Rudy is a traumatised boy

and sometimes things are crappy.  And sometimes we get it wrong. Underestimate how difficult something will be for our new dog and put bluntly fuck it up and back to square one we go. Sometimes it is something smallish that we can't think what unsettled them and other times it is obvious.

So, for example,  Rudy eats at the entrance of the kitchen, except when for some unknown reason he won't come down the hall.  Then he eats half way up the hall.  My concession to going back completely to square one.  Then later that day he bounds down the hall to see what is going on in the kitchen - wtf?

Rudy had been clean in the house, until I wheeled my butchers block from the kitchen to the living room to iron on,  well that upset him very much.  I had figured he had been settled enough but no, we then started weeing in the house.  Having started, despite scrubbing it now smells nice and weeable in. Oh piddle!!  Guess I will iron in the kitchen 😐

Actually I have been amazed how clean in the house Rudy has been considering that he has been in a shelter for a year.  He was anxious wet in his crate the first night.  Other than that, until today, he has been dry in his crate.  Serious question:  How do I get him to willingly wee. Outside! I stand outside with him for as long as it takes and direct him and redirect him every so often saying toilet and I say toilet when he finally wees and tell him how good he is!!  But where he is so switched on to me when he is telling me about the person walking past the house, he has his ears firmly shut when he is outside pootling round the garden.  So he pootles round NOT weeing and then lies down.  I try and re interest him pretending to go for a walk around the garden with him.  I try very hard to not let him in until he has wee'd.  I then let him in straight away, hoping he will make a connection with having had a wee and getting back inside.  Right approach?  Wrong approach?  Or do I just need to learn the Romanian for toilet, wee wee, business etc in case that works......

Willow cat traumatised him one night as he ran down the hall towards her she belted up the hall to get past him and he turned tail and fled.  I have to say we near wet ourselves as it was very funny.  Rudy didn't agree.  Cue a nervous pee (Rudy that is).

And now my monunmental Fuck Up ( see capital letters - indicating doing it good style).

So, I had phoned to ask the vet if they have a scale out in the waiting room that I could weigh Rudy on and to register him.  I spoke to a lovely nurse Zoe who told me they run a free weight clinic which we were very welcome to take him to, As he is quite heavy and needs to be quite a bit lighter being a front leg tripawd, I booked him in for the Thursday.  This involved getting him to wear the harness.  Getting in the car and driving to the vet a couple of minutes away (but not walkable as Rudy hasn't done lead work and isn't happy about the lead or harness, he does a great sit or cling to the crate when it appears, even with chicken!) So I gave him a cuddle and put his harness on.  Grabbed the car keys and picked up a reluctant Rudy, unlocked the car and my old heap of a car decided the boot wouldn't open ( if anyone fancies sponsoring a nice car for Rudy to ride round in, in style, you would be so welcome, something quite modest would be a vast improvement). Fighting with a boot with one hand due to holding a dog in the other isn't easy.  After the air going blue I finally put Rudy back in the garden to figure out what to do.   At this point I probably could have just scrapped the outing!

 I didn't.  I clipped Rudy into the back seat via his harness and the car seat belt, so he was safe but not in the more familiar surrounds of the crate.  We arrived.  I got Rudy out and put him on the ground and he clung to it in the way that bath hating dogs appear to have suckers on their bellies.

 Ok I will carry you poor Rudy!  It was quite busy so we went and sat as far away from others having had lots of why are you carrying your dog looks, not that I was bothered.  Really Rudy had shut down.  He sat hunched in to the wall.  It was a sorry sight. 

The nurse took us through to a quieter place with scales.  Then into an examination room.  I put Rudy on the table and he was just there.  I chatted to the nurse.  The idea was to take his measurements but Rudy growled and growled and was snappy with the nurse. So we aborted that plan instead she spent time feeding him treats I had bought with me and stroking him and eventually he looked at her and was less growly. I brought Rudy home and he slept and slept he was so exhausted.  He wouldn't even trust me to go near him or get him out of his crate to go for a wee 😭

Later that day my sister was popping round.  She had already met him and they had been fine and she had given him cuddles and scritches, him asking for more when she stopped.  This time she walked into the room and Rudy growled angrily at her.  I asked her to sit down on the couch.  I sat on the floor with Rudy reassuring him.  Some time passed and my sister had been allowed to rub his head.  Then a while after she joined me on the floor and gave him a stroke.  As quickly as he had appeared to be ok he changed and launched at her to bite her.  It felt like he meant to bite but whether he really did or not I don't know.  We both got a fright and were very glad that Alice's quick reactions meant she got out of the way in time.  I prefer to think it was a warning but either way it was my fault because having known how stressed Rudy was I ought to have cancelled my sister coming round.  Having a dog like this requires for us to make the decisions, to save them from having to!!!!! So, I got it wrong. Alice's first reaction was to leave but very quickly she decided that she needed to stay so that he didn't think his behaviour had got rid of her!

With the nurse we had agreed that we wouldn't overly worry about Rudy's weight for a couple of weeks or so and concentrate on finding food he likes and, at the same time start taking Rudy in the car to the vets and sit outside with yummy treats while a nurse or vet or receptionist comes and feeds them to him so he gets used to the smells of the place and gradually work inside. 

It is going to be a slow process.  Not helped by having virtually no income and therefore being unable to mend the unreliable boot. I can't put an anxious dog in a boot I might not be able to open.  The seats don't go down completely flat so I am not sure that I could put the crate on the folded down seats down and for him to feel safe. I don't think he will feel secure enough.  Not to mention the bigger issue which is:

I can't get the bloody harness on him at the moment, even with chicken, as he is just sooooo scared.  I could sit him on my knee and pop it over his head I suppose which I have done before but that isn't teaching him that it is safe and means fun, especially not when the first place we go is the V.E.T  where he had his balls and his leg chopped off, not to mention being checked over just before going on a long journey.

So, we are a work in progress

Pahahahahahahahaha  understatement of the year lol

Giving it Zzzzzz's last night 💖

Any thoughts on any of my crazed ramblings are most welcome.  Feel free to share far and wide and feel free to post comments on the blog as well as on the fb page , otherwise I look like billy no mates.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Quirky Boy

A few quirks of Rudy

1:  Not taking food from my hand unless my palm is flat open but if food held in hand he lies down and squeals and cries at me.

2: Mucky eater - Rudy loves to lift a piece of food from his bowl and drop it on the floor if he doesn't like it.  He then goes back to those bits last, or leaves them all over the ground!!

3: Rudy likes cooked veg but NOT peas and sweetcorn it would seem 😂 oh and not potato.
So far he has eaten cabbage, carrot (but not if they are overcooked), butternut squash, courgette and cauliflower.

4: Rudy will not eat the kibble I have tried him on and likes hardly any of the treats he has tried. Is he a dog?

5:  Rudy barks at people walking past the house with dogs and then comes bounding in whining and crying to me to go and look or that he wants to play, very endearing that he communicates his excitement..... I wish I spoke dog 😂

6:  Watch this space.................

The first week or so...

The first week or so!

It always amazes me with a new pet, how it can seem as though you have had them in your life for ages and yet it is still such a young relationship.  Never more so when you adopt a rescue and it seems with bells and whistles when adopting a dog that has had such a difficult start as Rudy and many of the other Romanian Rescue dogs!

The photos below are on day one.  We brought Rudy home and into the garden to go for a wee if he wanted and generally to have a good sniff around which he did on the slip lead.  As we expected he was really scared of the doorway and so we spent best part of an hour enticing him in with Chicken and generally just being and allowing him to suss things out.  Being the UK, it started chucking it down and so eventually Josh picked him up and brought him inside.

I decided to start this blog partly because I like writing, partly because I just have a feeling that this is going to be quite some journey with young Rudy (otherwise known as Rudders, Rudel Strudel and many more equally daft names) and I don't want to forget where we have come from when we get there.....  And also with the, hopefully not too arrogant wish that it might be helpful for prospective adopters of Romanian Rescued street dogs/special needs dogs  and document some of the ups and downs of our journey.

Whoever named Rudy, thank you.  It does suit his personality 😍 and he responds well to it. Words like 'toilet' when it's peeing down and he is refusing to do just that, while I stand there getting soaked, not quite so much. I have never known a boy dog hold his wee in such a determined way 😅 - unless he doesn't do one outside of course and then it can flow fabulously although I have to say apart from when he has been frightened by something (like me wheeling the butchers block in the sitting room to iron on)  he has been exceptionally clean in the house! 

One of the very striking things about having a new rescue dog ( and especially so with Rommies) is the vast amount of unknowns.  We don't know his exact age. We don't know if he ever lived in a house at all ( I wonder as he stands beautifully to be groomed). We don't always know what traumas they may have experienced. With Rudy Poos we know he was found on the road and it's thought he was hit by a car.  We do know he was in a lot of pain. And ultimately that his front left leg couldn't be saved.  Then when you start doing things you've always done with dogs, like, for example putting your hand on their collar or sticking  a finger inside the collar to check tightness, Rudy squeals like a banshee if I go to hold his collar,  Something has happened there, whether it be a dog catcher (yes, in Romania that is a real thing) tried to catch him, or as I wondered if he had been with a family and they threw him out of the car by his collar......  Who knows..... And we never ever will.

So, what are we left with,  We are left with dealing with the symptoms of trauma.

What does that trauma look like?  It can have many faces and it can spring up and surprise you just when you thought all was well and include many different behaviours such as insecurity, a desire to please, altered behaviour from that which was expected or described when in Romania, grabbing food from our bowl and eating it elsewhere, being hugely fear aggressive to the cats when in Romania they were cat friendly. There will be many surprises along the way.

Cats

We have three cats.  

Two big grey long-haired boys from the same litter. Curio and Top-C. They are part Norwegian Forest Cats and very lovely (if moulty, Rudy is in good company on that score, although he disagrees at present 😉).

We also have Willow who came with her brother Vinny. They were semi-feral when we got them from CPL and had had their left ears clipped as it had been intended to return them to be feral but marked to show they were spayed and neutered.  Unfortunately Vinny disappeared after a year and we never ever managed to find him which was really sad, he was a stunner. Josh and I spent many hours sitting on the kitchen floor feeding them their dinner kibble piece by kibble piece.  Willow is the most cuddly cat you could imagine. She loves head butting Josh.  Imagine our amusement when Josh went to see the nurse with sore ears and her first question having looked in his ears, was, do you have a cat??  😂  Willow had been head butting him past his ears and there were Willow hairs in both his ears causing aggravation 😂😂😂😂  Josh is a bit more careful about Willow's affections now lol.

So Rudy, was very very unimpressed with cats and not at all cool.  He turned into a snarling gnashing Tazmanian Devil.

Now imagine those jutty out bottom teeth gnashing and look at our very own Taz.  It's actually quite scary and vicious sounding when he gets scared like that - for that is what it is - it is just fear  as everything is so, so new.  Major amounts of reassurance are needed!! So our scared new Rommies need us to be the ones who take control and manage the situations for them.  The post adoption support from Sadies is so key in this and is second to none.  I really cannot fault the time and effort and time in conversations, advice and reassurance that has been offered and will be as long as it is required.  I am fostering Rudy long term but I am quite sure the same follow up support is there for those who adopt.  

We have made concessions to arrangements in the house because our previously dog savvy dog happy (or at least accepting) cats,  were very much not happy, rather scared and scared unhappy cats equals unhappy me!

So currently the cats eat on the landing, where Rudy can see them and that they are fed first. They were using the front door instead of the sitting room doors as they had been pre Rudy, but yesterday it was as though they had all thought F this and one by one decided that it was time to start claiming back the sitting room and the garden.  This requires Rudy to learn not to chase.  Funnily enough, when he chases it isn't in Taz mode, it just looks like good sport.  If he is in his crate he is in Taz devil mode if the dare to walk through the room. If they come in and sit he is gradually accepting it.  It will be a slow process and not quite what I had in mind for cat friendly.  I assumed a bit of a frosty few weeks but not Taz Devil and not chasing.  I don't mind admitting I was worried and a bit pissed to begin with but we WILL get there and in the grand scheme of Rudy's issues..... But for those who are considering adopting and fostering I guess I am saying that this experience has opened my eyes to the fact that just because the dog is a certain way in Romania doesn't mean they will be the same once they arrive here.  When they arrive they have had a horrendously long two day journey followed by two days in kennels which may be pretty basic and they will be wondering what happens next.  Then  they have a car journey to their new home and in my case a hand over from the very kind Emma to me at a service station.  So they are completely overwhelmed when they arrive but in Rudy's case very willing to be friendly and keen to please.   What I hadn't been prepared for was that the first journey in a car after this would traumatise him very much. That is another story for another day.

I have so much more to say about Rudy and it's only been just over a week, but I won't bend your ear any more for now.   Hope you have enjoyed this or at least that it may help someone.  Do feel free to comment and chat.  Love from Becca and Rudy xx

Rudy

Rudy

Rudy joined us on the 15th April 2018

 Day 8 Listening out for Josh in the kitchen

 I got so excited over some packaging

I've learned to play a bit.  I like bunny best!