During the past 48 hours Belle’s stomach has improved greatly with normal stools and it’s a lot easier to cope with cleaning up after her now! The other two are also absolutely fine now so all of the dogs have been mixing calmly and happily throughout the house, sharing floor space and a big mattress in the yard in the sun. Belle is actually very respectful of the other two dogs, albeit clumsily (as a pup always is).
The only thing we are watching extremely carefully is her resource anxiety around water. We have multiple water bowls throughout the house and yard and if she isn’t drinking from them is no problem but the moment she puts her head down to drink, if another of the dogs approaches she becomes very anxious and ‘freezes’. To help combat this we’ve put water in her ‘room’ next to her crate which is ‘hers’; the other dogs do not go into this room when there is a foster dog in, even though it’s my office! Belle seems to understand that if she wants a drink, this is where she can go and drink ‘in peace’ without having to scan and freeze.
She is a still quite reactive when out on walks and when we visited her new owners again she was still edgy around the male owner but it was promising to see that if she had the space to escape from him, she always did this rather than decrease the distance and try to ‘intimidate’ him away from her (which is what she does if on a lead).
She’s now hitting the end of the ‘honeymoon’ period with a newly-relocated dog so we’re expecting behaviour shifts, but we also think she may be coming into season as there were a couple of blood-spots on her bed this morning so this may also be responsible for a slight escalation in anxiety or reactivity.
We’re now just waiting for the test results on her fecal sample earlier this week and if they’re all clear she can go to her new home and start her new life (fingers crossed!).
