She's Still Crazy

We've always known that our dog was a little crazy, but we just assumed that rescue dogs come with some baggage.  She's the sweetest dog in the world around us, but there are many moments out in public that she's not very sweet at all.  I just found out that she was pulled out of the active puppy group at daycare back in February because she was too much for many of young puppies or older active dogs to handle, and she now has playgroups in much smaller controlled settings with a handful of other dogs that she is friends with or one on one playtime (always with supervision) - all depending on which dogs are there that day.  She apparently has 2 best friends at daycare, so that's good at least, she can't be friends with all of them.

I was surprised by the need to pull her out of the general public of dogs - but I guess most parents think their kids / dogs are super wonderful, when in reality that isn't the truth.  These smaller playgroups may actually be benefiting her though because she's getting more correction and bad behavior is instantly stopped and avoided unlike in a larger group when it takes a few seconds for someone to step in through all the other dogs.  At home and around the neighborhood, she's really been fantastic and maybe daycare has been helping that - or maybe having a very consistent Saturday and Sunday long walk have helped things.  We see other people and dogs all the time now, and she rarely reacts with a bark or a whine.  Most of the time she just watches what's going on, and she's able to greet other people and dogs nicely - unlike back in October when she was a real mortifying jerk about it.

It's all sort of funny to me because what we really wanted was a happy go lucky lab with a nice temperament.  I'm not sure that I would go the Petfinder route again... without being able to meet the dog first, I think that was really the key.  Our friends found a local dog that they were able to meet before bringing home recently and he's the most chill dog ever.  Mia is hardly ever chill, especially around kids or guests.  I'm pretty sure she's been terrorized by kids in her past life.  She has been able to get over her fear of men, even really big scary looking men, but so far she does still have a fear of kids or people who are smaller than average.  I've been thinking about doing a regular obedience class with her this summer to sort of keep her sharp... we'll see though.