Ella is extremely affectionate and loving. All she seems to want is belly rubs, scratches behind the ears and to give kisses. She really responds to both treats and affection as a method of training. She is very gentle in taking treats by hand. One thing we noticed about her is that sometimes when we are firm in tone with her when reprimanding, she reacts by being very scared and cowers as if she is bracing herself. We’re not sure if that means she was possibly struck in the past. She does come over to you after you are firm with her with a “NO or DROP IT” and comes to make up with you. She loves her humans.
She can be both food and toy aggressive with people. Most of the time she is great with toys, playing fetch and bringing the toy to you to play with her. However, sometimes she can be growly. It’s the same with food. Many times she will growl when you come close to her food while she is eating - fearing you will take it from her.
When Ella first came to us she was growly in many more instances. It seemed that for most things she did not like (going inside the crate for the night, having the stitches from her spay checked, etc) she would give a low growl and then show teeth. After gaining her trust we have brought that down to a minimum with her only growling at the above situations. Her progress has been on going.
Ella also gets nervous around some women. This manifests itself with growling. However when reprimanded, she responds immediately and then behaves. We’ve observed that with confident women she is not like this - she in fact will be loving. A woman who displays uncertainty, fear or is not firm with her will get back a grrrr. She should be with people experienced with dogs.
She is a moderate energy dog with 2 walks and a decent amount of playtime enough to keep her happy and tired at night to go to ed. She eats well, sleeps well, is now crate (meaning she will go into the crate without incident) & leash trained (does well with a harness, not as well with a collar), UTD on shots and negative on heartworm test.
Posted on July 20th, 2007 by zennia
Filed under: Ella
She certainly is cute and she obviously needs some understanding… but I do think from the sounds of it that she’s totally workable. The fact that the growly incidents have diminished are very good. I suspect she was not treated well by the woman in her first home… what people do to screw up dogs… GRR!
Is Ella still up for adoption?
Thanks for your inquiry on Ella! She will be available for adoption soon. She’s a wonderful, very special girl! If you’re interested in adopting her, please fill out our adoption application!