Tuesday, May 15, 2012

My Two Weeks with Monroe - Part II

After we started feeding Monroe, she became a regular nightly visitor. Since she was very nervous around people and our goal was to gain her trust through food. At first, we put the food bowl at the end of our driveway and walked back to the house. Once we got to the house, Monroe would army crawl to the bowl and gobble down the food. If there was any noise she would retreat across the street. Eventually, she would come back to the bowl and eat more.

We repeated this routine each night for a week. Each day her trust of us grew and she got more and more confident going to the food bowl. We were eventually able to put the food down, take two big steps away from the bowl and sit down with her while she ate. The trust building process was definitely slow, but it was clearly working.

Our main goal in feeding Monroe was to gain trust so that we could get her off the streets and in to rescue. Our fantastic pug sitter volunteers for a local rescue group and we had already made arrangements for them to take Monroe as soon as we were able get her. It felt good that Monroe had a bright future, we just needed to put the time in to get her to trust us. The slow process almost killed me because each day we didn't get her was another night she was spending on the streets and another day she was wandering around doing who knows what until we got home from work.

In addition to feeding her, we also just hung out with her in the evenings. We would bring the pugs out and they would play. Monroe would race around the yard and the pugs would follow suit and we would do our best to keep the pugs' leashes untangled. After the pugs tired out, which was way sooner than Monroe, we would do little things around the yard. We laid some mulch, fixed a sprinkler head, watered plants. We did anything we could that was outside so that Monroe could get used to being around us.

We did everything except try to capture her. Straight attempts to capture her were always futile. We saw neighbors run after her and try to lasso her and none of it worked. Monroe was fast and way too smart to fall for any of that.

Our approach was to have her feel like she belonged and have her come to us. While our method was slow going it seemed to be working. Monroe lounged in our driveway while we tinkered in the yard. She followed us to the mailbox when we got the mail. She kept a watchful eye on us at all times, but she was so much more relaxed around us than she was before.

Our plan seemed to be working.