LwL1 Prelude to Luna

There had been a plan for the family to get a puppy from a breeder in NH’s next litter following when they lost their current dog, Abby. Covid happened and we were all negotiating through daily changes. None of us were tracking GSD breeders or personalizing the news stories about how everyone now had a new puppy in their life. Didn’t seem relevant to us.

Part way into July Abby let everyone know by her demeanor and carriage, that she had fought as long as she could against an autoimmune disease, that it was her time to say goodbye.

Saying goodbye to Abby was too difficult for words to capture. And at that point eyes turned back to the ~*~ The Plan ~*~ to discover that there are no GSD puppies to be found anywhere. It was like getting locked out of your house by surprise. This is a dog family and no break from being that family had been considered. But there we were.

I reached out to an online friend who mentioned that a litter had been born on July 13th in Mass. A sign or not a sign? Hard to say it was not a sign after the loss of such a powerful dog. Clearly phone calls are made and plans are made and crates, snuffle mats, gates, lick pads, kongs are collected in preparation for the day Luna comes home.

The planning included everyone in the family being home for a few days so that there would be a solid understanding that family was the beginning of all good things.

I’m the stage left or stage right player in this story as I’m the sounding board and support staff for questions and conundrums as this puppy grows up. Who knew that fully growing up was not something we would get to see in Luna. In human years she would make it to about 16 or 17 and she would be fabulous and vital and full of her best self and yet still so much yet to come…..

This is the background for Luna’s first few days home. The emotions that the humans waiting to meet her were experiencing in addition to the covid experiences that were the backdrop of everyone life that year.

Welcome Home Luna

The first time I observed her to see what her instincts were as she met her new home and humans. Some way to describe her presentation that morning would have been to say that she was diminished, non reactive or reserved. Not a bouncy puppy that was for sure.

She didn’t have an expression that was visible aside from what could be called neutrality or aloofness. She had located a tennis ball and made that her chosen object. She carried the ball with her and she would lie down, ball in her mouth or placed in front of her. She would be facing the room without making eye contact, Luna and her object.

She had not been home for 24 hours at that point. I assumed she had Puppy Jet Lag and found the Comfort.Object interesting. The trip to new home had been a big deal for her and she needed some time to regroup and to understand how this new place worked.

One thought I had was to resist getting her super engaged in chasing things before she was comfortable in her new environment with her family and friends. She would have plenty of time to learn how to use that brain for action.

Because she wasn’t my puppy I didn’t feel an urgency to connect with her. Also, I didn’t see a clear path for engagement and chose to observe her while commenting ‘leave her possessions to her for now, don’t challenge her ownership’. I often advise ‘don’t pick fights with your puppy’ and since this little one was showing so little my thought was that if she needed to walk around with a thing in her mouth or next to her then she can do that…...and leave that thing alone. My thinking was that if she was fairly inert then a way to get noticed in a negative way, would be to start challenging her ownership of that ball. And the ball could have been anything. She seemed to need the object to have with her. So in a way,,,letting her have that, which we all did, was a kindness because it seemed to soothe her.

A little whisper in my ear from a conversation I’d had with a friend (JR) said ‘she is going to have big feelings about possession’ , from what it looked like to me, as an autopilot response from this puppy who did have a connection to what she was doing. but she was definitely doing something that felt soothing to her. Give and take with strangers would have meant nothing to this little baby. She was stuck and I wanted her to work that out herself without anybody challenging her. How can you be the loving creature who comes in peace if you say hello by removing her object. ‘Proximity of chosen object’ appeared to live largely in Baby Luna so I left it alone.

And here is where the miracle of connection was rapidly changing the heart of a stranger into ‘heart of the family. Luna was beginning to understand that there was safety and goodness in this new place and no un-good actions were directed at her by anyone. I stopped off to visit a few days later and was greeted by a happy buoyant puppy! She was animated and she was showing me her yard and I was tossing some food and she thought that was a super-fun game to play. And then I saw the miracle of time working and changing the thoughts of this puppy nearly in front of me. I baby-skipped backwards as she’d followed me earlier but this time she would be asked to walk toward where her mom was and to then walk away from her mom to me.

I saw her slow her motion when she got close to mom (connecting with favorite-human) and then she didn’t feel secure leaving mom to come ‘all.the.way’ to me. She ran out of steam, eyes still on me she did not feel confident leaving close proximity to her mom. Reading this in real time, I changed what I was doing and went to her where I told her what a good girl she was and then shared with Mom what I’d seen.

Luna taught me to alter my actions to meet what I was hearing from the dog I already had ideas about or activities planned for. Luna's communication was extremely clear for those who could listen.

My take-aways

Where do we see interest, where do we see concern and where do we see concern turn to resistance or avoidance. This teaches us to learn about giving them more time or reframing which increases their trust in their humans

We learn big things about our young dogs when we ease up on forward motion and take the time to hear what their motion is telling us.

How to build a solid life for this little morsel of the future dog she would grow to be? How do we connect this puppy with the world we want her to grow up to be comfortable in? So, a day by day commitment to plan as we needed to plan and teach what skills we thought would help all of us. Thinking of this as a foundation plan I would have said only use good paint and only vibrant, happy colors No patch jobs or sand as we work up the foundation with this puppy who we already love and who we barely know.

I always said of Luna that we were going to teach her to use her powers for good. Tremendous investment of time, energy and lovewas directed at Luna and now she is not here with us….it seems appropriate that her legacy of triumphing over life’s challenges be continued as a narrative of the time we were blessed to have her be part of our lives.

Note: Going through old texts with a friend of mine I found this to describe Luna's beginning and it pretty much sums up how I described Baby Luna's landing:

From her perspective, she was ripped away from the only thing she’s ever known ride to a place where people kept hugging her and the only thing she knew how to do is grab onto something lie down and process all the 'new' with her thing in front of her. So let her do that right?

Otherwise they would’ve been bringing a fight to a 13 pound puppy who is someday going to weigh maybe 85 lbs. pounds. Who does that?