please find below the latest escapades of Oscar, one of our rehomed springers featured in Rescue Tails.
“The Boy Is Back!
Last time I updated this blog I told you that my human mum was waiting to hear from the behavioural vet who would help me not be so frightened about going on walks.
Well, it took nearly three months to hear from her and my mum got fed up with waiting so decided to start doing some work with me herself.
She read up a lot about learning to deal with the fears that humans have and came up with a plan that she thought might work with a dog too. Every day we did lots of games at home where I had to learn to trust her more and more, like her blowing noisy kisses on my face (which I didn’t use to like) and she learnt to trust me not to use my teeth at her.
We did loads of tricks like this, over and over again, until in the end I didn’t really get bothered by them as I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. But we also started to doing walks on paths (where there was no grass) and then built up to going onto paths in a park, then walking a little bit on the grass in a field, and then across a field but by the wall. All of this was on-lead so I knew she was still looking after me.
After a while, I really wanted to begin to explore outside a bit more with the other dogs so she would let go of the lead. I know it sounds a bit daft but it made me still feel safe if I could at least feel like I had a bit of her with me, even if I ran around a lot.
The best thing was that she always made sure that we did walks where there was water for me to have a swim in because that really is my favourite thing to do.
She would never, ever force me to do a walk. If I got a bit nervous and sat down she would just stop and stand beside me. She wouldn’t pay me any attention though so I started to realise that there was no real benefit in keep stopping because it didn’t really get me any extra attention.
When I started to walk again she would always tell me what a good boy I was and that made me happy.Each walk has made me happier and happier and now I can run around loads without my lead on! I think she still gets a bit worried though – but this time because I run off to explore and she can’t see me, apparently we now have to work on something called my “recall”.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know that after a couple of wobbly months I’m back to my old self again – running around the fells, sniffing out a gazillion interesting things, splashing in any mud or water I can find, being a Springer!
Here’s a photo of me having fun in the stream recently – boy, it’s good to be back to me again.
Oh and the special vet phoned my human mum last week to say she was ready to see me now but it would cost over £700. Apparently, I don’t need to see her now, and that has to be priceless.“