Red Stick German Shepherd Rescue
Name: Noel
Meet Noel. Noel came to the shelter with her sister Holly and her mother, Merry.
While her sister Holly is shy and a scared of her surroundings, Noel is simply petrified. She's withdrawing into herself to avoid having to interact with anyone, practicing the canine art of "avoidance." It's heartbreaking to see a young pup going through this. Our volunteers are visiting as often as we can to sit with her and work on bringing her out of her shell.
Over the weekend, after several short kennel visits dropping off high-value treats in between photographing other dogs (during which time Noel ignored the treats at first and then secretly munched them when no one was watching), our volunteer ended the day just sitting quietly in the kennel with Noel. After a long time like that, Noel finally trusted the volunteer enough to creep warily nearer for the treats, and eventually to even eat the treats from the human's fingers. That took most of an afternoon to accomplish. That was all she could give us that day, but for a dog who started out the day refusing to look at anyone and avoiding even the treats, it was huge progress.
A couple of days later, another volunteer managed to take Noel outside, just to sit in the sun in a quiet place. Noel, as you can see, relaxed onto a lap, eager to be protected from the scary world around her. We'll go see her again tomorrow, and see if we can continue her progress out of the debilitating fear. We worry that she may become a candidate for euthanasia if she shuts down, so helping her find her way out of the darkness is important.
Since then, we have found her a quiet foster home. She's so young that she has a great chance of coming out of this--we've seen many dogs her age bounce back beautifully from similar shelter-fear as puppies.