It has been about 20 months, give or take since I have updated Stella but I thought sharing her experience might be helpful for others.

First off, to her humans and all humans, Stella is so sweet but has occasional moments of rambunctiousness.  She just celebrated her 3rd birthday on May 2, according to her Turkish passport. 

Stella came to me in July of 2019 because she was reactive to other dogs. When she first arrived, my stepdaughter also moved back home from college with her cat. Stella had a very intense interest in little critters outside so it was no surprise that when the cat arrived, her initial reaction was 'good...dinner is here'.

If Stella even saw the cat, she went crazy. So we separated the house into two distinct and separate areas known as the cat area and the dog area. We made sure that both dog and cat had plenty of room to roam and plenty of human attention and interaction and we settled in a nice routine that worked very well. Everyone knew it was important to keep dog and cat separate and that even getting a glimpse of the cat would send Stella into a frenzy.   

Regarding her reaction to other dogs, it was pretty intense. One trainer described her reaction to another dog as 'explosive'. That is not exactly the adjective you want to hear someone describe your foster dog.

Since that time we have worked with trainers and a vet behaviorist to try to get her to feel differently about other dogs. While her behavior is reactive to other dogs, we have managed to get into a routine that allows us to bring her on a daily 2 mile walk and have gotten her to the point that when she sees another dog out our big picture window overlooking the neighborhood (which was a lot during the pandemic) we can calm her and she hears us and listens to us.

That might seem to be an ordinary feat but know that when she has crossed over her threshold into a frenzy, a filet mignon couldn't get her attention away from the dog she is barking at, so the fact that she will listen to us when she sees a dog outside is a big success.

Back to the cat: Somewhere along the line, probably 6 months in or so, Mona decided that she was not going to let the dog dictate how she lives her life. She started breaching the gates and coming into the dog territory. The first time it happened we were afraid that Stella was going to harm the cat but it turns out, Mona knew something we didn't, or was braver than we were, but she kept coming over. And Stella started accepting it.

But Mona also decided she was going to be in charge so she let Stella know that if there was anyone that was going to get hurt in an altercation, it wasn't going to be Mona. As time went on, we settled into a routine where dog and cat co-existed...but to keep Stella in her place, every once in awhile, Mona would walk by her and give her the one, two, three sucker punch (never making contact of course) and that was just enough for Stella to respect and understand that Mona was not dinner.

In fact, every once in awhile, Stella would get excited and play bow to Mona, which Mona didn't care for so there was no fairy-tale ending where they played and snuggled but they did co-exist peacefully, until Mona and my step-daughter moved out to their own place about a month ago. I think Stella and Mona both secretly miss each other.  

Stella is still a work in progress and I am not sure if she will ever be able to be within 20 ft of another dog and not react but we will always keep working with her and trying.  

In the meantime, we have grown to love her fiercely as she is a sweet, perfect, cuddly dog when there are no other dogs in sight. Stella's story is atypical of a golden retriever but it happens.

Recently, with a trainer, we tried to carefully introduce Stella to a black chow chow named Chloe. I think it would have surprised many people to see the sweet Golden Retriever being the aggressor and the chow chow calmly laying down not reacting at all. I think its an important lesson: you can't judge a book by its cover.

Some updated photos of our journey with Stella aka Bonkers...if you knew her or met her, you would know why she has earned that nickname:)