We got this guy on Thursday after having spent much of the previous week driving around NH, VT and MA visiting various shelters. The typical price of a "shelter dog" these days? $350 if it's more than a year old, and $450 if it's less. Shelters generally have no dogs that will weigh less than 40 pounds when fully grown, and the few that ARE smaller always seem to have problems: Unending shaking, skittishness, cancer (a hospice dog), a history of biting people, deafness, already 8 years old or older, etc.
After visiting eight shelters, I'd about given up. The problem is, when smaller dogs show up at a shelter and are cleared for adoption, people who live nearby snap 'em up, first thing in the morning. We can only get to our local shelter that quickly, and it only has two dogs... both of which are big.
We started looking on Craig's List, but Craig's List doesn't allow animal sales (it does allow the owner to charge a "re-homing fee" of about $100), so there aren't many dogs listed that are within a 2 hour drive.
My wife posted her own ad and someone in eastern NH responded. We drove to Concord and met "Kermit" on Thursday. It's NOT love at first sight and perhaps we shouldn't have taken him. This 2-year-old is very skittish and I don't know if he's ever going to change. I can't get him to come to me at all, and he spends most of the day hiding. He won't leave our living room except when we put him on a leash.
On Sunday at 7:30 in the morning - when we'd had him for less than 3 days - I took him out for his morning constitutional. He loves the outdoors - it's almost the only place you'll ever see his tail wag. We were behind the house and I'd just pushed his butt down to reinforce a "sit" command I'd given. The dog stood back up. I reached over to make him sit again when he yanked hard on the leash and pulled his head out of the collar. In a second, he'd raced away toward the road. He came to a halt, apparently scared of the road, then raced toward the front of the house. I called for my wife to get her to open the door and figured I'd find him there when I got to it... but he was gone. He'd continued beyond the house and ran into the forest.
My wife and son looked and called for Kermit for an hour. I considered the situation to be about as hopeless as it could get:
o Miles of surrounding forest
o Predators a-plenty
o A dog that's terrified of people, including us
o ... who doesn't come when called
o A dog with no bond to either us or to our property
o A dog with no collar or ID tag
After an hour, we gave up. I called for him periodically, but I figured he wouldn't want to come back even if he knew the way, which I figured he didn't. He loved being outdoors and didn't care for humans at all. (He'd probably take a different view of the outdoors once he'd experienced the forest at night, or been through his first thunderstorm). Oh well.)
Around 7 p.m., nearly twelve hours after he'd taken off, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was in the front yard when the dog came trotting into the field as if he didn't have a care in the world. I called "Good dog! Come here, boy!" He looked my way, paused for a second, reversed direction and trotted right back into the woods.
#%@#$!
I went inside and told my wife. My son was in the shower. She went into the woods and was joined a few minutes later by my son. They looked for an hour but had no luck. (I'd concluded that the dog was most afraid of me, and there was therefore no point in my looking for him.) They gave up and came inside. My son resumed his shower. My wife sat near the window and I saw Kermit in the field AGAIN. I pointed him out to my wife, and she headed out. He ran back to the woods but didn't enter. She walked to within twenty feet or so and sat down. He came to her a half dozen times, each time approaching her feet and then running back to the woods.
I thought it was hopeless to be honest, but I stepped away from the window for a moment and when I came back, she had him on the leash (with a CHOKE CHAIN this time.)
Okay. So what I supposed to do with this dog? If it were human, I'd call it mentally ill. I don't know if there's any hope of changing its behavior...
I've fenced off an area around the deck using heavy steel mesh. Tomorrow, I'll put in heavy stakes to ensure that it is secured to the ground. When I go outside with him, that's the only place I intend to take him from now on. Time will tell if the dog is trainable. So far, I'm not optimistic.
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