Well since my post awhile back about our breakthrough with Tommy's object fear, he has just continued to make rapid and amazing progress! It seems that that breakthrough just gave him a pure dose of self confidence. For example:
He's always been fearful of jumping down from the bed. I had to coax and encourage and really work at it. He was laying in bed with me and Tasha for awhile one night, sort of an occasional treat for him. I got up and said "ok Tommy, let's go." And he got up and hopped right off... as if he had done it 100 times before with no problem!
He's walking up to new things and checking them out with much more confidence. The other day he walked up to the hated and feared vacuum cleaner and was sniffing it and giving it a good lookover, something he has never done.
Finally, on Valentine's Day evening, we ordered out for pizza. Generally when anyone unfamiliar comes up to the door, he stays in the hallway nervously peering out. When the pizza guy got here, he went to the door with me and stuck his head out, snuffling the pizza delivery man! It was still too much when the guy lifted out the pizza box over his head and he fled then back into the hall, but that was really surprising and a first for him, that he approached a stranger right away and was sniffing him curiously.
It is like somehow something clicked in him, almost overnight, and his confidence is up, and he is daring to do more than he ever has. I'm so thrilled and so very proud of him. It is really hard to describe the feeling of making a breakthrough like that, but it just feels wonderful!
His first owners only had him from age 2 months to age 6 months, but his fears and inhibitions he learned in that time were deeply imprinted and have taken over 2 years of love and patient work to overcome many of them.
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) And of course, there's all of the love and patience showered upon him by his fabulous Mom and Dad! Keep up the good work Tommy!!!
P.S...Even my bold and brash little spitifire Star has her moments. She thinks there's a ghost in the pantry! Every now and then the ghost appears as I'm filling their food bowls! She has been known to suddenly slink away, tail tucked way under, head down to the safety of Daddy's lap and won't go near the door for hours!
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