TL;DR - my dog (3f mutt) is extremely shy and dependent on her mother and as such will never come to me when I call her unless I really lower myself to her level, literally
I want to include all details so that anyone who reads this may have an idea of what I can do to help her become more confident and obedient. The Backstory doesn't start so well but gets better at the end of this post.
Right, so for some back story, my dog (Lilo) has never been a house dog until recently. She's always been outside, day in day out her entire life. She's the last remaining pup from the previous litter and soon as the other pups were given away, she would share a dog bowl with her mother who can be very territorial and growl at her for eating out of her bowl. A mistake on my part but I changed that a by giving her her own bowl and making sure they're not eating that close to eachother but by the time I did that, she would still gravitate towards her mother's bowl and still get growled at. This went on for about a year and a half and I still wanted to give her away this whole time but no one was interested until about 4 months ago but then the lockdown started in my country. I'll admit I sort of neglected my dog (Lilo), not by way of not feeding her but I never took her on walks when she was younger, never played with her often because I had assumed someone would come adopt her at some point. So these whole 3 years she's been under-stimulated. Anyway, after witnessing how much my dogs both loved me very much, I decided to fully take the responsibility and actually care for them. I started with Samantha (Lilo's mother), who's medium sized, because my sister had already trained her a bit so making her a house dog was a cinch. After about 3 months of training it seems Lilo (toy dog sized) now understands the basics of potty training and generally she is a lot happier which warms my heart. Even got her a little doggie basket that she's sleeping in right next to me as I type this. Everytime she goes to potty outside both #1 and #2, I reward her with a treat and a belly rub so good apparently that she just sprints rapidly in circles around me which is hilarious and wholesome. She never used to drink any water at all which bothered me when I started all this training but now, she really drinks like there's no tomorrow. She never used to finish the food I gave her (now I've made sure that both the dogs can never get to eachother while they eat, Sam on one side of the house, Lilo on the other) although, Lilo still struggles to finish her food unless I'm there beckoning her to do so. I'd take her out on walks but because I didn't do this regularly when she was a pup, she's terribly frightened of just about everything, so aside from that I've made a bit of progress but now here's the thing...
Whenever I call Lilo to come to me, she'll obey me when it's outside the house in the yard, but inside she just sits and looks at me. There's this favorite spot she has, the door to the backyard, it has a window which she can look through to inside the house. I never expected her to come in when I called her when I started the training for obvious reasons but now after 3 months worth of training, caring for her properly, playing with her... She doesn't come inside at all. It takes me actually getting down to her level, actually laying down on the floor for her to come up to me when I have a treat in hand but even then she sits there awkwardly looking at me. I pet Lilo as often as I pet Samantha now but whenever I pet Samantha, Lilo runs up towards us to be pet some more.
Samantha also had a bad habit of going into our neighbors trash until we made her a house dog and Lilo would always follow her around. If Samantha crawled through the fence, Lilo would too. If Samantha was in the driveway in the middle of the night, Lilo would be there too. And before the whole training, Lilo would cower in this sort of pit she dug in our backyard, always too shy and now whenever I know she needs to use the bathroom, I call her to come potty but she still awkwardly sits in her doggie basket averting her gaze to the point that I have to pick her up and set her down in the corridor just outside my room so that she goes downstairs to wait for the door to be opened to go do her business outside. Up until 2 weeks ago, I was using a leash to make sure she never leaves my sight while inside but now that I've weened her off the leash, so to speak, I want to get her to follow me on my command.
I realize it's been 3 months of legit training compared to 3 years without for her. I know that I have to be patient but I can't help wondering if she'll ever really get more confident. Does anyone know what I can do get Lilo out of her shell a little more to actually follow my commands when I want her to?
P.S. Sorry for the long post
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/ilrmgc/my_dog_3f_is_extremely_shy_and_dependent_on_her/
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