22/05/2021
She isn't quite ready yet but it's about time to start talking about looking for Ruby's forever home.
Ruby's Best Side:
✅ Absolute cuddle monster. Perfect for people that love velcro dogs that want to spend most of their time as close to them as possible.
✅ She is bright as a button. Whilst she is by no means biddable in the way of a shepherd, collie or retriever, she IS trainable and far from stupid.
She is getting better at learning, especially now that she can think like a dog that understands training as a concept
✅ Food is life. She will work for her dinner more than willingly. So every meal is a training opportunity.
✅ Crate trained. Sleeps soundly through the night.
✅ Impeccably house trained.
✅ Has been trained to walk politely on lead, kennel up on cue, wait at thresholds/doorways/before charging out of her crate door, sit, down, has a pretty good foundation in recall work, is learning to heel (more formal than just a loose lead), go to her bed.
✅ Has proven that she IS capable of integrating with other dogs.
✅ Is constantly improving every week. This is a dog you train to do all sort of fun things with this if you're looking for more than a house pet.
✅ Is SO much fun! She has the best personality and really has been a joy to have here.
✅ Relatively low energy (just enough drive to make her fun to train though). Happy to chill. Especially if cuddles are involved.
Ruby's More Complicated Side:
☑ Rather neophobic - new things unsettle her. New Home will need to be patient and considerate of this.
☑ Nervous of strangers but has improved enormously and warms up to them much faster and with much less barking in the house and with no barking at all out of the house now.
☑ Strange Dog Reactive. She is muzzle trained now and I highly recommend she wear one for all new dog introductions. She needs continued work on her socialisation skills and given that her breed has a known genetic propensity towards being unhappy around strange dogs, the chances are that she will never be a true social butterfly. She is already FAR less reactive than she was though and this is something that you will need to be prepared to continue working on.
☑ Fairly minor resource guarding of high value chews and food from other dogs.
☑She is a bit of a bull in a china shop. I'd be very unlikely to rehome her to a family with small children.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
💜 Experienced dog owners with GENUINE experience living and working with reactive dogs.
💜 Would prefer someone Shar pei experienced but this isn't the be all and end all.
💜 No sound children. She is a small, dog shapes wrecking ball of chaos at times and could easily send a toddler flying by accident. There is also that mild resource guarding to consider.
💜 Will be able to continue her training and will give her mental and physical stimulation.
💜 Will be prepared to return Ruby to us should anything go wrong. She is NOT to winter the shelter system.
