One year with my 'spitfire'

One year ago today I went to pick up our youngest White Shepherd, Evie. Beautiful and feisty she is. She was born in The Netherlands and at 7 weeks (*) she was picked up by my then friend and breeder of Mojo, O. It turned out that the time Evie stayed with O was at least very stressful and unstable. I didn't know that and trusted that she would be taken care of, raised like I would have done. But that wasn't the case, on the contrary. And so when I finally took her home Evie:

• Peed & pooped in her bench, in the house
• She jumped up constantly, especially when her food is being prepared
• She nipped when you wanted to touch her, leash her, put on her harness, etc
• Reacted like a crazy dog when she wanted out of her crate
• Didn't go in her crate voluntarily
• She got car sick
• She growled when one of other dogs are to close to her bowl or bone (
• She leaked urine when (over) excited and or not sure of the situation.

I really felt hopeless because I've never had a dog that was so 'out of control' before. For a long time I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep her. Especially because of her the pack became 'out of balance' too. But here we are, one year later and Evie is doing much better. A lot of her 'bad habits' are gone. The only mayor thing she really has a hard time dealing with, is when there is a lot of energy going on, like just before we go for play & walk to the pen, and the anticipation gets to much. She's barking and whining, it hurts my ears big time. Because of that I walk with ear protectors. And I try a lot of things to get her distracted, to stop barking. But as I've written in other blogs before, unlearning a dog something, like barking, is very hard, maybe impossible even. It takes a lot of time.

And I do stay positive that one day Evie will be relaxed and doesn't make a sound when going out. So on a positive note Evie is not going anywhere. I love her and she can be sweet at times. Knowing she will be ok one day, keeps me going in helping her to make her life more easy, more in balance.

(*)I would never have my puppies leave the litter before 8 weeks old. But O. advised me that it was better to get Evie at 7 weeks because she felt that the breeder of Evie wasn't taking care of the puppies the way O would do. And O. also argued that it didn't matter if Evie was another week with her litter, her 'pack' while she also would be in a pack at O's home. However that only works when the pack is stable and in balance. Relaxed. I didn't know that then, but O's pack was far from stable. It was a complete chaos, especially bc O had one of her pups returned (at 11 years old) and she brought a lot if stress with her.

Anyway, I now know and learned that taking a puppy too early from their mother, is a big 'No No' and can lead to serious behavior problems. Like with Evie when she first got here.