50 First Dates

Whenever the movie "50 First Dates" is on TV, no matter how far along it is, we watch it. Love Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler together, love the happy ending ... love the movie. (If you're not familiar with it, the idea is that a woman was in a terrible auto accident, and as a result her memory resets to the morning before the accident every day, so when a guy falls in love with her, he has to "meet" her for the first time each day, and she has to fall in love with him again each day. But it's funnier that that.)

Sometimes with Mojo, we feel like we're in our own version of that concept.

Yesterday, it seemed like he was definitely considering a move beyond the kitchen doors. Jay left for a Bible study at around 6:30, so I mosied back to the bedroom where I had my computer set up and was working on a few things. And then I heard an unfamiliar sound: a doggy head shake with flapping ear percussion! Was it possible that Mr. Mojo was out and around?

Almost -- he was standing at the kitchen threshold, nose in the air.

I know, I know ... I should have just let him be and gone back out of view, but I thought maybe if he saw where I was, he would come my way. Nope. But when I checked the kitchen, he was sitting up, he was a little engaged, and so I gave him some loving, sat with him for a while, and talked to him all the way back to where I was working.

When Jay got home, Mojo sat right up, went out for a quick constitutional, and later on, we could hear him wandering around a little more. But he was not yet a dog without borders.

Then, this morning I heard him up and peeked out to see him walking around the kitchen, sniffing at the place where treats are stored, and told Jay maybe he needed to go out. (Jay says it was my way of saying that he needed to get up LOL.)

So he rushed to get dressed, went to greet Mojo, and darned if that beautiful dog wasn't back trembling in his corner. What the ...?

It's as if he has this imprinting in his mind of some evil person who yells "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TO BE MOVING AROUND -- GET BACK IN THAT CORNER AND STAY THERE!"

Once he and Jay went a few laps in the freshly fallen snow (up to Mojo's knees!), he was more relaxed, accepting pets (and treats of course) and back in his comfort zone.

His foster dad, Ben, says the behaviorist explained that Mojo captures each experience as a photograph, and when he collects enough photos of a certain thing, it becomes an accepted fact. For example, that when we come into the kitchen and love on him, he doesn't need to look away or back into the corner because we're just going to keep doing what we always do: give him some pets and rubs and he won't be harmed. We're building up a lot of those photos and building his confidence that he's safe when we come in the kitchen.

BUT, he doesn't have any/many photos of what happens when he wanders around the kitchen and virtually none of what would happen when he comes out. At least, not of what happens in his forever home with us here. So it seems (to me) that he draws on old memories of what happened when he used to do such things, and those must be awful pictures indeed. I wish his memories went no further back than the time he spent with his foster family, and that hed realize it's OK to come out and play.

I guess we just haven't had enough dates yet ... but I know that time will come.