Shyla's Socialization

It has been an interesting journey with Shyla, since she arrived 15 months ago as a fearful older puppy. At that time, I had no experience with socializing any dog except a tiny puppy. With my tiny puppies, I socialized them like crazy, literally running myself ragged to expose them to "everything" during the critical socialization periods. It was worth it because it prevented them from having major fears of everyday life. K had some relatively minor fears, caused by genetics and a wonky thyroid gland, but they have been dwarfed by Shyla's fears.

No doubt, Shyla has come a huge way in the 15 months that we've spent together. She is a happy and outgoing dog most of the time now.

Interestingly, I am noticing a pattern for when her fears flare up. A few weeks ago, I took her to town for the first time in a very long time after being stuck in the mountains due to the floods. On her first trip after the floods, she did tremendously well, breezing through situations that used to scare her.

Since then, some of those old fears have re-emerged. It seems as if a single event in town can cause her to be fearful of anything vaguely resembling it for a long time. For example, last week at my Physical Therapy clinic, a small child scared Shyla as we were leaving the clinic. This week, Shyla was happy and apparently carefree during my PT appointment until the end approached. As I tried to exit the clinic with Shyla, she was so skittish that I wasn't sure that we were going to make it through the door with all the "obstacles" in our way (people, a desk, etc.). There was nothing that normally scares her in our path. I think that she remembered being scared last week as we exited the clinic and has now generalized that exiting the clinic is scary. Her skittishness continued until we arrived home in the mountains.

That is just one example of something that I've seen time and time again with Shyla.

I'm beginning to think that Shyla may be a dog who simply needs to have a quiet life in the mountains with occasional trips to town but not weekly trips. I think that having a schedule of weekly events (e.g., taking her to town twice a week - once for training class and once for something else) lets her develop certain hard-wired fear patterns that only go away when we take a long break from visiting town.

An example of a "long break" was the 6 weeks that she didn't go to town due to the floods plus a couple of other scheduling problems. She was awesomely confident in town after that extended hiatus.

Have any of you who have worked at socializing very fearful dogs run into this kind of pattern? I'm curious to hear your experiences.

I plan to discuss this with our trainer because it seems opposite to how I've socialized our puppies. For a puppy, it's important to expose them to a variety of situations on a regular basis. It seems, for Shyla, like going to town on a regular basis amps up her fears.

No matter how it turns out - I feel so lucky to have Shyla as our dog. Her sensitivity is one of her best characteristics as my best friend... and I suspect that her sensitivity is the reason why the bustle of town and unfamiliar things can scare her so much.

My sensitive girl and I watched the moon set over the mountains this morning. It was sublime.

I'm learning so much from Shyla's sensitive heart and our journey together toward helping her cope with her fears. At the beginning, socializing her seemed like a huge insurmountable obstacle. I'm learning to accept her for the wonderful dog she is and to capitalize on her strengths rather than trying to eliminate her weaknesses. That's a lesson that I can generalize very broadly, including how I live my life.