7. Two months

I can´t believe how fast time has flown by. First the most important news of all, Lorni and I took the plunge and officially adopted Lima a couple of weeks ago. We met with Shona from APROP at their vets in the town of Ondara, we took Willow with us as well and both of them threw up in the car, Ondara  is not too far from here, where we picked up the documents and had everything changed over to us.

Lima and Willow

So over the last month what has been happening with Lima?, apart from now officially being part of our family she now goes on walks without the escape-proof harness, although it was useful I know Lima hates it. Her bond with Willow has solidified into a great friendship which we are both happy to see.

Lima is still very wary of men and yes that does still include myself, but that nervousness is now not as bad as it used to be, she is still frightened of strangers but we are working on that, and last week while walking the two of them I saw her tail wag for the first time since she arrived.

                                                                     Harness free

Lima now knows what time her walks are and she lets me know if I am late. She enjoys her walks more when Willow is with us and she will play with Willow when we are out together, next I would love to get her to play with a toy of some description something I could get her to chase when we are out. We know that all this will take time...a lot of time. Now Lima has all the time she wants.

6. The fifth week

This week has been a bit of a dead loss not because of Lima but I have been rather ill and the weather hasn't been that good we have had a storm or two and a lot of rain. What I will say is, I have no idea how bad or good Lima has been treated in the past but! she is still so terrified of certain situations that it actually  upsets me to see it. I have said it before this is going to take more than a few weeks to hopefully sort out.

So Lima now will happily trot up to bed in the evening without much prompting she is now eating in my little downstairs office instead of on the sofa and she doesn't complain about it but wants out as soon as she has finished eating.

She does love to curl up with our other dog Willow which is good for her confidence it helps her feel safe and she has met with a couple of other dogs without too much stress or mishap which is also good

Lima really enjoys being on a walk with Willow she seems to be a bit more confident less scared! than when she is on her own. I do try to take her out on her own at least once a day in the hope that she will get used to me and stop  being so scared of me.

It is going to be a long Spring and Summer this year and no we are never going to give up on this dog I am now going to update this blog once a month instead of weekly as the improvements in Lima will now slow down a bit.

5. The fourth week

This week has been very interesting for more than a few reasons, lets start with the walks, I have found that when I take Lima out on her own she behaves so differently than when we go with Willow. She is far quieter, walks alongside me without pulling so much and she doesn't bark at cats and cyclists so much. For the last couple of day Lima has gone up to bed and come down again int he morning on her own with very little encouragement. 

When its time to go out for a walk she lets me know when, it would appear that she has gotten so in tune with my routine she knows it better than myself already., I have started feeding her more in my little office just to get her used to not being on the sofa for so long although I do know she has decided for now that the sofa is her safe place.

She really does enjoy the time I spend with her on the long lead where she can go a little further away from me and explore a bit especially where the rabbits are. There is still a lot to do with Lima and I know it want be a short journey but it will be great and she is starting to let her personality show through already and every day there are small improvements..

4. The third week

Sometimes with dogs and in fact life in general you take one step forward and then two back, this has happened with Lima on a number of occasions now. For example I have tried to get her to eat her meals in my room, when I say my room I have a small office downstairs, I am trying to get Lima to have a bit more confidence in her surroundings and to stop feeding her while she is sat on the sofa, This went well for a couple of days then...she dug her feet in and wouldn't enter my room. After a walk she used to get very nervous about me being close enough to take her harness off, after a two weeks she got better about it then...she went back to being nervous.

The one thing I have learned over the years with all the dogs we have  homed is that Patience is something that is dearly required, even more so with Lima as she is by far the most nervous dog I have ever come across, but we are getting there slowly. And I have nothing but time to help with this beautiful pup.

On the upside, she is more confident on the lead when we go on walks, she has stopped shaking when we pet her, and she has asked to go out a couple of time rather than just waiting to be taken out on our regular walks. And with very little encouragement she will go upstairs on her own to bed if the lights are on, it does seem she has a slight fear of the dark.

3. The second week

Now this week things started to improve dramatically first off all she now snuggled up with Willow and on the morning walks she has started to play with Willow.

Lima and Willow

This was a great start and just what I wanted to see. Walking with Lima got better but she still didn't want to get too close and would pull back on her lead if I tried to get too close to her, but she learnt our routine very quickly and even knew which way to go after a few days. I then moved her food and water bowl into my downstairs office but I had to encourage her to go into my room I just wanted her to feel safe about entering a different room and to get her to eat away from the sofa, we are still working on this one.

At night we put her pink mattress on top of another bed at the foot of our bed but we still had to either carry her upstairs or put her lead on and encourage her upstairs it was the same routine to get her down again in the mornings. How ever one night she decided that she wanted to share our bed along with Willow. Willow gets under the covers but Lima sleeps on top. This makes getting into bed an interesting time.

During this second week I found out that she does like to run even though I am not that good at it. We also tried to introduce her to the owner of our local shop, the same shop where Harry used to get some ham from the owner that came form the meat counter/ This proved to be too traumatic for her a bit too soon, So going to put that on the back burner for a little while

2. The first week

We found out that we were the fourth family to home Lima this year, so we know it was going to take some time for Lima to settle in. Our first worry ended up as a non starter, that was would Lima and Willow get on. They certainly didn't fight or get aggressive with each other which was a great start. Lima would not allow herself to get close to either of us and had to be carried into our house, She does seem to have a fear of entering through doors or gates, she has probably been trapped in the past bless her little white socks.

She arrived with an escape proof harness her soft toy and her pink mattress, but she soon found her safe place on one of the sofas, from which she didn't really want to move. In fact we had to bring her food and water bowl to her on the sofa.

My plan was to just let her de-compress and to let her be. I also wanted her to get used to a routine and that was to take her out in the morning with Willow for a 3 or 4 km walk, Then a quick shorter walk midday and then another longer 3 km walk in the evening and a quick wee trip before bed. This wasn't easy to start with as she was still so scared and pulled away all the time on the lead. we were going to need an awful lot of patience.

1. Lima arrives

We were in the second week of December 2025, it had just started to get a little colder here in this part of Spain, by that I meant here in Palma De Gandia a small working village just outside the city of Gandia which is in the Safor region of Valencia halfway between Valencia city and Benidorm. My wife and I came to Spain at Christmas 2018 we brought with us Our Wonderful 7 Year old Black and White lurcher call Harry.

Harry

He was a cross between a border collie and a greyhound we had Harry from when he was a few weeks old. He was my constant companion and dare I say it, my friend. Not long after we arrived We noticed that Harry had become depressed and very quiet he was lonely, so we decided to get him a companion We adopted a young Galgo girl called Willow And it changed Harry's life.

Harry and Willow

Back to this fateful December morning, Harry had not been too well recently he was approaching his 15th birthday, he jumped up on the bed and I thought he'd fallen down but he hadn't, he had collapsed. He couldn't move his back end or stand up he was terrified of what was happening to him. We took him to the vets where unfortunately we had to make that one decision that all pet owners are terrified of. We came home from the vets without Harry. I was absolutely heartbroken as was Willow, My wife pointed out to me that Willow had started curling up at one end of the settee making herself very small and looking very very despondent. We agreed that if Willow didn't perk up after Christmas we would look for a companion for her as she is now the same age as Harry was when we first arrived here in Spain. Just after a week later I was in front of my computer was browsing through Facebook when a notification came up with a picture of a Podenco girl and a message stating that a foster home was urgently required for her by the end of the week. The strange thing was, at the time I wasn't even subscribed to that particular rescue page, which was the Facebook page of " Friends of APROP" but I do believe in fate and sometimes things are just meant to be. I showed Lorni my wife the page I wrote down the telephone number and told her to give them a ring. a Day Later Lorni went to see Lima in her then current foster home, She phoned me and said we've got to help this dog. The following Saturday the 20th of December Lima was brought to us in the back of a car, and thus started a new chapter not only in Lima's life but ours also.

Lima 

Lima was terrified of everything, she couldn't even look at us directly without shaking, She had to be carried into the house. our hearts melted We had to help this dog, Willow has been really really good with Lima, she has been just like a big sister should and I am very proud of her.

 

In one year Lima had been in four different homes, one family that had adopted her had returned her to the kennels stating that there had been no improvement in her behavior she had been in two other foster homes and now she was with us. We both knew that Lima was never going to be re-homed again, in a short space of time had already helped both Lorni and I along with Willow to heal from the loss of our Harry, not completely of course but Lima gave us something else to concentrate on..... so it begins!!!