It might be a good idea to get him used to a new sound and at least one new person
a day. Five months is still pretty young and it shouldn't be too difficult if you give
him the reassurance and love he needs. Doing dishes, the vacuum, loud radio, siren
from police or ambulance are all new things to a baby or pup. The baby is usually
out with the family but some people keep their puppies so isolated that they do
notget used to all these new sights and sounds and become frightened and do not trust. My kids brought home a shetland sheep dog once and we put an ad
in the paper. It was so frightened that I knew it had been mistreated. It went
under our bed and for 5 days it didn't come out except only once a day to the door
to go out ( it held it all that while) One side of the bed was against the wall and it
was almost back that far. To start with our youngest son would slide under there and give him
food and water and talk to him for a while and then come out. Each meal it would
be a new face and each day we put the food and water alittle closer to us.
Anyway our kids were getting
attached without even playing with him and I know they felt such pity. The
end of the 5th day, he came out alittle and found a really fluffy rug and fell asleep
on it. It was like we won the lottery day in our house; we were all so happy.
About a week after that I got a call from a woman who said she had lost her dog
and I asked what her dogs name was - there was a tag with just a name and she
had it right. I had my husband take the kids somewhere and when she came I
was sick. She was so mean and not delighted to see him at all. I explained to
her we had two little shih tzu that were no trouble and my kids had fallen in love
with her dog and would she consider letting my children have Laddie. She said "no" I told her I'd like her name and phone # so I could check on
how he was doing once in awhile and she seemed to wonder why I would want to do that.
She left and I started to cry (not my kids) but I recovered. The kids didn't miss
him yet when I told my husband the story and I said I wanted to call someone to check
on her house. My husband said "Joan it won't do any good" Let's call her and
see if we offer her $200 (that was alot in 1968) if she would sell. I did and that
woman was over in 15 min. Our youngest saw her coming to the door and heard
us say "thank you" words she never said to us and he yelled to his brother and
sisters upstairs "Guess what, we have two Laddies ." They only had one Laddie
but they certainly learned alot during those two weeks. I was really proud of them
and with alittle more work, we had a wonderful dog. |