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Our biggest challenge with Joy is her unpredictable fear. We live near a construction sight and some days she won’t even go in that direction and some days she walks by as if it wouldn’t exist. A few months ago, our neighbors had roof work done and seeing someone on the roof freaked her out completely. When she is in fear, her flight responds is very strong. She didn’t want to leave the house for days. We worked hard on making outside fun with games, special chews and her favorite people. It got better but she still sometimes scans every roof when we are on a walk. The other day a bird on a roof was all it took to make her freeze.

I would love to take her on walks in the area but she is never relaxed or excited, new places are always stressful so we try not to drive too far so when she freaks after just 5 minutes, I am not too disappointed to go home.

After my husband was hospitalized with Covid last year and we had to quarantine for 2 weeks she developed hyper attachment and separation anxiety. We can leave her now for 1.5 hours but it’s been a long road.

She is on anxiety meds and we have a great vet who encourages me to specialize in anxiety because there are no trainers for this in the area.

The rescue does not have a strong foster system. She always struggles to find foster homes and the amount of dogs she has in her house keeps growing. But it is also a very new rescue, she just started last summer. She gets stray pregnant moms and puppies from eastern Washington to find them a home and makes sure they all get spayed/neutered. We have only done short term foster (1-4 weeks) when foster family go on vacation or can’t keep them any longer but that’s all we can commit at the moment.