Blog #2 - Pets

 Describe one of your pets. What do they like or dislike? What are some of their peculiar habits? 

One of my pets Coco is a chocolate Labrador Retriever/Australian Shepard mix. She is pretty slender, and would be called a medium sized dog. She is brown and has different variations of brown over her fur in spots. She also has lighter brown eyebrows which is funny for a dog to have. She has an Australian Shepard face but more of a Labrador Retriever body even though she is smaller than a purebred Labrador Retriever. She is 4 years old so she is still energetic but not as much as the puppy stage.

Coco is a very special yet interesting dog. We got her from the humane society when she was 6 months old. She had been dropped off at the humane society after being neglected for 6 months to run around outdoors in the country. With this past trauma she is very skittish, timid, and barks at others when she is afraid. She does not like people coming around our house, other dogs in general as well, and she doesn't like "her brother" getting close to her toys or food. "Her brother" was bought from a breeder at 8 weeks old so he really has no life experience other than our family. He is very different than her because he does not have fear and is fine with letting people do anything to him. Coco doesn't like when people touch her sometimes. She for the most part tolerates "her brother" but occasionally she starts fights with him. This is similar to human sibling behavior, siblings usually tolerate each other but you know once in a while they start fights and disagree with each other. 

Some of Coco's peculiar habits are that she wont go in to the bathroom. She won't even walk in there to check it out. She doesn't like going on walks sometimes and will just randomly start going home and then will stay inside and not walk or move. She sleeps upstairs with my dad but doesn't want "her brother" to come down until a certain time so will block him on the stairs by growling at him. She also doesn't eat all of her food at once, she will either her food over the bowl but eat in small slow bites or will take a mouthful over to the living room, spit it on the floor then eat it and do this as many times as it takes to finish the bowl of food. She also doesn't like to come back inside from the backyard. We sometimes have to trick her to get her inside. I know she sounds like a handful from this but overall she is a very good dog because she has characteristics that allow her to be a family dog, and to usually listen and behave. 

Coco has peculiar habits like described above but most of them can be explained when we think of her trauma. She had to go on anti-depressants for a little while to calm her anxiety down. Even with these peculiar habits, she works well for our family/life habits. She is also pretty eager to learn and is treat motivated usually. I say usually because sometimes her fear takes over and the treat doesn't get her attention. She has been through training classes and has had a personal trainer for a bit as well. She is getting better than before but she has had trauma and there is no way to remove that from her memory.