DescriptionThis is Bella. She is a 1.5 years old spayed cross bread (probably with American bulldog or staffy in her).
We rehomed Bella in June 2023 and she is such a good and loving dog. She doesn’t realise her size and would quite like to be a lap dog. Bella is fun, playful, cuddly and very clumsy. Bella is friendly with children and dogs, but we would rather not rehome her with a small child due to her being clueless of her size. We would ideally like to rehome her with very secure dogs or on her own, as she is very empathetic and feeds off the emotions of both dogs and people. We don’t think she could live with a cat as she finds them very exciting.
She also has some food aggression around other dogs so we feed her and our other dog separately.
Bella is over-excited by her lead and the idea of walks. After rehoming her we realised we weren’t told everything about Bella and that she probably hadn’t been walked for a long time before we got her, so she wasn’t used to it and found the outside world very exciting. Unfortunately to add to this, 2 days after our dogs were spayed we were charged by an aggressive dog and chased into our house. Bella has been wary of walks ever since. We are working on this with a professional Dog Behaviourist and she is slowly improving.
We live close to fields and lovely places to walk, but we do not have enough garden space for her to happily roam outside and burn off lots of energy before a walk. So getting her adequate exercise currently means paying for a secure dog park which is a car ride away. Due to not having being properly walked for a while because of her aversion, Bella’s recall needs alot of work. This is starting to improve with the use of a dog whistle at the dog park.
Bella jumps up in excitement whilst walking, mouthing the lead. This is also improving with training. Bella was never exposed to cars as a puppy so needs crating in the car.
Both the Behaviourist and we think that Bella was under-socialised as a puppy and left in a crate a lot, so she didn’t get used to the outside world.
Bella is very smart and food motivated so training needs to be consistent and engaging, but she learns very quickly.
Bella will need a home ideally with a lot of outdoor space and one or two very dog savvy people who are willing to put in time and effort to help this anxious overgrown puppy become the amazing companion dog we know she can be.