Changing Perceptions: Being Fair to Langley

In May it will be the one year anniversary of Langley coming into foster care and it has been a tumultuous but highly education journey for both of us. This post has a lot to do with the Labels and Perception post that I did about a week ago, but it's specific to Langley and my perceptions of him.

The quintessential Langley: total and complete goofball

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the topic of perception and how it affects my interactions with both my personal dogs and my fosters. It is so easy to lock onto one's perception of another person/dog/situation as the absolute truth but each individual's perceptions are based on the experiences they've had. Those "truths" that seem so absolute are actually continually morphing and evolving over time as we add experiences to our lives.

Early on in fostering him, Langley had a pretty severe compulsive binge that I had no idea how to handle. I was a mess, he was a mess, and the rest of the household was a mess from having to live with the two of us. Remember this post? Blood, Shit, Tears and a Garbage Strike  That was definitely a low point.

Chewing is a great way for dogs to calm their nerves. Langleygives bully sticks a 4 paws up vote of approval

But Langley and I both have come a hell of a long way since that post and he is not even close to the dog he was back then. In fact, today something happened that really let me know that I needed an attitude adjustment where poor Langley was concerned.

Langley had been having some unstructured time lounging in the living room while I worked on the laptop in the room with him. I was completely absorbed and lost track of time. Suddenly, I realized I was late to pick up my husband from a class he was teaching so I grabbed my keys and purse and ran for the stairs. I was almost out the garage door when I realized that I had completely forgotten that Langley was loose in the living room. 

Now there was a time when Langley being loose in the house meant that I needed to be on high alert watching for signs of him approaching threshold or him getting locked into a compulsion or getting interested in pulling the books off the bottom shelf of the bookcase to check where the cord that ran behind it went. Langley "free time" meant Janell "hyperalert time."

Langley and Neah got along wonderfully because they both have a deep love of rough housing.

That's no longer the case. While he still needs some initial watching when he first gets unstructured time, after a few minutes he finds a toy and will keep himself busy, even occasionally relaxing and napping on the sofa. Don't get me wrong, we still have to manage his anxiety, but this is a dog who at one point could barely sleep he was so anxious. Now he enjoys the occasional bout of lounging.

But my perception of Langley is still that hyper-compulsive, nearly manic ball of anxiety. While I know that he's no longer the master of disaster, I always fall back to that exasperated mindset of working with a difficult dog. Today though I realized I'm really doing the Langster a disservice because my perception of him is not in tune with who he is today.

Everyone goes through their rough patches and if we are lucky we grow and change. Langley has definitely grown and changed over the past 6 months and now it is time for me to do some work on myself and try to evolve my perception of Langley to be closer to who he is today. Because the reality is that he is the best trained dog in my house. Sure he's energetic and has no clue where his body is in space. but he adapts to change much more quickly than in the past and he really is pretty close to "normal", whatever that really happens to be.

Practicing some impulse control exercises with a bison stuffed pickle pocket

So I'll continue my soul searching while Langley continues to be the lovely dog that he is and hopefully my perceptions will come more in line with how spectacularly brilliant and loving he truly is.