Rusty and Chloe are finally home – Progress Week 5

What another amazing week and so much has happened in this last week. I recently signed up to a pet forum (Petforums.co.uk) to hopefully get some advise and help with some of the issues we were experiencing.

As I previously mentioned Rusty and Chloe have some socializing issues and a few other smaller things. We take them walking every evening and it is really embarrassing when all the other dogs approach us tails wagging and all R & C wants to do is attack them.

I posted all the issues we are experiencing on the forum and got some valuable feedback.  One thing I never thought about was that they said since they are from the same litter that they are very attached and that could be part of the problem.

One of the VIP Forum members called Hutch6 gave us quite a bit of advise and then offered to meet us with his 3 dogs to observe their behavior and try a few exercises.

We met with Hutch6 (Ian) in a moor in the Bradford area. Chloe was a bit carsick but I am prepared for this, no worries.

We met up with Ian and his 3 dogs, Dillon, Kes and Jess and what an experience it was!!!! We separated Rusty and Chloe and Ian took Dillon on the one side and Rusty on the other and kept on feeding them chicken pieces while trying to get them closer to each other.

He determined that both Rusty and Chloe are perfectly happy with other dogs around as long as they don’t see their eyes. I have absolutely no idea why they have a problem with that but he proved it over and over. They were sitting back to back touching and Rusty would be happy as long as Dillon did not look at him.

Ian did get both Rusty and Chloe to walk in a pack with his 3 dogs and it gradually improved over the 2 hours.  Jim and I both agree that Ian definitely has a way with the animals.

I feel that we have hope now to resolve this socializing issues with Rusty and Chloe. It will require us to take them on separate walks and spend a lot of time on the fields to teach them social skills.

No one said it will be easy but I am ready for the challenges ahead.