Baby Steps

It's been an interesting ten weeks as Flynn settles into our house; he's calmer, more relaxed and lovable. And as great as our Dr. Jeckyll is, we've seen more appearances of Mr. Hyde than we'd like. It all comes down to ensuring he trusts us with food and that we can trust him as well.

We have a few 'developmental opportunities' which is to be expected since Flynn spent some of his earliest months in life as a stray. Flynn will attempt to eat anything; rocks, leaves, slugs. I think we're over the rock thing, and luckily dry fall leaves are less interesting to a puppy palate than green leaves. When Flynn is chewing on something and I didn't give it to him, I need to check that he's not going to hurt himself which means I've encountered more half-chewed slugs than I care to admit. Gross, I know. However to Flynn this is worth fighting for and he growls and clenches his jaw tightly in order to retain possession. In more than one instance he's snapped at me.

Last week Flynn pulled his third Kake plant out of raised beds and helped himself to a salad. When Raleigh went into investigate they ended up in a huge brawl. Nobody was hurt but tempers flared brightly with Flynn protecting his salad bar and Raleigh protecting herself.

I gave some tips on food guarding in my book, but mealtimes are completely different; Flynn is excited but not aggressive. The dogs all eat within close proximity and respect each other's corner of the room. I regularly feed them fruit and vegetables as snacks, giving each dog a nibble in succession to foster this respect for one another.

Last week I separated Raleigh and Flynn and gave each of them a meaty bone as a treat. (It was Raleigh's birthday.) Flynn took his bone and crawled under a chair. While Raleigh wagged her tail happily gnawing on her bone, Flynn's tail was tucked, his ears were flat and an occasional growl could be heard 15 feet away. So he wouldn't be disturbed, I kept my distance but walked by every few minutes to check his progress and to show him that I was no threat.

After fifteen minutes I sat in a chair across the patio and called Flynn to me. Not surprisingly, his first reaction was to hunker down and growl. I continued to call him and he gave me an evil eye. I called him some more and my neighbor started joking about my repetitious call of "Flynn. Come." I broke the tension by switching my focus to the neighbor over the fence and occasionally calling Flynn to me. Eventually, Flynn looked up and dropped the bone out of his mouth. I called him again with a cheery, playful tone. Flynn paused while making his decision. More encouragement and he peeked out from behind the chair. By now I had driven my neighbor away to do yard work on the other side of her house. I kept my voice light and upbeat and Flynn finally took his first baby step away from the bone. Now each time I said his name he took one more step towards me. At the half way point Flynn stopped to reconsider and looked back at the bone. Friendly encouragement won out and he took another step forward then quickly closed the gap between us.

While I was being friendly and cheerful in my tone and body language, Flynn was not. I kept my hands in my lap, palms open and Flynn gave a sniff. I wished I would have brought a cookie but I had nothing but the scent of dinner ingredients on my hand. Praising Flynn, I reached down and petted his side, steering clear of his head. Of course Flynn wanted to get back to his bone, but I stretched the time out to almost two minutes before telling him, "okay, go!" Flynn didn't think twice and reunited with his treasure.

I went back to randomly walking through the patio and Flynn no longer growled. That felt like success.

I used the appearance of a well-timed squirrel to finally discard the bone when Flynn left the patio. Flynn returned to search for his bone and was confounded by its disappearance. I like to think that he blamed the squirrel.

We concluded this forty minute exercise by going inside and I gave all the dogs a generous round of cookies then some carrots and snap peas. With his stomach full, Flynn crashed and napped happily.

Being a guy who advocates for feeding dogs better and being quite generous with the goods, it definitely bugs me that Flynn is so distrustful with food. However, I'm not worried. We'll get there: it just requires more time and patience when you measure progress in baby steps.

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