Taming/domesticating a wild dog

Even my wife follows this saga. She's very involved. Whenever she sees I'm on Jazzfanz, she goes "Any news about Willow???"

Last night we left her crate open all night for the first time ever and things went well. She has been getting better at fetch which makes me very happy. She is still very weird about the weirdest things. She still wont come in the house at certain times and I cant figure out the reason. She will want to but she will stop right at the entrance. Other times she comes in just fine. Getting one of her ropes usually gets her in. I literally still have never seen her pee away from my house. Its mind boggling. I take her on very long walks. I took her up butterfield canyon this week and we went all over the mountain. She didn't pee at all. Its probably the strangest thing about her to be honest. I have probably taken her on like 60-70 walks at this point and have never seen her pee. Only seen her poop 3 times.

She loves meeting cats and dogs on walks (though both are almost always jerks to her) and she remembers what houses have cats that she has met and always looks for them. I allow her to go up to any cats we see. The cats hate it but Willow just loves to check them out. She is so gentle and soft and calm with all cats, even ones that are hissing at her and acting like they want to kill her.

Yesterday I was brushing her and I went to brush her tail and she freaked out and ran to her crate so I guess her tail is off limits for now.

She loves jumping on the trampoline. If she is outside then there is a decent chance I can look out the window and she will be on the trampoline jumping around with a toy. Makes me laugh every time.

She still doesn't really let me or my wife pet her and its hard to figure out the issue. She isn't acting scared of us in any other way anymore. I can walk right past her so close that I brush against her and she is just fine. She jumps up on the couch and sits by me. She rests her head on my lap while im eating at the table (wanting bites which I give her)....... But if I approach her with my hand out to pet her then she backs away every time. I can put my hands behind my back and lean down and she will touch her nose to mine but if my hand comes out then she backs away. I can pet her while playing tug of war and when she is tired and laying down at least. She still lets my daughter do whatever she wants to her with no fear. Even my daughters friends can pet her easier than me or my wife.

Im gonna have to get bricks to line all of the entire fence line in the backyard as she continues to try to dig under the fence wherever there isnt any obstruction. She was left out for about 1.5 hours on thursday and I went out and found a huge deep hole under the fence that she would have been able to go under if she had another 10 minutes or so to work at it. Carolina dogs, especially females are known to dig "snout pits" from september through january in the wild and most domesticated carolina dogs do it as well. Have to be careful walking in the backyard for these ankle breaker holes that are hard to see.
I also learned that wild packs of Carolina Dogs are always led by a "bitch". In their society the females are always the alphas which I find interesting.

I bought a 50 foot cable with a 15 foot lead that connects to the cable for when I go camping. Planning to have her attached to that so she will be controlled yet still have a lot of freedom. Also bought an attachment for a leash to hook to my waders and I look forward to trying to take her fishing with me this spring and see how she likes that.

She loves riding in my 4runner with the windows down. Probably her second favorite thing to do (walks are her favorite). I have taught her that if she starts to put her front paws up then the window goes up and she learned to keep her front paws on the floor really quickly and I now feel really safe about her not jumping out the window again.

All in all she is doing very well and we love her lots.

One thing I worry about is that she got her shots before we got her and most dogs get shots that contain Ivermectin. Its very common in standard shots for dogs for parasite control. Ivermectin is toxic to Carolina Dogs. Can cause neurological issues in them and Willow has some weird balance issues somewhat frequently and one of her eyes will go a little wonky on occasion (think sammy davis jr, Kash patel, notorious BIG etc).
If she does have some complications due to Ivermectin then I hope it wears off over time. I want to take her to a vet but Im still reluctant to put her in stressful situations.

fishonjazz said:

One thing I worry about is that she got her shots before we got her and most dogs get shots that contain Ivermectin. Its very common in standard shots for dogs for parasite control. Ivermectin is toxic to Carolina Dogs. Can cause neurological issues in them and Willow has some weird balance issues somewhat frequently and one of her eyes will go a little wonky on occasion (think sammy davis jr, Kash patel, notorious BIG etc).
If she does have some complications due to Ivermectin then I hope it wears off over time. I want to take her to a vet but Im still reluctant to put her in stressful situations.

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You may be able to find a mobile vet. May be less stressful.

TheGoldStandard said:

You may be able to find a mobile vet. May be less stressful.

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Interesting. Thanks for the idea.

She had a bit of a regression this week. Went back to not coming into the house. I had to "catch" her again and get her on the leash the last couple of days to get her inside. She also may have gotten sick or something because she was having issues needing to poop in the middle of the night and when I picked up her poop in the yard there was a lot of diarrhea.

I have been feeling a little more frustrated lately with the lack of trust she shows me/not letting me pet her and always keeping her distance with me. Been a bit of a tough week with her.

One bright spot was yesterday I took her on the Jordan River Parkway trail (I love that trail btw) and we walked about 7.5 miles. Had a really nice time. She got to chase some squirrels and see some ducks/geese. Met a few other dogs. For about 3 hours we walked the 7.5 miles. She didn't pee or poop even 1 time. Boggles my mind. When we got back to the 4runner I went into Charlies Chicken (they have the best chicken tenders I have ever had) and brought it back to the 4runner to have lunch with her. I sat in the back with her and shared the chicken and gave her a glass of water I got as well.

Speaking of the 4runner, I had it modified for her. The exhaust/tailpipe was pointing out the back of the vehicle and I didn't like that when she had her head out the back window the exhaust was right there and she was probably having to breath in the nasty air. So I went to master muffler and had them cut my exhaust pipe and put a 90 degree elbow on so that now the exhaust pipe points out the side of the vehicle behind the back tire. Still not ideal as im sure that some of the exhaust will still go up the back of the 4runner but should be less prevalent I think.

This is how I eat dinner now. Willow with her chin on my thigh waiting for me to share, which I do but only the tiniest bites.

I haven't done any updates recently because most updates have been about issues with her.
Lately she has been fantastic. Really her only issues anymore are digging (which isn't so bad because she isn't outside for long periods much) and still not being as affectionate as I would like, but she is much better in that regard.

I took her to the dog park Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and yesterday (Wednesday). She loves it there. I used to be worried about taking her because when it's time to go I would have to "catch" her but lately what she likes most at the dog park is for me to walk around and she walks with me and plays with dogs and then comes back and walks with me. We go through multiple gates into different areas of the dog park.

She comes when I whistle (but stops short of getting within touching range lol) which is good. Then when it's time to go I simply walk into the small, fenced in, entryway and pull out the leash and she lays down and I leash her. She still never pees or poops away from home so I never have to pick up her poop at the dog park. What I do instead is grab a bunch of bags and pick up other dogs poops while I walk around. I always bring a bag of cat treats to the dog park and give them to the other dogs there (I ask the owners if it's ok first)

I'm also starting to trust her more. Like I leave the garage open when we get home and open 4runner back door and she jumps out and follows me into the house. I used to close the garage door before opening the 4Runner door because I was worried she would take off.
Same with getting get into the 4Runner. I used to have the garage door closed but now I can have it open and she will just go and jump in the 4Runner. She loves riding in there. I have 75% of the rear seats folded down (I leave one little seat up for my daughter) so she can roam around and has lots of space. I always have the very back window down (one of the main reasons I bought a 4Runner) and the rear passenger window down. She goes back and forth between the 2 windows. It's cold AF but I just wear my winter coat and beanie and I'm ok.
Coming home from the dog park I keep the windows up because she is so tired that she wants to lay down anyways.

She hasn't peed or pooped in the house in about a month. She has turned into a very good girl. She lays by me all the time (she is laying next to me right now) and is really comfortable in my presence but still is uncomfortable when I reach out to pet her, though more and more she lets me pet her.

Btw in the background of that last picture you might notice a picture of a dog on the wall. That was my previous dog and the picture was taken at end of one of the best days of fishing I have had in my life. We fished my favorite river and I caught around 50 fish. Many of them huge. Rex loved fishing even more than I did. He looks so cool in that picture with his wet fur from the river and a look of a job well done on his face.

fishonjazz said:

Btw in the background of that last picture you might notice a picture of a dog on the wall. That was my previous dog and the picture was taken at end of one of the best days of fishing I have had in my life. We fished my favorite river and I caught around 50 fish. Many of them huge. Rex loved fishing even more than I did. He looks so cool in that picture with his wet fur from the river and a look of a job well done on his face.
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I'm not crying, you're crying!