shih tzu visitation

I went to visit Dottie, Candy and Flower, my potential daughters, this morning. Although Dottie follows Barbara around, she doesn’t come to me. Of course, Barbara has been foster mother to this sweet, shy little shih tzu for five months.

I sat in the exercise pen with the three shih tzus for a while, but then decided that Dottie might be distracting the little ones. Barbara took her to another room, and I talked to Candy and Flower. Barbara bought me some of the doggy chicken jerky that they love. Every five minutes or so, I would move a little closer to the shih tzus, huddled at the other end of the pen. Finally, I was close enough to offer them the treat. Flower finally took one, and then another. Candy kept her head behind Flower, but she finally got too curious and tentatively took a piece from my hand.

mixed reactions

The shih tzus had eaten all the chicken jerky in about 10 minutes. Next, I reached over to scratch Candy’s ears. She let me do it for several minutes. However, when I tried to scratch Flower’s ears, she growled and acted like she was going to bite me, so I backed away.

We next went out to their dog run. Dottie stayed at the opposite end of the run. Flower ran back and forth, always stopping a few feet short of where I sat, but Candy convinced herself to come and see if I really had more chicken jerky.

Candy would come near me, grab the food and skitter back, moving especially quickly if I even raised my arm a little. She kept coming back, however, until she had eaten all the jerky. I have to admit that Candy is the reason I keep coming back.

I stayed for about an hour and a half. John and I will be preparing a dog run in the backyard tomorrow, covering the bottom of our wooden fence with chicken wire, so they can’t escape, and putting lattice around the back porch, so they can’t crawl under and out of our reach. I don’t know if we will bring them home Monday or not.