Comments and suggestions needed, please!
It seems that Lacey is having trouble integrating into her family. She is refusing to eat – she only eats a few kibbles and then she wants to play with her human – and she is misbehaving quite a lot. This past weekend, she got into and ate half a box of chocolate, half of a chocolate-milk carton, and she tried to eat some of her human child’s toys. She tried to take food from her human child, and she tried to take food from the table. She is also not listening well to either of her adult humans.
We do not have these issues when Lacey is with us. But when she is with her forever family, she misbehaves and she gives little to no respect to any of them. She is making the decisions about when she will eat, how she will eat, when she will play, how she will play, and so on. Interestingly, when she is alone with her human mom, she does much better on all fronts. It’s only when she is with the whole family that she starts to act out.
On Sunday, the family had some friends over for supper. Lacey behaved very well and listened well when the guests asked her to lay down or sit. This shows that she can and will be respectful to other humans. But her family? Not so much. All Lacey seems to want to do is be with her human child – to the exclusion of literally everything else.
Lacey’s human mom feels that it’s best for Lacey to be with me during the day not only for training purposes, but for socialization, too. She also feels that Lacey’s human dad needs more time to learn how to be calm instead of frustrated when Lacey is misbehaving. I feel that Lacey needs to spend more time with her family so that she and they can bond with each other and create mutual respect and trust. Which, in turn, will create a calmer environment for both Lacey and her family.
It has been suggested to me that Lacey’s misbehavior and refusal to eat is happening because she sees us as her pack and she is missing us when she’s with her family. Is this the case? If so, how do we address this in a way that will make her integration with her forever family easier? Comments and suggestions are greatly needed, please. This is a serious problem that has to be resolved…