I miss her!

Last update Ruca (formerly Stryker) is doing wonderfully. I am thrilled.

I still miss her! Here's a few of my favorite pictures of the little monster.

courtesy of SaraB

last photos (-:

thank you Stryker

I didn't cry when she left. Her new owners came in to get her and she was absolutely overjoyed to see them. We hauled her stuff out to their car, she jumped right in and started sniffing around. I called her over, held her head in my hands, kissed her nose and said "behave yourself monster, I'm gonna miss you!"

As I watched them drive away, I thought about how much this little dog has taught me.

Start the day off right.
Stryker started every day with an enthusiasm for life I've never, ever, seen in a dog before. It wasn't just about life though, she wanted someone to enjoy life with. We had an early morning routine of going out for a walk in the dark, just the two of us, before everyone else was awake. She started the walk by bouncing all over the place, then progressed to sniffing around, and we ended the walk with some chase games. She greeted every day with gusto and zest!

Always greet friends thoroughly.
We worked a lot (A LOT) on appropriate greetings. In the end, I gave in and decided if she can show enough self control to sit, offer eye contact, and wait for the person to approach; who am I to micromanage the vocalizing, rubbing up against, and other silly greeting behaviors she does? I actually found it quite endearing after a while. If Stryker likes you, you'll know it.

Be picky.
At first I was quite annoyed with the fact that she wouldn't eat well, she didn't play with the assortment of toys we had in the house, and constantly scratched at some collars I put on her. Apparently she just had preferences, like we all do, and that's okay. She started eating really well at her first long-term foster home, chose the toys she liked from their toy bin, and learned to wear a rolled leather collar without complaint. She's much better about all of these things now, but it made me stop and think. I needed to appreciate her individuality.

Bond.
This is a hard one. I took her in knowing she'd always be a foster dog. There was no potential for her being a 'foster failure' as I'd promised my elderly dogs I just wouldn't bring a young, bouncy, energetic puppy into our house. Because of this, I wanted to keep my distance. Then I read Denise Fenzi's post about her "half dog - Juno"

I did not work to develop a deeper relationship with her – to make her feel special and amazing.  I wasn’t comfortable making her “mine” – because she wasn’t.  I kept a wall between us.  It felt unfair to her owner if I bonded with Juno as one of my own.

Substitute "It felt unfair to Stryker if I bonded with her" at the end and this is exactly how I (initially) approached fostering her. I didn't want her to settle in too much, I didn't want to complicate her life even more by allowing us to form a bond, and most of all, I selfishly wanted to protect myself from the hurt of her leaving.

I set about making her “my” dog...I ignored minor transgressions of the house rules if she was breaking them to be closer to me. I watched her style of play carefully and started spending a few minutes each day running around the back yard and trying to engage her when she was at her most energetic – truly an exhausting activity.  In training, I worked very  hard to add value to myself by thoroughly integrating toy rewards with celebration, play and ring... 

While not all of this is applicable, I took what Denise Fenzi wrote to heart. Stryker and I started to play. We started to have morning and night time together. I started taking her to work with me. And she started making more progress than I'd ever imagined. She started responding to my non-conditioned cue words with a wag of her tail and her eyes dancing, as if to say "I'm ready for anything." We could watch something scary together and she'd look to me for confirmation that it truly was okay. She learned to lean into me when she needed support during a stressful situation. She learned to trust me.

Take time at night to enjoy the ones you love.
At the recommendation of two people quite experienced with Shepherds, I started putting my dogs and cats away earlier at night. For an hour or more, Stryker and I hung out, just the two of us. Sometimes we played training games, sometimes we wrestled on the floor, and sometimes we watched movies. Her antics at night made me laugh so much that I called it my "good for the soul" time. She made sure I never went to bed upset.

I took Stryker in knowing full well she'd be a lot of work. I knew she needed to learn a lot of skills in order to be ready for a new home and I knew that somehow, I'd be up for the challenge. What I couldn't have expected is how much of an impact this black and tan beauty would have on me. "I love this German Shepherd, I still don't love German Shepherds."

Some come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever, the same.

--Flavia Weedn

Adios Chica Bonita

Stryker left for her new home today. 

Have a wonderful life, you crazy beautiful shepherd!

Love,

The Foster-Food-Lady

Exercise Pens Are Wonderful

Stryker has outgrown the "extra large" plastic crate for the most part but it is the largest one I have so we make do. Lately she's been more agitated in her crate at home than I would expect. The more I thought about it today the more I went "duh!" She's been in her crate a lot, she doesn't have any room to stretch out, and she's only been getting out of crate time for an hour or so a couple times a night. (My poor creatures just can't take much of her outrageous enthusiasm for life, so it's not fair to anyone if she's out a lot and I can't manage the situation completely.)

Tonight I hauled the exercise pen up from the basement, set it up in the living room, put her favorite chewies as well as dinner in food toys in there. She was SO MUCH HAPPIER (and quieter than she's been in days). She was able to stretch out, chew on a cow hoof, her bone, her kong, empty the food toys of dinner, and oh... yeah... stretch out while doing so! When I took her out for last pee and asked her to go into her crate again, she was more than willing and settled right in.

Duh!

Watching Dexter.

She is still here tonight. She seemed to show the prospective family her worst and best sides in a matter of 45 minutes! They're going to think about it and sleep on it for a couple nights.

 

She was a HUGE flirt with Dexter!

It was great to watch the two GSDs play together! For once, Stryker ended up covered in as much drool as the other dog after a playdate! Dexter makes Stryker look like a midget even though she measured in a 24" and 63# at work this week!

Stay... what?

Normally I'd say Stryker's lack of understanding regarding the cue "stay" is me being lazy. However, I have a reasonable explanation this time. Stryker came into rescue with one very reliable behavior, "sit." It has continued to be her most reliable behavior and it vies with "platz" as her default behavior at this point. My number one goal when she came into rescue was to teach her to think. I wanted her to think about her surroundings and how she could control them.

From there we learned how to shape things together. I learned how to work with a new dog and she learned how to think. One of her favorite behavior chains is "rise/jump/bottom" (front feet/all 4 feet/rear feet) using a pedestal. She's done it on the fitpaws peanut, the hatbox, and a large plastic storage container. I needed to get a picture of her last night and knowing that "stay" is not reliable enough for me to step away, I cued a behavior that has a long history of reinforcement for duration.

"Rise" while sporting a ThunderShirt.

All this is to say that "stay" hasn't been very high on my priority list. I'm okay with that and feel justified explaining that to her potential new owners. Instead, she has the skill set to watch a toy being thrown and offer a sit or down in order to be released to chase it.

She has a default sit in her crate until released. 

She will offer a sit and wait for water/food bowls to be set down. 

She's able to be tethered to a human while walking and stick pretty close to the left side. 

She'll put her nose into her gentle leader.

She can relax in her crate and out of it.

And, she's learning to pick up a toy when greeting someone, rather than chew on their arm.

Tim much appreciates the toy in her mouth!

Stryker has someone coming to meet her tomorrow, if it's a good match for everyone involved... this could be her last night here. If it's not a good match for everyone, she'll have interacted with two people and their current German Shepherd, and I'll have more information about new/improved/more reliable skills she needs for her home.

I'm pretty sure her tail continues to grow...

Work

Most of the readers of this blog know me personally and have likely met Stryker. If you do not fall into this category, however, here's a little bit more about her life currently.

I work as a veterinary technician, typically 4 days a week. Stryker usually comes with me at least 3 days because then I make time to work with her. I can fit in a training session before work, at least one on my lunch hour, and more often than not we go on a public outing after work. Lately she's been getting playtime with one of my bosses young labs at lunch. I was a good trainer and didn't even substitute that for a training session today (I brought my camera with us outside only to realize my battery was still on the charger, whoops).

When I first started bringing her to work, I'm pretty sure my co-workers were ready to kill me. She was noisy, she beat her crate door, and oh yeah-she was noisy. I've always left her with an assortment of toys, chews, and treats. In the beginning she didn't know what food toys really were so they were often left untouched by lunch time. I brought them out with us at lunch and she started to enjoy the food toys in my presence. She's quite good at food toys by now and they're worked on immediately!

I've been changing the location of her crate somewhat lately, usually rotating between two spots as well as giving her some time in an outside run if the kennel dogs are inside. While it's added to the initial barking if a dog walks by, she's still settling pretty quickly after the episode. 98% of the time people can walk by without much more than a tail wag, a huge improvement over 0% of the time in the beginning (I assume she hoped each and every person walking through would release her).

She noticed another of my bosses dogs, Cappy, on the other side of the gate.

All this is to say that all but one of my co-workers were able to be in the break room, eat lunch, watch tv, and socialize without Stryker uttering a single noise. One even commented... "I had no idea there was a dog back here!"

She'd just met Cappy through the baby gate!

After her play session with Crow, she accidentally met one of the other Labs, as well as the Greyhound. (Due to the gate below being open. Thankfully both of those dogs are incredibly low-key about meeting other dogs and are Good Dogs in general.)

Ram is really good at sleeping. He's also got wonderful dog-dog skills.

Not-so-little Stryker was wonderful and wanted to keep playing with everyone. Today is the first day I asked for impulse control exercises during play. There was some initial vocalizing (whines) but she quickly learned the faster she sits and offers eye contact, the faster she gets to go play again.

She slept well the rest of the afternoon and we even visited Tractor Supply tonight on the way home from work. This is the first time I've taken her out in a store and she was absolutely thrilled by all the sights/sounds/smells. She was incredibly confused by the giant broom a worker was pushing so we watched it together and "talked" our way through it. She never stopped eating, she always turned to me after the click, and never went over the top trying to get people to pet her.

She should be tired, but she's not... :)

I AM the cute!