In just two days, we will have officially been a family for a month. This is our Alice. We adopted her from the SPCA Animal Rescue. Alice has been through at least 3 names, but I think (and hope) Alice is her favorite.
Believe me, I can gush about this dog ALL day, but she has come with her own baggage of course. She's scared of people, and more so, men. When we were visiting her at the shelter, she took a while to come up to the fence to sniff me, and she coward from my husband. She isn't properly socialized with other dogs. We've only given her a chance in a controlled safe environment, to meet other dogs, and the results were mixed (something we're working on). When we first brought her home, she seemed to adjust quickly...or we thought she had.
Alice tends to be unsure, (likely were her issues come from I would guess), but she seemed comfortable with us, right off the bat. Early this week, the trainer we've seen a couple times (Bev, she's been super helpful and has put my mind at ease a handful of times), pointed out how much better she was than the last time she'd seen her. This had me take notice of other things. She's catching onto our morning routine. She knows when mom is putting on her shoes in the morning, we're going out, and if I'm taking too long, she lets me know. She's also not pulling like she used to on her leash, and the elevator isn't a terrifying thing anymore.
Today's progress on our walk, was VERY noticeable... there was little to no pulling, but we noticed, she's not so terrified of people. We actually stopped to talk to people on the walk and she DIDN'T freak out. This was panic mode before, desperately trying to find a way out. We also encountered a handful of other dogs on our walk. In the past she'd freak out, I'd try and get her to keep moving, and that was a task and a half. Today, we kept moving and kept telling her to come, we needed to repeat it, and pull a little on the leash, but again, vast improvement!
BUT, the one thing that has me thinking, she's really starting to feel like she's home? She's smiling. Sounds small, but this warms my heart every time I see that smile, and yes it's the one on the top of this post. I'd been posting pictures of Alice for a month. She looks unsure, or serious in basically of them, because these are the faces we saw. Now, she smiles. That may sound like such a small thing to some, and we'd seen a random smile from time to time, but we're seeing lots of smiles lately, and i love it.
We still have work to do, but I'm celebrating these victories, with pride.
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