Post by megan on Mar 15, 2013 14:48:20 GMT -5
In the next several months, we discovered many things about Louis. First and foremost, he thinks flashlights are the devil incarnate. He will literally throw himself on the ground and have a full-fledged panic attack if he sees the light from a flashlight when we’re in the yard at night for our last-call potty break. He will injure himself attempting to get away from thelight. He is scared of garden hoses shooting water, as well, but the reaction isn’t nearly as significant as the response to the flashlight. Secondly, he’s housetrained; the only accidents he ever had were fear-based, running away from something scary while trying to maintain composure. And it’s not something that happens often. Third, he longs to be outside. I mean, literally will sit in the window sill and watch the world go by. The first few days, he actually tried to walk through the windows a few times, poor boy. And Louie LOVES going for walks. Literally loves it. He walks incredibly well on a leash and would walk all day long if he had the option to do so. And lastly, Louie will likely puke in the car every single time he gets in the car.
Now, Louie is missing the majority of his foot from his left rear leg, but still has his leg intact. We were told he was hit by a car and had to have his foot amputated, but I believe there is more to the story. Where Louie is from, dogs are captured for food. And since he’s a bit of an escape artist, I do believe he was likely caught and hog-tied at some point in his life. The ligature marks are all in the same spot where his 4th foot was amputated, as well and I don’t believe that to be a coincidence.
Between July and December, Louie became increasingly fearful of me. Unfortunately, I was the evil human that bathed him, put him in the car for vet trips, discovered his fear of the flashlight, and had to check his mouth when I found a random broken tooth in the house, among many other things. Louie had become so fearful of me that he was running away to avoid me, and was beginning to urinate when he thought I was following him. We made the difficult decision to move him to another foster home on December 6th, where he could get a fresh start.
Louie had begun to settle in a bit in the next several weeks. He was even comfortable enough to take treats from his new foster Mom. But, taking treats from her is more than he had ever done for me, so we were incredibly hopeful this would be a better situation for him. On December 27th, Louie’s foster Mom and her daughter were out shoveling snow. Her daughter went inside to get some gloves and the next thing they knew, Lou was running down the street. He stopped to pee a couple of times, looked back, and then kept on going.
We immediately set up traps baited with bacon, liver, tripe, venison, and a variety of food and leftovers. Lou proved too smart for the traps, and actually figured out a way to get the food without setting off the traps, but the traps managed to snag a neighbor’s free-roaming dog several times, two possums, and several cats. His foster Mom set up a trail camera to see what his routine was and he was coming back daily to eat the food left out by his foster Mom. It also turns out he had figured out that one of the traps
was more sensitive than the other trap. He would walk over to the traps and nudge them with his nose. The one would set off, and the other wouldn’t, and he would only go inside the one that didn’t release when he tapped it with his nose.
At one point, Louie was spotted by the neighbor with her free-roaming dog, and she said her dog and Lou were outside near the pond on her property, frolicking and jumping around in the mud. They were PLAYING. The dog that barely came out of his crate in the 4 months I had him, who ignored any and all play invitations by my dogs, was playing with another dog.
Lou avoided capture for almost 3months. This past weekend, Lou’s foster Mom got a professional trapper in and he built a fenced-in style area with trail cameras, motion detectors, the works. He built the enclosure in pieces around the area that Lou has been eating his food for the last 3 months. He built it one wall at a time so as not to be too threatening, and he set it up with a remote door that could be shut easily from several hundred feet away. On Monday night, Louie went inside the trap to eat his meal like usual and the trapper, from his truck, hit the button on the remote and shut the door behind him. Finally, Louie was caught.
On March 13th, Louie came back to foster with me. His new foster Mom felt terrible, but she was so afraid that her daughter might leave the door open again and it was a risk she was unwilling to take. His foster Mom was simply too nervous that if he were to escape again, that there would be no chance we would be able to safely capture him again. My house is set up such that the only escape route that leads to a non-fenced area can be easily blocked off. We have no children and Lou has a couple of hiding places
that he can freely use if we have guests. My dogs don’t mind him and despite him victimized by other dogs in the past, my dogs seem to give him his space and don’t pester him. I actually think that Roxy understands him, to some extent. In fact, Roxy will throw play bows at him every other week, just to see if he’s changed his mind about playing with her. He never has. When they greeted each other through the baby gate Wednesday night for the first time in 3 months, she tried again with a play bow. He sniffed towards her, and then ignored her. She just wagged her tail.
He’s settled back in nicely. Knows the routine, knows “outside,” “dinner,” and “come on Lou, time for bed.” And he took a bit of food from me this morning, and although he’s afraid, he’s not running from me petrified and I have someone lined up to the “dirty work” with him – baths, nail trimmings, vet trips if necessary, etc. to hopefully make it easier for him to build a relationship with me. So, for now, Louie is staying in foster with us. I’m considering the fact that he may be here a while because most people are looking for a dog that actually wants to interact with them, and Lou will need quite a bit of time to feel comfortable enough with someone to enjoy interaction.
), but knowing his history, I'm simply happy with how far he's come already. He's learned our schedule, knows his safe places in the house, and is housetrained. Those are all really big things for a dog with his history, to be honest.
I look forward to learning much here