Lottie was born in a Romanian rescue kennels with her siblings. Once old enough she was transported to England to find a home. This is where she met her amazing owner and came to live in Staffordshire. Lottie settled very quickly into home life, after living in kennel, and very much loves her new owner.

Lottie’s owner put in a lot of work in for Lottie and managed to build lots of positive associations and behaviours during her first few months in England. However, they were finding that walks were becoming harder each week due to her fears of other people outside of her family unit.

First Assessment

During Lottie’s assessment it was found that Lottie was a confident girl at times, however this meant sometimes she would approach before she was ready, meaning she then became scared after approaching.

This didn’t help that in England our mannerisms to dogs are very different than her previous experiences in Romania. People would ignore her in Romanian, whereas in England, people tried to approach her, which was very concerning for Lottie.

Behavioural plan

For her behavioural plan, we worked on building self-confidence and frustration tolerances. This also meant we stopped greeting people outside unless Lottie was able to cope. This allowed Lottie to start to understand, people outside the home are not as scary as she thought and with her new frustration coping skills, she could cope not having the opportunity to approach or if things don’t go to plan.

During the behaviour plan we also worked on handling to allow her owner to bath Lottie after walks and getting ready for her future spay procedure.

Outcome

Now Lottie is enjoying her walks and even having off-lead time! She has started to confidently greet lots of new people inside the home and a few people outside too! She has also recently enjoyed her first confidence visit with her veterinary practice. Lottie’s owner is continuing with her training and building confidence going to new places and we plan on working on separation work next.