of course, she is!  Shasta is adorable, and she's my new foster dog, which is a bit of an adventure all by itself since this is my first foster. Then, while Shasta is sweet and fun, she also has some issues to boot.  Essentially, it's "stranger danger" which means that she reacts poorly when spotting someone she doesn't know.  I'll get back to that in a minute.

Let's start with the meaning of her name, "Shasta."  Going by the name dictionary, it means one with natural beauty, and that's nice.  She is a looker and a lover, but to be honest, the reference to the volcano in California is likely more appropriate.  Fortunately, Mount Shasta is dormant and won't erupt for several hundred years, and my goal is to get Shasta the dog to a similar state of curbing those eruptions. Then, some claim that Mount Shasta was named by Russian settlers, perhaps from Russian meaning "white, clean, pure" or another word for "happiness and luck."  I like this part of Mount Shasta because Shasta the dog could use more of that luck.  :-)

Shasta has lived with me and Sean for a month now, and she's making baby steps toward rehabilitation.  While she would growl at Sean for the first couple of days, now she's madly in puppy love with him.  She'll snuggle and play with him and lick his face.  He was even gone for two weeks, and when he returned, Shasta was thrilled to see him.  This is huge.

When I write that Shasta has a "stranger danger" fear, it might seem small, but her problem is anything but that.  When she meets a new person, she goes from cute to scary in a matter of seconds, and this is from a distance of more than 10 feet.  We're working on it, and during the process, I'm imaging the dog she'll become.  I see how wonderful she is with people she knows, and am keeping faith that she'll be able to calmly walk past strangers and meet new people one day.  By the way, that imagination is key to dog training.  You need to be able to see the dog you want her to become to be able to address specific areas...with kindness.

So.  What is she working on now?

Currently, she's getting lots of walks and play time.  I'm going to make her crazy about toys, and the goal is for her to walk while holding a toy in her mouth.  Why?  She can't bite if she's holding onto a toy for dear life.

The first change was her diet.  Shasta eats only from Kongs now. I stuff them with kibble, yogurt and peanut butter and then freeze them.  The yogurt is for her digestion.  She's a nervous little thing, and when I first brought her home, she'd throw up when she got excited.  Since adding yogurt to her diet, her stomach has calmed down, and I haven't had to clean up puppy puke in 2 weeks.  Freezing the Kongs is just to make her work harder on the food puzzle.  This gives her something to do with her mouth and makes that brain work.

We're also working on walking past people she knows, meet and greets, basic obedience and general manners.  I swear she's got spring coils in her back legs and will post a video soon.  We're working on appropriate jumping by putting it on cue and ignoring it the rest of the time.  Seeing her "dance, dance, dance" is definitely a frown breaker.

We make a little bit of progress everyday, and it's a slow trip with a scenic tour.  The destination will be wonderful though.  It's been a month now, and I can already see that it'll be hard to let her go to a new home.  While she tends to over-bond with people she likes, I'm falling in puppy love, too.

More soon...