Fun with Dogs!

Wasn’t she cute?  This is Bonanza Jellybean, my Australian Cattle Dog at about 9 weeks old in the summer of 2007.

As a baby, Jellybean was such a cute little thing

She was a normal if not overly friendly puppy.

But at around 3 months, Jellybean suddenly wouldn’t let anyone but me and family members (that is my mother in the photo) touch her:

So, I did what I knew had worked with Fancy, I had as many people as I could get to, feed her and give her positive experiences with strangers.

I took her EVERYWHERE

You’ve never seen a dog who is so calm in strange places around strange people right up until the second they tried to touch her!

But at her first birthday

still no progress towards allowing a Not-Barrie to touch her (Jellybean has 3 categories of people from what I can tell: Barrie, Friend of Barrie and Not Barrie.)

Jellybean will be two years old on May first of 2009 and this week I was really starting to lose faith in my ability to get her past these issues.  I was very seriously considering talking to Dr. Jude about putting Jellybean on BuSpar to just get her over the hump in the training/socialization process.

To me, it felt like cheating to use anti-anxiety medication to solve the problem and as a result for the past week I have discussed the issue over and over with pretty much everyone trying to decide if that is what I should do .

On Tuesday I was talking to Roger and Lucky’s  Mom about the issue and she said, “have you ever tried hoding Jellybean while someone else pets her?”

Me: (laughing) yeah, want to see what happens?

I picked Jellybean up and R&L’s Mom reached to pet her and Jellybean let her do it!  Previously when I have tried this, Jellybean has squirmed to the point where I could no longer hold her, leapt out of my arms and/or snapped at the person.

I SWEAR I think Jellybean has been listening in on all my BuSpar conversations and decided she would rather just let Not-Barries touch her than take pills every day ;-)

We did the same thing with my next door neighbor when we got home and while it did not go as smoothly, Jellybean did still submit to allowing herself to be petted!

For two years this has been a forefront focus of my daiy life, getting Jellybean to the point where she will let strangers touch her.  I almost don’t know what do with myself now that we have gotten there!

I feel FREE!

Although I must admit that I have been very annoyed by other people in my life not understanding what a HUGE deal this is.  They all seem to think that I understand that they always knew I would be able to do it but I need props man!!