We do have antler bones for her, but she’s only so so with them. They’re not her favorites. She will chew them for a little bit but quickly loses interest in them. What we have found works well for her is the busy buddy toys that you put raw hide rings in. She loves those, but she has figured out how to get to them pretty quick. The 1st couple of times she chewed on it, it took her about 2 hours to get those rings chewed up. Now she does it an about 30 to 40 minutes. Compressed rawhide bones and bully sticks are also favorites of hers. She also loves her Kong. I’ll put treats in that and she will play with it until she gets them out, and sometimes that can take quite a while! I wish I could give her marrow bones, but she totally destroys them. The last one we gave her ended up with a trip to the emergency vet because she swallowed a large chunk and it made her sick. I actually thought she might have been bloating so rushed her right in. Thankfully it did pass, but that ended up being an 800 dollar bone!
I think the biggest thing with her was that she got bounced around so much that she never knew what home was so she never could get totally comfortable. It took her a good 5 months I’d say to become totally comfortable here and to figure out that she was here to stay. Once that happened things started going well and we were able to resolve some of the major issues she had.
The issues she still has are pretty minor. The one that we need to work on the most with her is her pray drive. She gets easily distracted when she sees something like a squirrel or rabbit. She loses all focus and wants to do nothing but chase it. I sometimes have problems getting her attention back when that happens. I usually can, but sometimes it takes a while. I realize this may be something that may not ever improve much. If I could just get her to calm down I’d be happy. She will work herself into a frenzy and will run all over the house trying to get out to get at whatever it is she thinks is out there. I do close the blinds and that helps a lot but it’s not always fun having to close everything up! We’d like to leave things open so we can get some light inside.
As I said, I am looking forward to the spring. We have so much natural foliage in our yard that when it is all in season she really can’t see through it well so misses a lot of the critters. What she doesn’t see doesn’t freak her out! Thankfully, we have got her to leave birds alone. She use to wig out with those too.
She’s a good girl, she just needs a little polishing yet. I think that will improve as she gets older. She’s bringing back memories of Sadie for sure. Sadie was a real handful when she was young too. All that energy to burn off! When she got to about 4 years of age she really started mellowing out. I think Bella will too. I think that is pretty common with most dogs. I know it is with the dogs in our neighborhood. Many of the ones Bella plays with are getting older now (like in that 6 to 8 year range) and they have all mellowed out a lot from when the were younger and played with Sadie. Bella is still basically a teenager maturity wise and we know what teens can be like at times!…LoL
