Penny at 14 weeks

We must be doing something right because sweet Penelope has doubled her weight in the last 6 weeks that we've had her. But it is easy for me to think that I am doing a lot wrong in puppy parenthood. Mostly, I am completely lost on how to communicate with my feral-born puppy. It seems that when I try to make her comfortable, she thinks that I am going to hurt her. When I try to give her a treat she thinks it's a trap. When I want to pet her and give her love, she runs away with her tail between her legs. Is this the additional challenge that comes with adopting a dog that was born to feral desert parents? That is the most logical explanation that I can come up with.

I try to get into her head and understand her even though I am not a dog and obviously do no think like a dog. But I do it anyway. So here she is - born to feral parents, under a log in the middle of the desert. It would have been during the late monsoon rains we got out here. So it was warm and moist and she lived for awhile with her mom and litter mates under a log or more likely a large creosote. And then comes along these two-legged giants that scare her mother away and take her and her littermates to a new place with other dogs, cages, weird food, weird smells and no mother. They find her mother and bring her in a couple of days later. She and her littermates are hungry, traumatized and thus associate the two-legged giants with these negative feelings. Then they spend the next several weeks watching their mother interact with humans. And from what I have heard, her mother would shy away or snip at any human that approached her. So this is how Penny learned to interact with humans.

When I think about it this way, which dog psychologists would probably tell me is completely off, I understand why I still evoke fear in my sweet pup. And I know I need to be patient but sometimes it is so hard because all I want to do is love her and feed her and train her and make her comfortable and yet she often responds with fear to these attempts. Fascinating to watch my own emotions fluctuate, my frustration arise... and then I remember. I am not a dog. I am a human. It may take a whole lifetime of learning how to communicate with her. But I have to be patient.