#emma background

[emma-the-brave]

We had one, yes, what about second visit?

So, Jack and I were immediately in love with the small, very scared dog. Yes we love her we don't care if we never touch her she's wonderful and we will take the best care of her please let us treat her like a tiny princess.

We waited all of 3 days before asking when we could next coordinate a visit. 😂 The visit was set for December 3rd! In the meantime, with nothing but tiny dog on the brain, and with Black Friday sales lingering, I started buying supplies for her.

So. Many. Treats. And some chews as well! I was making lists of what else we would need to get - pens, a crate, carrier, blankets, a bed.... I ordered the carrier before the second visit, because we took it with us for that visit, to give to foster mom. We took a new blanket for her as well, and one of our couch blankets with our smell on it.

So Saturday the 3rd, Jack and I headed to the meeting, with stuff to send home with foster mom, blankets to cover our legs as they said she preferred, and just Spring with us this time.

As before, a fair amount of heavy stress panting for the first 15 minutes or so. But she did come closer to us while foster mom was showing us a video!

Those were my feet under the blanket!!! So close!!!

Foster and trainer were both excited that we'd brought our own blankets and were already covered up when Emma came in. We listened! We had brought some new treats too, but they turned out to not be that interesting to either chi, so foster mom was the favorite with her good treats. But they still did good around each other!

We were excited to already see some improvement, likely due to fewer people and less scary ones. She spent less time hiding behind foster mom & spent more time watching us as we talked about her behavior, likes, etc. Foster mom laid down and Emma sat between her legs, and was calmed down enough to stop panting!

Watching us 👀👀👀

And then!!!! Much excitement!!!!! She laid down!!!! We all just went quiet for a moment and did big OMG eyes at each other. Jack and I were so excited!

As we wrapped the session up & Emma went back in her carrier, Jack & I were babbling about "omg she laid down!!" and foster mom & trainer told us they were very happy we obviously recognized this as a Big Step. Compared to previous visits where people were asking when they could pet and hold her..... yeah. Not hard to beat that. 🤦

So apparently between having listened & brought lap blankets, clearly having reasonable expectations of behavior & recognizing small differences in behavior, we passed approval with flying colors! They told us that they were considering her already adopted, & they were happy for us to take her whenever we were ready. We were a bit startled 😂 but also EXCITED.

We gave foster mom the carrier and blankets (adding to our points 😂) and said we'd let them know as soon as we talked to the family!!

We were getting scared puppy!!!!! They liked us!!!! Yaaaaaaaay

[emma-the-brave]

First visit!!!

(Sorry for another text block post!)

Everyone went to go for the first meeting!! All 4 humans and both dogs, Addy & Spring. We wanted to see what everyone thought of Emma, and how the dogs reacted to each other - we didn't think it would be an issue, but some dogs can get aggressive with a scared dog. While having all of us there would be overwhelming for Emma, her training team decided it wouldn't be any worse than only a couple of us being there - she was going to be stressed and overwhelmed no matter what.

I was sent a text with directions for what to do for the meeting. We waited when we got there until given the okay to go in. They had us all get seated and settled before having foster mom bring Emma in. She came right out of her carrier, panting with her mouth wide open. SO very stressed at traveling & people. Worth noting that she had been to this room before, many times, and foster mom had been working with her on going to it outside of training to try and work on her comfort in it.

We all mostly stayed right in our places, across the room, for the whole visit. Jack & I managed our two dogs, who were thrilled that everyone had great treats. 😂 We all took turns tossing treats out to redirect the dogs so they could do short intro sniffs & see each other, but not put too much pressure on Emma. They all did great! No issues sharing treats or saying hi to each other. Our two had no clue why Emma was so scared and upset, but they didn't get too concerned about it.

Emma stayed panting for the first 20 minutes or so of the visit - but Jack & I both immediately noticed when she stopped!! She had about 15 minutes in the middle of the visit where she wasn't stress panting. She mostly hid behind foster mom or moved around her, watching us nervously. We didn't even get any pictures this time, bc we were either trying not to move much, or managing our dogs.

After she was crated again, Jack & I immediately exclaimed about the not panting for a bit. We hadn't even been sure she would leave the crate with all the people, so we were thrilled! As soon as they heard that, foster mom & trainer were visibly pleased that we seemed to "get it". Emma had had previous meetings with people who wanted to know if they could pet her. 🤦

But we understood where she was coming from. We had reasonable expectations for what her behavior might be. We noticed the small steps and recognized them to be big steps for her, and celebrated them! That was a big positive for the team.

Still, we decided we would do another visit - they cautioned us that we may need to do visits for a couple months, depending on what the trainers decided, which we were fine with. Despite our excitement, we were in no rush.

On the ride home, we discussed everything. Everyone was STILL on board! We could see how she did and flex our plans to match what she needed and what made her feel safe. We all wanted to give the scared panting girl a good home, and help her learn she was safe and loved.

[emma-the-brave]

We've been approved!! ... now what?

So after having our application for Emma approved by the original rescue, we were passed off to the training-based rescue that was working with her & her foster mom. We didn't know quite what was going on yet, as we didn't know much about her background yet.

We got an initial phone call from a volunteer, who gave us the rundown. Emma grew up in a pen in a backyard with her 2 sisters and her parents. They weren't given any human interaction outside of being fed, so the puppies were fully unsocialized. The dogs were rescued when the girls were around 7 or so months old, and she'd been in foster homes since - her main foster home had her for most of 2022.

(I have pics from foster mom of Emma's family, but idk that I'm allowed to post them publicly, so not gonna risk it)

The volunteer told me that Emma was considered more or less half-feral in terms of her fear level & socialization. She couldn't be touched, she was afraid to go outside, she was a major flight risk, and she wasn't leash trained. She wasn't aggressive, she mainly just wanted to run and hide. However, she did have some resource guarding issues, particularly guarding foster mom when foster dad entered a room due to being afraid of foster dad.

We were given a couple days to talk about the new info & decide if we wanted to keep moving forward. She was obviously going to be a bit more of a project than we initially thought, but everyone was still game. If she were aggressive, that would've been a deal breaker, but we could handle a dog that just wanted to hide from us. I let them know we were still interested on November 18th.

Next...a second phone call with one of the trainers! She reiterated the extent of Emma's issues, ensured that we understood, and we went over our household, both people and animals. They decided we sounded like r could be a good fit, so the next step would be meeting Emma at the training center, with her foster mom & a trainer.

Our first meeting was set for November 28th! Cue all the anxious excitement!

[emma-the-brave]

Meet Emma!!

I saw Emma posted for adoption from one of our local rescues sometime early in 2022. I immediately fell in love with the fact that she looked so much like our current chihuahua mix, Spring. Reading her post, I thought she sounded similar to how he was when we first adopted him as well.

Young, scared, needing time, patience, and socialization? No big deal, Spring was too, and it was so rewarding watching him flourish over the last couple years we've had him. I wanted to do it again.

But it wasn't the right time yet. I saw her posted a couple more times and made 🥺 faces each time.

Finally, after we spent part of 2022 talking about wanting to get another small dog to be a buddy for Spring as our disabled lab mix Addy gets older.... Emma's post came up again in November 2022. I poked my household again, and this time!! We decided to apply!!

We were quickly approved by her rescue (who had already adopted out a dog & 2 cats to us), but that was just the beginning of what we were getting ourselves into.

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emma stone bgs

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emma bg

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