Taming/domesticating a wild dog

SoberasHotRod said:

Beautiful dog, thanks for sharing. We had a reservation dog once and some of this reminds me of that dog. I'm not sure if you are familiar with reservation dogs, but they basically live wild in packs with other dogs on Indian Reservations. Our dog was a border collie mix, so a domesticated breed at least.

I remember trying to get our dog to come in at night, and yeah that was one of the worst parts of having her. She also never saught out affection, but was happy to have us pet her. Luckily she was easy to potty train, so we didn't have to deal with that. She loved the dog park and being with other dogs in general, so I'm curious how that goes for you.

Unfortunately our son who has severe ADHD was not old enough at the time to control himself and was abusive to her. We tried to figure it out, but in the end we had to rehome her, but had nothing to do with her, it was 100% my son (luckily he grew out of that and is great with our current dog). We keep in touch with the family that adopted her from us and from everything we've seen she's been a great dog for them.

Anyway, I know it's not the same thing, but I'm definitely hoping it works out for you and that beautiful dog. Good luck!

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Thanks for sharing. That's a good story to read as well.
I will try to update once in a while.

We took her to the dog park on Monday. She did great once she was in the 4 runner. Loved the ride. Kept putting her head out all of the windows and seemed really comfortable and happy while driving.
Getting her in the 4Runner was not ideal but ok. I had to pick her up and put her in. She wouldn't get in on her own but she was good about being picked up at least.
Getting out went well. I didn't have to pick her up to get her out.

She LOVED the dog park. Had the time of her life never seen her so happy. And she did really well. Only issue was when it was time to go it was really hard to get her on the leash. Took me about 10 minutes to "catch" her. She won't come when you call her at all.

All in all it was a great experience for everyone. Probably gonna take her there again today. She is getting better little by little on a number of things.
I'm way more hopeful about her now

fishonjazz said:

We took her to the dog park on Monday. She did great once she was in the 4 runner. Loved the ride. Kept putting her head out all of the windows and seemed really comfortable and happy while driving.
Getting her in the 4Runner was not ideal but ok. I had to pick her up and put her in. She wouldn't get in on her own but she was good about being picked up at least.
Getting out went well. I didn't have to pick her up to get her out.

She LOVED the dog park. Had the time of her life never seen her so happy. And she did really well. Only issue was when it was time to go it was really hard to get her on the leash. Took me about 10 minutes to "catch" her. She won't come when you call her at all.

All in all it was a great experience for everyone. Probably gonna take her there again today. She is getting better little by little on a number of things.
I'm way more hopeful about her now

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That's good to hear, thanks for the update.

Have you tried the pupford app for help with training? It's science based positive reinforcement training for all sorts of situations. I think it's pretty good.

SoberasHotRod said:

That's good to hear, thanks for the update.

Have you tried the pupford app for help with training? It's science based positive reinforcement training for all sorts of situations. I think it's pretty good.

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I have not. I will look into it though, thanks

Yesterday was a disaster.
Took her to the dog park again but when we got there I opened the back hatch door on the 4runner to leash her but right when it opened she jumped out before I could leash her. She has been having good days and I let my guard down which was a mistake. She never truly lets her guard down and I cant either at this point. I should have had the leash on her prior to opening the door.
So now she is out. She mostly stayed by the dog park because she wants to play with the dogs but she would not allow us to get the leash on her and wouldn't come to us or follow us or anything. We had numerous other dog owners trying to help us catch her using their dogs as bait and treats etc. She is the most alert dog I have ever seen though. Extremely hard to get the drop on her. She knows EXACTLY how close she can get to someone and still not get caught.
There is a dog pound connected to the dog park and there just happened to be an on call dogcatcher there at the time (the facility is closed on sunday). So my wife went and asked for his help. (all of this was extremely embarrassing for me by the way. All the dog owners were watching us try to catch her the whole time)

So he is a guy who catches dogs for a living. He had all kinds of plans that we tried as a team. Never came close to catching her. He was pretty amazed at how alert and clever she was at avoiding any of his tricks/traps. At one point she said F this and took off far from the dog park and I had to get in the 4runner and drive quickly ahead of her and try to at least get her headed back towards the dog park.

We attempted to catch her for over an hour. I was about to just say screw it and go home and leave her to fate. Then a new dog owner showed up and was walking their dog to the dog park and for whatever reason Willow liked this dog and followed it into the enclosed park and we were able to leash her. We were pretty frustrated at this point so we just took her home rather than letting her play with the dogs.

That was probably the worst thing to happen so far.

This gives me so much second-hand anxiety to read about. Amazing you got a Carolina dog, but I would not have the stomach for a situation like this.

I have a husky and he trained me to never trust a dog off-leash which is probably just the correct way to proceed as an owner.

NUMBERICA said:

This gives me so much second-hand anxiety to read about. Amazing you got a Carolina dog, but I would not have the stomach for a situation like this.

I have a husky and he trained me to never trust a dog off-leash which is probably just the correct way to proceed as an owner.

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Ya I'm pretty upset about it. Off leash behavior is my #1 favorite trait in a dog.
Me previous dog (heeler/border collie mix) was the best off leash dog I have ever seen. He was perfect. I had complete control over him no matter the situation. It was awesome.
My black lab I had was also very good off leash though not quite as good as the farm dog mix.
I'm afraid this dog will never be good off leash and that makes me sad.

I'm thinking about getting a Vizsla next year. They are known for being great off leash. Lol at a husky and off leash. Those words don't belong in the same sentence.

SoberasHotRod said:

That's good to hear, thanks for the update.

Have you tried the pupford app for help with training? It's science based positive reinforcement training for all sorts of situations. I think it's pretty good.

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Worked great on my kids!

I haven't commented in this thread yet, but I really admire what you're doing, fishonjazz. It sounds hard and like a lot of frustrating work, but look at that beautiful dog! You are giving it chance for happy life.

I'm ridiculously invested in how this plays out. I want the happy ending for this story so so bad, but I know that it might just not work out that way.

No matter what happens, you tried. You did more for this dog than anyone else was willing to do. I know you have a good heart and that if you have to call it off it is because there was no reasonable way to make things work.

Fingers crossed!

fishonjazz said:

Ya I'm pretty upset about it. Off leash behavior is my #1 favorite trait in a dog.
Me previous dog (heeler/border collie mix) was the best off leash dog I have ever seen. He was perfect. I had complete control over him no matter the situation. It was awesome.
My black lab I had was also very good off leash though not quite as good as the farm dog mix.
I'm afraid this dog will never be good off leash and that makes me sad.

I'm thinking about getting a Vizsla next year. They are known for being great off leash. Lol at a husky and off leash. Those words don't belong in the same sentence.

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I want to believe that any dog can learn recall. I'm not 100% sure this applies to feral dogs, but I have to believe it's possible.

In my personal experience there are definitely huge differences between individual dogs and probably different breeds, but they can all learn it. For example with my Sheltie mix we never even had to train him, he always wanted to be right next to us. Our cocker spaniel took a couple of months, but she was also our first dog, so we probably weren't as consistent as we needed to be. Our current dog is a pit mix and he was somewhere in the middle. It took about 6 to 8 weeks.

LogGrad98 said:

Worked great on my kids!

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Actually at work I went through training with Aubrey Daniels' organization on utilizing reinforcement in the workplace as a trainer in their Performance Management system. It brought great results after putting all our supervisors through the training. So I dug into it some more, read a lot, and came across a book called the Power of Positive Parenting. My wife and I read it when our oldest was maybe 15 and we felt like it had a strong positive impact on our parenting and helped us understand their behavior. It's worth the read honestly. So in a way, it really did help with our kids.

Update. I had 5 days off recently and I fell kind of hard for Willow. She has made pretty good progress over those 5 days.

She learned "lay down" (my wife taught her and at first she would only do it for my wife but last night she was following my command too)
She has kind of learned "come" but will only do it if I have a treat.

I was frustrated that she wouldn't "play" with me but she loves my daughter the most by far and I told my daughter to try to get Willow to play tug of war with a rope toy and she took to it very quickly. Then I had my daughter bring me her end of the rope while the tug of war was ongoing and Willow would play with me for a bit until one of us "won" and then I would have to get my daughter to start the game up again. 2 nights ago she played tug of war with me with no assistance from my daughter! It was awesome! I really really want her to learn fetch. Maybe my daughter can get her to learn that too.

She had been on 3 car rides and every time I had to pick her up and put her in the 4 runner but the last two car rides (her 4th and 5th) she jumped in by herself! She also did ok at Petsmart.

She is just getting less scared around us in general lately. Like I can walk past her very closely without her heading for a safe space. She still doesn't really allow my wife or myself to pet her unless she is kind of cornered or laying down and we get to her before she can get up but she lets my daughter do whatever she wants to her and on news years eve she jumped up onto the footrest of the recliner with me and I got to pet the top of her head while she drifted off to sleep. This was my favorite moment with her so far.

She never has issues with coming in the house anymore ever. That was her worst thing for the first 3-4 weeks.

She doesn't really dig much at all anymore or destroy the yard much. (A little here and there)

I still take her on walks all the time and love our walks. She always ends up getting me to take her farther and longer than I originally plan to. She is just so happy on our walks (I am too). I have even lost a few pounds since I got her and Im 100% certain its due to all the walks.
I took her on walk late last night and there were fireworks going off and I was shocked that she wasn't scared. She was interested in them but continued on the walk just fine without fear.

Im kind of in love with her at this point. She still has a long way to go before she will be how I really want her to be and she might never get there but she doesn't have to be perfect for her to be a part of the family for life so right now Im feeling good about her chances of remaining with us.