Better Late

Cheers SG, appreciate it! I'll post a thread in general later this arvo for recommendations. Also here is a photo we took of her yesterday, I'm off work due to mental health reasons at the moment and honestly, looking at this photo and just remembering her gentle nature makes me relaxed. She looks so content here. And I'm also sharing because I am in LOVE with her colouring and want to show off a bit haha

Well, the adoption is looking really good from our point of view. We met her today and she was a completely different dog compared to what we saw yesterday in her kennel (shut down, whale eye, body language just said yeah no thanks to all of this). Today in the socialization area she ran around playing chasey with us, splashed around in the clam shell, sat for us when we asked her to, fed off our body langauge and chilled out once we decided play time was over, came to us for pats and was just an all round sweetheart. In the pen next to her there were two SWFs, she didnt bat an eye at them until they started barking their heads off when the handler went out of her pen and into theirs to put them back in the kennel. Once they started yapping it was almost a case of join in the chorus and sing it one and all, but once they had disappeared she was back to her playful self. The only other time she was even interested was when she caught sight of a dog about 30m away going around a corner, it was ears up and whats happening over there? But she made the choice to come back to us. We're taking a bit of time to think about things but at this stage, its a definite yes from both my partner and I. We already have a crate on the way and a longline from K9Pro coming, so the next thing on the list is a behaviourist. Looks like we're bringing her home next week :)

Hankdog, we are in Central Vic. Theres a few to choose from but any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! You're all so right when you say get a behaviourist in, it's already at the top of my list. If she comes home with us I want to give her the best chance possible right off the bat and learn how to help her as best we can. Its all so exciting! Meet and greet is at 12pm today!

I've just read through this entire thread! As I'm a new member (long time lurker) and there's every chance I'll be adopting a (possibly) dog reactive dog in the next week. We're organising a meet and greet in the next few days at the RSPCA shelter, all we know is she is four years old and is 'not too keen' on other dogs. The word is that her previous owners might not have socialised her properly when she was growing up, but she's a sweetheart and isn't doing so well in the shelter environment so we're looking forward to meeting her and, all going well, giving her a second chance :) so I thought I would do some reading first.