Need Help with a Skittish/ Scared Puppy

[Sculpture Widow]

I agree with bugface and Katey66......after working 3 years in a kennel with rescues. This poor dog must have been treated horribly by someone, and my heart aches listening to your story. How wonderful of you to take her in.

I will say, that my opinion is that once you get this sweetie, she will probably ALWAYS be skittish and shy. It will be a part of her personality that will NEVER go away. She may become more comfortable with your family, but it's something you will deal with continually. You will need to be watchful, as she may nip or bite out of self-protection -- who can blame her??? -- especially if she's been treated terribly by humans. but then again, I have seen some dogs that forgive humans and are the most trusting.....and in may opinion have no reason to trust humans again. it is incredible to see that transformation. amazing.

freshly cooked chicken/broth or hamburger is a great idea.

Good Luck and would love to hear an update as well.

[luxwif]

When my husband brought our lab home from the pound about 6 years ago, he was about a year old and exactly like you are describing (extremely nervous). They somehow got him in a carrier for the short few blocks home. We put him on a leash before letting him out of the carrier and just spent some time petting him and comforting him. It really didn't take him too long to warm up to us, but to this day we have to keep him on his chain because if our parents come over and try to greet him at gate or the meter readers come he scales the 6 ft. fence and takes off for a few hours!


At first we had also thought he had been abused, but figured out that where he came from he was caged up outside with a bunch of other dogs and really didn't get much human interaction before we got him.

Hope your pup is warming up to you! Best of luck!

[CitygirlR]

Thanks for all your advise
Here's the latest update on the pup:

We found out it was a HE instead of a SHE , he usually had his tail tucked so tight all the way under his belly that we thought he was a girl!

And then we discovered that he was coming out from under this person's fenced-in yard so technically, we were trying to "rescue" someone's puppy! The sad thing is they are obviously not feeding him or socializing him at all , if not he would have come willingly to us & not be terrified of everything. We didn't find this out until after 2-3 weeks of feeding him everyday and we tried everything to try to get him to come home with us. I actually made DH drag a piece of rotisserie chicken behind him ( on an early sunday morning, so less embarrassment for him! ) to try to get the puppy to follow him home but the pup would stop about 5 blocks from our home & run back to the woods. And we also tried a net ( after all else failed but that didn't work either ) & then he eventually stopped coming out to the woods so we were thinking that maybe he couldn't get thru the hole in the fence anymore or that the people there closed up the hole.
I just hope that he is doing okay, we haven't seen him in a couple of weeks.
Thank you everyone who read my post & replied.
There is no happy ending to this story but boy, did we try to give it one!:shrug7:

[meems]

OMG..dragging the chicken..that is a priceless image!

[CitygirlR]

I know , right??
And my DH is 6' 4" 275 lbs & the puppy is maybe about 30-35 lbs tops so that was pretty funny! I'm sure the neighbors had a good laugh!

[katey66]

I also wish I could have seen that! Is there any way you could "check up" on your new friend? I'm glad you were able to get close enough to see "he" was she!! I will keep this poor pup in my nightly prayers. If you happen to find that she's not being cared for properly, you could always get the human society involved.

[CitygirlR]

We have been looking for him evey time we drive by the woods but we have not seen him lately. I am glad that he isn't running around the road anymore as that was dangerous & I was always so worried he might get hit.
The people who "own" him have a 6' privacy fence ( that's another reason why we didn't know he was coming out from their yard initially ) so we can't see how he is doing:shrug7:
We are both sad that we couldn't get to adopt him but we did try our best ( especially DH ) so I guess he just wasn't destined to be ours.

Thank you everyone who tried to help us out , we really appreciate it!

[luxwif]

Please don't assume that the owners are not taking care of him because the pup acts this way. . . we have owned our dog for 6 years now, and he is still a scaredy dog! We feed & water him daily, we also play with him everytime we go outside.

He has done better when socializing around other pooches and the girls at the vets office, but still is not fond of people visiting the house.

I just know how it is to be the owner of such a pet and to think that someone would accuse me of not taking care of him would really upset me.

[CitygirlR]

Originally Posted by luxwif Please don't assume that the owners are not taking care of him because the pup acts this way. . . we have owned our dog for 6 years now, and he is still a scaredy dog! We feed & water him daily, we also play with him everytime we go outside. He has done better when socializing around other pooches and the girls at the vets office, but still is not fond of people visiting the house. I just know how it is to be the owner of such a pet and to think that someone would accuse me of not taking care of him would really upset me.

We could see that the puppy wasn't being taken care off as we could count the number of ribs he has & he was running around the road looking for scraps to eat! In my book, that is not a well-taken care of dog. That was why we thought he was a stray.
I'm sure you take very good care of your dog & whatever I wrote that might have upset ( or offend ) you was not intended to.

[luxwif]

No offense taken. . . Thanks :)