Unfortunately it's been a helluva lot worse than usual because of the awful heat at the moment - it hit over 30 degrees again today. Belle was very restless, even though we had a fan on her all day. We then swapped the fan for a larger one this afternoon and she seemed a little more able to settle.
She's not eating much but that is fairly common with foster dogs being swapped over onto another food. We've had to put her straight onto Burns as we can't feed the food that was provided because it is mostly animal and vegetable derivatives, provides absolutely no nutritional quality and is far too high in protein to help with her behaviour.
She also still has diahorrea and is sadly not housetrained so the last couple of days have been extremely difficult for me and the rest of the family as she doesn't seem to want to toilet outside at all. This is a very common problem with dogs that have come out of a long stay in kennels; they just get used to toileting wherever they want to (just another reason why
we don't like kennelling dogs!).
One of her accidents in the house today had a little drop of blood in the urine so there is a chance she is coming into season which might explain some of the restless behaviour.
She met Bailey the Great Dane female for about a minute today (supervised and in the yard). She showed absolutely no aggression but there was a high level of anxiety and tension there as she clearly displayed that she hasn't got a clue about what to do when she meets another dog. This is going to have to be a very detailed rehabilitation with very carefully selected dogs I think..
Normally we would exercise her a bit more to help her to settle when indoors but in this heat we're not able to get her out for a proper walk until the evenings although I did take her to sit outside the house on a public green for 10 minutes a couple of times just to get her out for a change of scenery.
She is still giving a couple of barks at people but I'm teaching her that I don't want her to do this by taking charge of the situation and walking her calmly and confidently around in a circle away from the stimulus, re-approaching and praising her for settled behaviour. If I were to punish or react harshly she would simply associate people with not-very-nice things happening to her and that is the opposite of what we would like.
Teaching her to sit instead of jump up for attention is going well. She's starting to realise that jumping up merely gets her completely blanked and actively ignored. If she sits or even lies down and rolls over we will immediately be happy and smiling and interactive with her.
This is all very basic puppy training stuff which we'd normally have done and sorted by the age of 16 weeks so she's a very immature, young pup in a great big body and months behind in her behavioural development. I've always understood why people have trouble coping when their cute bundle of wrinkles turns into something like Belle, but I've got no sympathy for people that didn't do their homework BEFORE getting a Neapolitan Mastiff pup in the first place....
