Finley 08-565

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Finley is a 7 month old, spayed female, purebred Golden Retriever. She is house trained and sleeps in her crate at night. She walks nicely on her Gentle Leader and loves her toys. Finley came from a home with several young children. She had a 1 hour drive to our house and rode nicely in her crate the entire trip.

The first thing you notice about Finley is her looks. She is very pretty. She still has some of her puppy coat but her adult featherings are coming in on her rear and tail.

Once she arrived at our home she met our resident Golden boys, 4 year old Sota and 1 year old Rouser. She was cautious but friendly when meeting the boys.

Her first night she only let us see her shy side. She was always wanting to please but very unsure of her new environment. No signs of aggression, she just wanted to curl up around our legs or sniff every inch of the yard and house.

We look forward to learning more about Finley. Please read on to learn more about her!

At a Glance #08-565

Golden Retriever Born: April 2008
Female 50 lbs

Status: Deceased

Profile

Finley is a 7 month old, spayed female, purebred Golden Retriever. She is house trained and sleeps in her crate at night. She walks nicely on her Gentle Leader and loves her toys. Finley came from a home with several young children. She had a 1 hour drive to our house and rode nicely in her crate the entire trip.

The first thing you notice about Finley is her looks. She is very pretty. She still has some of her puppy coat but her adult featherings are coming in on her rear and tail.

Once she arrived at our home she met our resident Golden boys, 4 year old Sota and 1 year old Rouser. She was cautious but friendly when meeting the boys.

Her first night she only let us see her shy side. She was always wanting to please but very unsure of her new environment. No signs of aggression, she just wanted to curl up around our legs or sniff every inch of the yard and house.

We look forward to learning more about Finley. Please read on to learn more about her!

Updates

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Hi ALL - Finley Here!!!

Boy do I have some BIG NEWS!!!! On Wednesday night 5/27/09, I passed the AKC's Canine Good Citizenship test!! My humans and I have now gone through two classes; puppy obedience and dog obedience I, culminating in passing the CGC test Wednesday night. AND my humans have started to allow me free roam for short amounts of time while their gone and while they sleep. I'm never home alone for long, but I was still doing some puppy chewing when I first got here, so I had to prove myself to them or go in my kennel for those times when they were gone. Today they had to go to some doctor's appointments and were gone for about 5 hours. I was a "REALLY GOOD GIRL" according to them.

I think soon we'll be doing some agility work and looking into the path toward Pet Therapy certification. Human Dad thinks that I might be pretty good at that since for the last week I have been helping him recover from knee surgery.

Check out some more of my favorite pictures.


Graduation night with Dan
Graduation night with Jan

Playing tug with Jan
Learning more of the computer stuff
from Dan (that mouse is FUNNY)

Relaxing in the back yard
Snoozin in the sun.

Bye for now,
Finley

Hi,

Dan Here.

We are very proud of the strides that Finley has made. Her thinking level is very high and Jan and I are always trying to find new ways of challenging her. She is still challenging us with resource guarding, but we are committed to helping her through that. With some wonderful support from RAGOM, our desire to have her succeed, and the fact that we have a pretty ideal family situation for her for working though this, we feel that she will overcome it.

The other night at "Graduation" we worked with some of the agility equipment and Finley took to it all very readily. She balked the first time on each of the stations, but by the end of ten minutes she had the tunnel, hoop, table and moving platform down.  She still needs to work on the horizontal ladder, but she was hitting most of the "holes" by the end of the session.

Dan & Jan

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Hi, Finley (08-565) here.

I was lucky, my owners, Jan and Dan, discovered RAGOM about six months ago when they saw a news article about Hope (08-378) on a local news story. They then made the decision to start looking for a new pup to add to their family. They settled on ME, and I love my new home.  I wanted to tell all the RAGOM fans how well I am doing, but we are all a little sad right now at my home.  You see, we recently had to say goodbye to my older fursister, Sadie.  Sadie was a rescued Golden, but not a RAGOM dog.  So, while she can't be added to the RAGOM Rainbow Bridge page, I thought I'd write my tribute to her as an "honorary" RAGOM dog. Let me tell a little about my reasoning.

My Humans rescued Sadie in December of 2000 when she was a year old. She was not a RAGOM dog, but luckily they were there to give her the Golden Life. She was always reluctant to talk about her “previous” life as she called it, but I learned enough to know that it was not pleasant. Because of that life, she was afraid of loud noises such as firecrackers and thunder. She also did not like lightening or flashes from cameras which frustrated our humans. She chuckled about that, but always outside of their hearing.

Because of her prior life, she was hard to make friends with. It took her a long time to warm up to humans other than her family, and it even took about two weeks for her to acknowledge my presence in the house. (You should have seen how she reacted when they came up to my foster’s house to meet me!!) Once she was your friend though, you were hers forever. I know that we were becoming bestest friends though, when she started to play with me. She told me that she couldn’t ever remember playing with another dog. I still remember the look on our human’s faces when we started to play. I needed to stay close to their legs at first though because Sadie could get a little rough, but as she got better, she really started to enjoy our play sessions and to understand the rules of play.

Sadie was a very good Golden for our humans and they had eight great years together. Sadie loved going out to a place called “the farm”, playing and retrieving training dummies from this thing called a pond. She hunted rabbits and made sure that the cats did their jobs well by chasing them and making sure they were in the best shape possible.

We finally all four went to this place called the farm. What a place! I saw Sadie run like the wind, sniffing for animals in the pine grove, retrieving dummies from the pond, playing football. She told me that these were all of her favorite things in the world. We had a grand time and I learned a lot. Our Humans took a lot of pictures, and here are a few of my favorites.  That's Sadie in the regal pose and swimming; that's me doing my famous Finley shake; and the entire family.

Sadie's fears of strange humans eventually became too much for her to handle, and so she has gone to the Rainbow Bridge. There she is running free, playing with no cares or worries; even when the occasional thunderstorm comes through. There she has met and is even now playing with their friends, Puddin, Ebony, Shaitec, Bear, Doc, Misty, and Banjo.  Some day, we will all meet there and cross over the bridge together.

It has been a little over a week now and I think things are getting back to normal. HD says that he will get some pictures on his website soon (www.briodanphoto.com) and we can all enjoy Sadie’s memory. As you can see, Sadie was very important to my Human’s lives and to mine, because it was her that convinced them that they had room in their hearts for another puppy and that turned out to be me. I am thriving and since I am now the senior dog of the house, I will try my best to keep them happy. I hear we may be going out to the farm this weekend… I can’t wait, I really gotta try out more of that swimming stuff.

(We did, and she did Wink )

Bye for now,

Finley

 

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Finley has been with us since Friday (11/21/08). The shy girl has started to break out of her shell.
 
Saturday we hand fed her breakfast to observe her reaction to us fiddling with her and her food. She was happy to show us her obedience talents: sit, down, and shake. She was just fine with us having our hands in her dish as she ate or petting her ears, neck, and body. She was happy to go in and out of her crate and even started to learn a new behavior, nose touching our hand.
 
She is just cautious enough though that eliminating outside is a bit scary. She did have an accident in the house which always teaches us humans we have to be more diligent in watching her and helping her feel comfortable outside. Lots of treats and happiness for "going" outside!!
 
Finley and our 1 year old resident Golden, Rouser, are really starting to play. They love to chase each other and wrestle. We know our 4 year old Golden, Sota, would love to join but due to recent surgery he can only watch :o( She has no issues interacting with either dog. She also was excited to meet the 3 year old German Sheppard from next door.
 
She has really bonded to my husband but if he speaks to her in too exciting of a voice she gets nervous and piddles. Another human lesson learned; be more mellow around her as she warms up to us. She is just a bit unsure of what all the praise and happy talk means.
 
Sunday was an exciting day for Finley. We allowed her to have a few toys to evaluate her behavior with these. Her favorite was the tennis ball but the rubber Kong was delightful too.
 
Standing over her and reaching for the toy caused her to tense up but with us sitting on the floor she was more at ease and she came dancing over with her toy. With the limited access to toys we can over reward bringing us toys. The day went like this: chew and play with toy, bring it to the humans get treats, repeat over and over.
 
Also while hand feeding breakfast she would tense up while being petted. We will continue to work through this so that it does not escalate.
 
The most fun we had this weekend was going pheasant hunting!! Sunday was as nice of a day we get in Minnesota at the end of November so off to the field we went. It was not long before 7 roosters flew up and the guns were blasting. Good news...Finley is NOT gun shy. She had no issues with the noise and loved to help the other dogs sniff for more birds. She has not been trained to know what to look for but that did not stop her from trying.
 
All this exercise made for happy dogs and Sunday evening was quite peaceful in the house!
 
Monday morning and Finley did her business outside...big party!!
 
We continue to hand feed her and although she can tense up at times she is doing OK with it. We continue to reinforce bringing us toys and even started to work on other items like paper towels. Since my experience has shown Golden babies love to shred paper products I thought this would be a good test of our relationship so far. She was very excited to pick up the paper towel from the floor but equally happy to drop it at my feet and take her treat.
 
Now that we have had time to get to know Miss Finley I feel ready to find her a new forever home. Please contact RAGOM if you think Finley sounds like the right little girl for you!