8 State Hurricane Kate

Zulu slept in her crate (a large crate from my Bernese Mountain Dog Zena) last night. She loves the crate and likes to have towels to scrunch up. She hasn’t eaten anything since she’s been here, not even the cookies that she had in her crate in the car. She tried to bury those under the towel. I gave her a bowl of food last night and she has shown interest in it, but hasn’t eaten any that I can tell. She overturned it once last night and I think she was trying to bury it. I left a bowl of  water with her and she didn’t drink any. This morning I held the water bowl out to her, and the light bulb went on—“Oh, this is water” and she drank all of it. She seems to have the stray dog mentality of hoarding something when you can get it because you don’t know when you’ll get it again.I tried to hold the food out to her, but that trick didn’t work with the food. She’s a little bit roly poly and she’ll eat when she gets hungry enough.

This morning Zulu moved to the back of her crate at first, but then scrunched over to me when I turned sideways, talked to her and petted her. I spent a couple of short petting sessions with her last night too. This morning she even looked me in the eye, briefly, before looking away again. I think she’s starting to realize that there’s something good out there that she might just want…love from a person and her own family. It will be fun to see her come around, but I will need to be patient…it will take time.

Soon I’m going to set up a crate in the living room for her so she can be around us more, yet have her own space. Becky recommended that I let her stay in her crate in the basement last night because she seemed so shell shocked and seemed to need her own space. We’re not going to let her be a wallflower forever though. With patience and persistence, she will learn and grow. Katie of HB thinks she will suddenly come out of her shell. We’ll see…

Bandit doesn’t react to her the way he reacted to Kate. She is submissive around him and looks away and that defuses him, I think. I was wondering how Bandit would be and he seems to be very appropriate. That’s a relief for me.

Posted on April 9th, 2008 Filed under: Cayenne/ Zulu