3 July 2010, 11:29 am
I have a toy Australian shepherd named Joe, we got him as a puppy and he had never warmed up to people. When we first brought him home he stayed in my room in a kennel at night and i would take him out every few hours to go to the bathroom. He would bark at me throughout the night to the point where i wasn't getting much sleep. I tried to get him comfortable with me during the day but all he did was run in a circle around me and bark when i offered him treats or affection. He has been like this for the 3 years we've owned him. He wont get close to anyone but my mom and he even runs from her occasionally. He's worse with men. Sometimes when im out in our barn he will jump up on the back of my legs or put his nose on the back of my knee like he wants attention, but as soon as i turn around to give it to him, he runs away. My brothers and my dad and my grandparents who live with us try all the time to get him closer to us by sitting down in the grass near him and offering him a treat. He will slowly approach them and take the treat but once he has consumed the treat he will run away again. We have a lot of people in and out all day as we have a barn that people board horses at, one of our boarders has managed to make friends with him by offering them treats everyday, he began by throwing treats to our 3 other dogs and slowly he warmed up to him by seeing the other dogs get close to him. He still wont let him get close enough to touch him, but he runs up looking for treats. We sold him once to a lady in Salem who said she's seen dogs like him before and could give him a good home. After just a month, some people in Hillsboro called us and told us that they had found our dog in their back yard, they said he had been there a few weeks and it took them a long time to get him close enough to check his tags. We live in Gaston, and Hillsboro is between Salem and Gaston so we can only imagine he was running home. We emailed the lady who bought Joe and asked how he was doing and we never heard back from her so we kept Joe. He still wont get close to us. We don't know what to do with him, or about him. We cant get rid of him again, we all love him, we just don't know what to do. WE DO NOT ABUSE HIM!!!!!!... Read More »
Share on del.icio.us
Share on digg
Share on Technorati
Share on reddit
Share on Yahoo!
Share on Furl
