@xjasonsteelex I read the 3 3 3 rule, but I have to say we’re quite a bit overwhelmed that I forget about them.
To answer your question about her general behavior.
First off, we don’t think she was ever properly taken care of and may well have been one of those COVID dogs where she was adopted at the start of the pandemic then given away as life resumed to normal. When she was dropped at our house, she had a rope for a leash, no bedding, no food, no toys. No judgement of previous owners, but that made things more difficult as we had to discover what she liked, not like, food. To this day, we are not sure about feeding. She won’t eat quality kibbles and barely accepting selective wet food. She will eat raw chicken drums, barely cooked ham, and raw ground beef. We try to sneak mushed veggies and brown rice, but we struggle feeding her (so expensive !!!).
She definitely is not shy or timid - for sure.
She is definitely outgoing too …. BUT
I’ve noticed that she is more careful around men than women - especially if the man is wearing a cap or a hoodie. She will bark at tall men who try to befriend her. She HAS NEVER BARKED EVER in our house since she came.
On the other hand, I don’t know that she is confident.
A couple of weeks ago, during a very pleasant and calm walk (calm, here, means no pulling but fast paced walk
![Grinning face :grinning: 😀](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png)
), we were attacked by 8-10 toy dogs whose irresponsible owners were not holding on to the leashes in a public unfenced park.
No dogs were hurt.
I of course started yelling and the owners came rushing to contain their dogs.
She FREAKED and ran and dragged me. I still held to the long leash and sprained both ankles until I finally stopped her to calm her down and hug her and praise her.
Long story short: Since then, she is erratic any time we go on that street. Sometimes she will be fine but more often than not she tries to get out of her harness and pulls so damn hard that I find myself trying to contain myself so she doesn’t think I am angry at her.
Now does this make her confident? How can I help her regain confidence or build confidence? How can I undo trauma, if that incident traumatized her.