An opportunity to replace Sarah came up remarkably fast. Esma recently came up for adoption, so last Thursday Kelli and I traveled to Bloomington IL to pick her up. Her owner has had some big changes in her life and needed to find Esma a new home. So here we are with Kangal Dog number 4. Of course Arie and Sarah have since past. So we only have two Kangal's as of this writing.
Esma set up in the back of our old Suburban |
Jennifer and her daughter who we got her from coaxed Esma up into our Suburban. It's a stressful transition for many dogs to be rehomed and I think especially so for Esma because she is quite wary of strangers.
When we stopped for gas on the ride back to Wisconsin we saw that Esma had found herself a hole to lay/hide in.
Esma had her head buried in the corner of her hole as seen from the open rear passenger door at the gas station. This is where she stayed almost the entire 6 hour drive home. Every time I checked on her this is what I found.
We decided to keep Esma in the house at least until she warms up to us. We may or may not be keeping her as a house dog. We no longer have any house dogs so have been thinking about getting one so it is a possibility she will wwind up in the house. However right now the main reason for keeping her in the house is that if for some reason she escaped an enclosure she would never come to us, I feel it is critical that she learn to trust us, as she is vary wary of strangers. And we are total strangers to her, even 3 days later.
The first thing I did was take Esma out in the back yard so she could relieve herself after the long ride. I kept her on the lease because I had no idea if she would attempt an escape or not.
I always remember the story about one of our rural neighbors who got himself an Irish Setter, he had to drive a ways to get the dog and as soon as they got home he opened the door on his truck to let it out and it took off and he never saw the dog again! That would be a horrible feeling! And I never want to ever experience something like that.
We did have something like that happen many years ago, we had bought our young daughter a baby Shetland pony and it was just being weaned from it's mother. We only had it for a matter of hours and it crawled under the fence and escaped! We searched until dark then gave up till morning and a neighbor over 1/4 mile away had found it grazing in his yard and wondered if it might be ours. We got him back so it ended well.
Esma got herself a good drink of water that was in our grand kids toy. |
Just before we got her apparently Esma was on the run for around 5 days and she got quite thin, so for the past 3 days I've been trying to get her to eat plenty, but she is very mistrustful.
I am wondering if people tried to bait her with food in order to catch her and perhaps failed in catching her a number of times since she is SO mistrustful. So wary of even being given food, very jumpy and bolts away over the slightest thing. And she won't eat out of a dog bowl. It's a metal dog bowl, she will drink water out of a metal dog bowl but simply will not eat out of one. I plan to get a plastic bowl to see how that works.
She's been on a raw food diet so I am attempting to mix dry dog food in with the raw stuff that Jennifer gave us. Yesterday while out in the back yard I laid on the ground and took small hand fulls of the food and tossed it next to her on some concrete. She would eat the little bits like that until finally she had the whole thing eaten. Then later for another meal I tried putting it on a paper plate out side and she ate it off of the paper plate. And I got her to eat out of my hand later yet.
Today I fed her on a paper plate outside and she ate it that way. She may or may not eat chicken organ meat that we dried ourselves. Usually she will but only if I toss it on the floor or ground in front of her. Fattening her up is going to be a challenge.
Tonight she barked for the first time. I was beginning to think she wasn't territorial at all, but she is starting to feel secure enough to bark. She barked on to separate occasions.
Overall I like her personality. She is total opposite of Lokum. I don't think they could be anymore not alike in temperament. Lokum is bold and unafraid of anything or anyone. And Esma is very wary of people.
I took her out to see the sheep today and she was very interested in them and gave a slight wag of her tail when she saw them. Her and Lokum saw each other to, separated by 2 fences. She was definitely interested in him and he barked and whined at her. I almost think Lokum thought she was Sarah because he was always happy to see her and would whine, he behaved in a similar manner with Esma.
Esma and Lokum have history, as they both came from the same farm. Jennifer owned Lokum as well and he sired pups via Esma. I am eager to see how they do with each other after having been apart for a couple years, however I am not in a hurry, I have patience when it comes to these things.
Will they remember each other?
Lokum |
