Belly (Formerly Vincent) - Foster Dog Blog - 5 weeks

I took a few photos of Belly during a habituation session last week.  He still suffers from a slight anxiety around new stimuli but has habituated to 'our' half of the village which is generally much quieter so I thought it was time to take him to other, busier parts of the village to get him used to light traffic, a bit more social activity etc.

He was nervous at first but this junction in the middle of the village has lots of space and is not busy at all.  It has no lorries or fast vehicles going through it and rarely any pedestrians so within 10 minutes, Belly was relaxed enough to lie down and watch the world go by, which was very encouraging.

We then continued our walk to the local kids' playground, just 5 minutes up the road.  Again, I left lots of space for him to gently habituate to the activity but there were only a few families in there.  I made sure to sit down with him to show him that I was relaxed enough to 'chill' so he very quickly chilled with me!

His anxiety around children is still interesting to me as he apparently lived with a family of young children for the first 3 years of his life but as I've mentioned before - I don't think this was a pleasant experience for him so I make sure he knows I will 'protect' him and give him lots of space if he needs it.  Luckily we didn't need it on this occasion, even though children were running about and even came out of the playground to play cricket nearby, Belly remained happy to sit by me and relax.

Good stuff.