The "Incident"

Shyla and I are still working away at teaching her about all the crazy things that a dog might encounter in the human world. Shyla is completely comfortable at home, in our forest, and anyplace rural. However, the bustle of human activity can throw her for a loop.

Since I never take photos of her during our training (I have to completely focus on the training), I'll pepper this post with photos from our outing in the snow today).

Just after Thanksgiving, Shyla had made huge progress since her arrival, and I could take her almost anyplace in town without her becoming scared. Indeed, I told our trainer that we might not need private lessons anymore. I thought that Shyla and I could do the "socialization" training on our own and attend a group class weekly.

But then, we had an "incident" just after Thanksgiving. I took Shyla to the vet for an xray of her ulna. We arrived in the parking lot, a busy lot next to a noisy road with lots of cars. As Shyla exited the car, a person and dog came out of the vet clinic. For some reason that I cannot fathom, that dog was not on a leash. The dog made a beeline for Shyla and "attacked" her, making lots of scary noises and laying his teeth on her. The person came over and pulled him off, saying in a bored tone "Don't worry - he does that all the time". Shyla was not physically hurt.

I wanted to yell at the person about using a leash, especially for a dog who attacks other dogs "all the time", but I knew that Shyla was watching me closely. I needed to act calm to try to prevent any new fears from blossoming in Shyla's mind. So, I saved my complaints for the vet who promised to speak to that client about the leash rule.

Here's the part that seems the oddest to me. My trainer and I thought that Shyla might develop a fear of dogs due to that scary experience so we arranged for her to meet some nice dogs right away. Indeed, she was slightly timid with the nice canines at first but seemed to forget any worries about dogs pretty quickly. I'm guessing that she's had a lifetime of good experiences with dogs so she didn't generalize that all dogs were scary.

But, she retained a fear of parking lots and traffic sounds. Isn't that odd from a human perspective? Because the incident happened in a parking lot next to a loud road, Shyla gets scared in any parking lot and near any traffic noise. Yet, to my surprise, dogs don't scare her. I'm guessing that, because she has little experience with the bustle of the human world, she decided to blame the scary incident on the unfamiliar parts of the scene.

My trainer and I have now spent 4 sessions in a row very gradually reintroducing Shyla to traffic and parking lots. We've very gradually increased the intensity of the "stimulus" (i.e., traffic) by starting in quiet places and working up to busier places.

I'm happy to report that Shyla is, slowly but surely, rebounding from the incident in the vet's parking lot. We still can't visit all the places that we did before the "incident" (because they're too scary for Shyla) but we're gradually getting there. It's all part of the journey, not a journey that I expected, but one that is building a strong bond between Shyla and me.

Now, on a lighter note, I've concluded that Shyla does the best Santa Paws impersonation of any Lab I've seen before. How about that white beard?