Nine Months with Hannah

This last month has been a challenging time in our household.  There have been lots of schedule shifts and it's been a constant rotation of new.  Hannah has handled it like a champ.  

We finished up Hannah's first session of obedience classes in mid-March. She was really getting good at letting people come up to us without jumping on them, letting strangers pet her, and approaching dogs without freaking out.  She has learned a bunch of new tricks, including lots of hand targeting with a box (all four paws in a box, front paws in a box, back paws in a box, sit in a box, stay in a box, walk around a box, etc.).  

Her ears go completely flat when she's concentrating and I think it's so charming.

Sometimes, someone else gets jealous of training time.

But the schedules. In early March, I got a surprise job interview and after frantically updating my resume and practicing my interview questions, I started that job on March 11.  I went into the office for four days before my boss told me to work remotely.  I don't know what I'm doing really, but sure, yeah, I guess I'll work remotely.  Meanwhile, Hannah is used to someone being home about 75% of the time and suddenly it was only 50% of the time and now it's like 95% of the time. I'm worried that she's going to suffer from serious separation anxiety when/if we return to work.

Then the order to maintain social distancing came. We tried to keep things as normal as possible for Hannah. We still took her to daycare. I open the trunk of the car and Hannah runs to the daycare person (who could be fifty yards away) and there's no need for us to have any contact. We still try to take her to the dog park as often as we can.

Daycare aftermath. We'd been home for about two minutes.

She got sick around mid-March (loose stools culminating in an accident in her kennel overnight). Then she hurt one of her legs. Despite us trying to maintain social distance, there was a trip to the vet's office.  Our February run of no vet trips was ruined, but she seems like she's in good shape now.

So we're social distancing.  It makes me kind of sad.  But Hannah likes the additional walks. She likes the people home all the time. She likes the extra training that comes because I feel like she needs extra mental stimulation.  She's also learning some terrible lessons. Since we cross the street when we see people now, she thinks people are dangerous and she barks at them.  She wouldn't have done that a month ago. I worry that all our progress about people approaching her and petting her will be for naught and we're going to have to start at ground zero again.

Social distancing is fun! More hikes with my people!

Meanwhile, there have been some successes.

Hannah's scared of people wielding sticks. She loves playing with sticks with other dogs, but as soon as a human picks one up, she tucks her tail and tries to make herself small. I'm going to gloss over how sad this makes me and focus on successes.  I have a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels and she no longer hides when I pick it up and sort of thrust it about in her general direction.  But the cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper is a whole different story. For weeks she wouldn't even be in the same room as it - she'd just run away. Then she'd be in the room, but she'd do huge circles around it.  In the above photo, you can see the day she would actually face the tube and stay in position.  A few days ago, I got her to walk over it!  

In obedience class, she handled someone walking with crutches okay.  So we're definitely making some progress!

I don't know what the next months are going to look like. Even before the social distance order and the looming threat of COVID-19, things were going to change.  But I think that Hannah will be fine no matter what happens.  And I know that adopting this dog was one of the best things we could have done last summer.