Petal knows how to heel?

First, a quick note about Zuzu: She is on her fourth day of Prozac. We were unable (and unwilling) to capture her on the day she was supposed to go to the vet, so the vet made the decision to try Prozac.

Although Petal is still fearful, and has never sought human contact during the three and a half months since we adopted her and Zuzu, I'm pretty sure someone taught her to heel. I imagine they used one of the more barbaric training collars, or at least a lot of yanking and yelling. I’ll never know, of course, but here’s what I'm seeing:

If we take her outside and close the door to her room (i.e., the glass door between the sunroom and the back yard) and close the curtains so she can’t see inside, Petal will still spend most of her time going to the door and trying to look through the curtains.

If I’m standing way out in the yard, facing the door, she will check the door and curtains for a few minutes, then run out to the yard and stand behind me, where I can’t see her. I think this is her telling me she’s ready for me to open the door. I always talk to her, but if I don’t move when she’s standing behind me, she will eventually run back to the door and repeat the process.

But…if she runs to me and stands behind me, and then I take a step toward the house, she will move to my left side and stop. I take another step and she moves up to stay by my left side. I move one or two more steps, and stop, and she’s still right there next to me. She gets a little excited because she’s getting the result she wants, but if she moves a little ahead of me in her excitement, she turns around immediately and moves back to my side. She does this all on her own, although I praise her throughout.

She shadows me like this all the way to the house, and I open the door so she can get back to her chair. I will never want to betray her expectations (or confuse her) during these little excursions.

These dogs are teaching us a lot about the depths of fear, but they also continue to amaze us with their intelligence.