Nell

Nell was just 3 months old when she, her mom, and two siblings were picked up by animal control in rural Oklahoma. They were picked up from a property where they were in the pasture with goats. Animal control had to use a catch-pole to catch them because the whole little family was showing a fair amount of fear-based aggression. Sadly, the animal control officer made the decision to euthanize one puppy, saying s/he was too aggressive. It's really hard to imagine a 3-month old puppy being so aggressive that an experienced person couldn't have dealt with the issue, but seeing that the animal control officer was willing to put down a puppy, a local person volunteered to foster mom and her remaining two puppies until she could find a rescue to take them in.

When we brought them here, the puppies (whom we named Nell and Maynard) were very frightened, and they tried to avoid my attempts to touch them, but they were never aggressive. They simply acted like feral pups who had ZERO experience with humans, other than their very unfortunate interaction with animal control. Their mom (whom we named Violet) was very aggressive in her attempts to protect her puppies, so it surprised us that the mom survived and a puppy was killed by animal control. The mom's aggression made it a challenge to work with the pups, so we separated them, with mom moving into the house and the pups staying in one of our barn kennels.

After she was old enough to be spayed, we brought Nell inside the house. Ironically, her mom Violet acted like she didn't know Nell at all, but another one of our Great Pyrenees mix adult females acted as a surrogate mom to her. They shared a giant 54" crate at night and usually went outside for potty breaks together. Nell was making a little bit of progress in learning to trust me, but then we moved her and her brother to another foster home where we hoped they would get more attention than we could give them and make more progress. Unfortunately, even after two years in that home, we didn't see any real progress, so we moved Nell and Maynard back to Windsong Ranch. They are once again moving in the right direction -- they are learning to walk on a leash and to sleep in a crate. They are still very skittish, but they will go outside to take care of their potty business and then come back in the house. They observe the other dogs and sometimes engage in play with them. Mostly it seems that Nell and Maynard are learning what it means to be a house dog with people who love them. We try to pet each one every time we walk past them, maybe just a 5-second interaction, but it gets repeated multiple times a day, with the hope being that our persistence and consistency in having positive interactions with them will show Nell and Maynard that we can be trusted, that not all humans are terrible people.

We would love to find a foster or adopter for Nell who could help her move to the next level in her journey to being a family pet. We think she would do best in a home with another dog who is confident, who loves their humans, and who would enjoy playing with Nell. Taking her on a daily leash walk could help improve her skills and increase her confidence. If you have the patience and compassion to love Nell and work with her to overcome her difficult start in life, please complete the application on our website at www.bluebonnetrescue.org.