Help with Rescue GSD
My cousin got a GSD mix last year. We think her mom was a lab/poodle mix based off of pictures, and her dad must have been a GSD because she has a lot of the behavioral traits and her coat is that kind of pattern and hair texture. They were roaming trailer park dogs, so we’re just guessing visually and behaviorally.
They basically kept her until she wasn’t a cute puppy anymore, didn’t train her at all, and they took her to the shelter when she got too much to handle. The shelter was about to put her down within 3 days like, she wouldn’t have been up for adoption at all if we hadn’t called and asked for her by name. She’s not really okay with any people beyond people she has known since she was a baby, aka, only me and my fiance at this point.
So, me and my fiance have had her for about 2 or 3 months now, she’s about 9 months old. She’s really good with us, like if it was only the two of us on the planet, she acts like a normal puppy her age just getting excited and jumpy. We’re working on very occasional nipping and eating things she shouldn’t sometimes, but it’s pretty normal dog stuff. She’s even well potty trained like, she just does the submissive peeing when she sees new or unfamiliar people.
It’s just that everything outside of our bedroom, us, and her safe space sets her off very badly. Like, for context, when my family had her, they were hitting her and yelling at her and they had very inconsistent discipline. They were pretty neglectful and mean to her but also not keeping rules at the same time. She was chewing children’s toys, eating out of the trash, they would have her clean up after the kids eating food out of the floor. And they were feeding her inconsistently and not giving her enough water so she wouldn’t pee. Despite all of this, she did pretty well being around children all day and she did really well with their cat. It’s honestly like, all up to her being a very smart and very good girl that she doesn’t have more severe problems. But the problems we do have are pretty bad, and I think the abandonment and fear from going to the shelter for a week did traumatize her.
She’s still not used to the rest of my family in our house, she’s barking and peeing everywhere when she sees them and she’s jumping. It wasn’t that bad, but there was an incident where inside of the house, she ran up to my grandpa and he got scared of her and swung his cane at her. (He has dementia so like, I know this is abuse, but I can’t help what he does beyond keeping her away, he’s at the point of being childlike mentally) He didn’t hit her, but now she’s understandably started growling at everything and everybody and barking louder. Like her reactivity has gotten worse. She’s so heavily reactive to other dogs or the cats that she’s freaking out and barking for 5 minutes if a video of a dog or cat autoplays on my phone. We’ve had her in our yard and our back porch which was like, a pretty long process to even get her comfortable sitting on the back porch. We haven’t taken her on walks yet because I just don’t know if I could get ahold of her if she goes off and I’m trying to be responsible.
I guess I’m just asking how to work on her trauma and the extreme reactivity. We had expected her to be okay with our 3 cats since she was ok with the cat from her previous home, but the cats have had to be separated in their own room for the last 2 months because of her reactivity. Like she was getting to where she was calming down and improving but the incident with my grandpa really set her off and obviously set us back.
So far, we’ve gotten her a harness that she can’t slip because she had been doing that and choking herself on her collar. She’s working on being on a chain in the backyard currently. We’ve gotten her to where she will sit on the back porch with us during daytime, but nighttime still makes her nervous and we had a nipping incident last night. It’s just been a lot of baby steps with her.
I also bought a muzzle and we’re going to start training with that so hopefully we can get the cats out. And we haven’t been able to take her to the vet or get her nails cut because it’s just a total meltdown around people at home, I can’t imagine a car ride or a vet visit right now.
Thank you for any advice, if anybody made it through all this. Sorry for the novel.