Bella 21-083
Profile
Profile
Updates
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Exciting news! Bella had her follow-up X-rays, and the surgeon said she is healing beautifully, and her activity restrictions could be lifted! We started with some running, then a little fetching, and then we decided it was time for a play session.
Bella hadn’t met Tamara before, so we went to her foster’s house and while the foster kept Tamara leashed in the front yard, Bella and I did some training. We started farther away to try and give Bella enough distance that she wouldn’t bark at Tamara. Each time she looked at Tamara she got some pieces of chicken. Next, we started walking back and forth on the sidewalk, and each time she looked at Tamara, more chicken!
It took about 5 minutes, and Bella slowly stopped her little mini-growls and I could see her relax. Once she was relaxed, we moved closer, met Tamara with no issues, then took them to her foster’s fenced-in backyard where they proceeded to have a blast chasing each other and playing keep away with the purple ball!
As you can see, Bella does great with other friendly dogs; she just needs to take her time before she meets them so that she can be relaxed and not worried or fearful.
Here is a video of the two of them chasing each other and playing keep away:
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Bella is continuing to heal amazingly well and is ready to find her forever home!
She is such a good little puppy for her age. If she gets her walks, she is good as gold and goes to sleep. If she doesn’t get her walks, she still enjoys finding paper or cardboard to chew up, which is a good motivator to make sure she gets her exercise!
Bella’s foster went on vacation, and she spent some time at other foster homes and did a great job! At one house, she met the 5-month-old puppy next door and loved him, and hung out with a 12-year-old dog. She really wanted to play with both of them, but her hips aren’t quite ready yet, so she had to settle for some bitey face games (where they lie next to each other and chew on each other’s necks) and roll on the ground with them during playtime.
We take all of our walks with diced chicken, and each time she sees another dog, we say, “Yes!” and chicken rains from the sky. She has started to look to me when she sees another dog because her brain has started to make the connection: “There’s another dog over there - oooo, I get treats!”
Bella also likes to collect her favorite things and bring them to her bed. She’s so funny.
If you want a sweet, sweet girl that you can help grow to be her best self, submit an Inquiry for Application and specify you are interested in Bella!
Sunday, July 25, 2021
Bella absolutely loves water. Before her surgeries, she enjoyed swimming in our lake as well as playing in the waterfall in our yard.
Bella is continuing to heal and get stronger. She wants to go on long walks to get the wiggles out, but for now they need to be short, so we do a lot of stopping and sniffing to make them a bit more satisfying for her. It’s amazing how much calmer she is, and how much less likely she is to chew, when she gets even a 5- to 10-minute slow walk. She is such a good girl!
We are making progress on her training with other dogs as well. When she sees a dog when on her walk (far enough away and not walking towards her), she immediately turns to me for treats, which means that she has connected the fact that seeing another dog means good things will happen! If the dog is coming at her, or too close, then she still resorts to barking, so we will continue to work on that.
That’s all for now! Here is a picture of Bella sleeping with some of her favorite toys.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Bella is doing great and gaining more strength in her new hips each day! We are working on developing muscle strength with specific exercises, and taking small walks around the yard.
She is so darn cute. This week she was carrying her favorite stuffed Moose around the house and literally fell asleep with it in her mouth.
After she woke up, she started playing with it.
She is definitely tired of not having regular walks and getting her energy out. She’s actually a very mellow dog, but after 7 weeks of no walks, she’s a bit bored.
This week I made the mistake of leaving a roll of paper towels on the floor, and came downstairs to find this.
Just look at her face and wagging tail when I found her. She is so happy; no shame whatsoever!
Bella is one lucky girl to have an organization like RAGOM to give her the opportunity to live her life with 2 completely repaired hips — without her surgeries, she would have lived her life in a lot of pain. She would love if you would be one of her sponsors to help support RAGOM and pay for surgeries like hers!
More to come about Bella soon!
Thursday, July 8, 2021
Bella is a sweet Golden Retriever who will soon be ready to find her forever home! She has a few special issues that her potential home must be willing to work with, so let’s start with those – and then we’ll get to the good stuff about this sweet, snuggly girl.
1. Bella is afraid of new dogs and will react by barking aggressively when she sees them. Once she is given time for a slow introduction, though, she loves to play and become their best friend!
This is not something that love will fix, nor going to the dog park and getting her “used to it.” It will take regular training, with a trainer, and lots of practice each week doing what the trainer recommends, to help Bella overcome her fear.
With regular training, over time, her reactivity could improve. But that is an unknown. Bella will never be a dog that should go to a dog park or a brewery.
That said, once Bella meets a dog (a trainer would show you how to do this successfully)—if the dog is friendly, of course—she is their best friend and will play and play! I was able to introduce her to my dogs, giving her plenty of time (many days) to get used to them before meeting them face to face, and she did wonderfully. They now play all the time and are totally comfortable together.
If you are willing to put the time in, she has a huge amount of potential. She just needs someone who loves her and is willing to spend time daily working with her in various situations that will build her confidence.
So, applicants need to be willing (and able) to pay for a trainer to help Bella, and work on training exercises with Bella each day.
2. Bella has hip dysplasia. That means she will never be a jogging partner, but going on long walks and hikes is actually good for her as it builds her muscles up.
Bella had TPO surgery to repair each hip, 4 weeks apart. The second hip surgery was one week ago, so she is recovering and starting to heal. The next 8 weeks will involve rest, then stretches, then more physical therapy exercises and short walks, then finally full walks.
Now that we have those important issues out of the way, let me tell you more about this sweet girl!
Bella came from a family that could not afford the surgery she needed, so they lovingly made the sad choice to surrender her to RAGOM so she could have the pain-free life she deserved.
She is totally housetrained and is great about scratching at the door when she needs to go outside.
She loves my dogs and absolutely loves to play with them, and she *tries* to play with my cats as well.
She does OK with cats, but she can be a little over exuberant and will sometimes chase them (not prey-drive chasing, but “Oh boy! This is fun! Let’s play!” chasing). If you have a cat that would be stressed by her "let’s play" overtures, then Bella may not be a good match. I would hope her exuberance would go down over time, but she’s been here for 2 months and she still likes to invite my cats to play.
Bella loves, loves, loves to snuggle. And she is so good at it! We have taught her some bad habits, like snuggling on the couch and on the bed, and she really loves to do it.
Bella walks pretty well on a leash. We were doing short walks (post-surgery #1) as part of her recovery physical therapy protocol, and she pulls a little, but heck, so would I if I were a 9-month-old puppy who hadn’t been able to run in 4 weeks! The pulling decreases as the walk progresses.
Because of Bella’s reactivity, I would like her forever home to have a physical fence. If you have neighbors with dogs, or walking traffic near the fence, I will give preference to a wood privacy fence, simply because if Bella is in an environment where she can practice barking at other dogs each day, she will not make any improvements, and most likely will get worse.
If you live on an acreage where she won’t see other dogs through the fence, then chain link is fine.
Bella adores kids, but due to her behavior issues, I’d like kids in her family to be age 12 and older.
Another thing to note: Bella is still a puppy. What I mean by puppy is that she will get into puppy trouble if she’s bored, such as pulling a bag of baked potatoes out of the pantry, shredding the plastic, and playing ball with the potatoes, all while Foster Mom went outside for 20 minutes.
In Bella’s defense, Foster Mom had put all of Bella’s balls – which she loves to play with – away after her surgery, so Bella was left to find a ball substitute, which she felt the potatoes were perfect for. And she did not eat the potatoes; she just played with them, throwing them in the air, and distributing them all over the house.
Or, for another example, finding a manilla folder full of property tax documents on the couch in the study. Bella played Jenga by ever so gently extracting each tax document from the middle file in the stack – without tipping the stack or pulling the file from the stack – and then shredding them into teeny-weeny pieces.
So, you need to be able to roll with these type of events and have a sense of humor about it, puppy-proof your house, and crate her if you’re leaving for an extended period of time!
That’s enough for Bella’s first update. More to come soon!
Adopt Me: If you think Bella would be a good fit in your home, please review our adoption process. If you have already submitted an Inquiry for Application, email [email protected] with Bella's name, RAGOM number (21-083), the name you submitted under, and a sentence or two explaining why you feel your home would be a good match.