"Max’s human mom, Marica, got in touch with me because she loves her dogs enormously and wishes for them to be happy. Marica has a very loving heart and believes in adopting dogs. However, that sometimes means that the dogs have some issues from their past. Marica is not someone who gives up on a dog, though, even if their issues seem almost insurmountable.

Max, the handsome gentleman with the green bow tie, tended to be distrustful of humans, even someone as loving and caring as his mom, Marica. He was also a nervous little dog. Relaxing while eating posed major challenges for Max. He would keep a distance from the food bowl, then dart in and quickly snatch something to eat. It upset Marica when she saw that Max struggled to relax and be happy.

When Marica got home from work, Max would dance around her and wag the little stump of his tail with great abandon, but she couldn’t touch him or pick him up. “I always had to bribe him with something tasty to get him to allow me to touch him,” Marica says. "He made sure that he kept a safe distance from people, no matter how loving they were towards him."

Because she wanted Max to be happier and to have a closer relationship with him, Marica asked me to have a conversation with him.

“After the chat, he changed completely,” says Marica. “Now, he comes to me immediately to be picked up, even in the excitement of my arrival at home.”

It is as if he trusts me more and loves me more. He also plays much more with the other dogs. It looks to me as if he doesn’t have so much to worry about any more.”

Max and strangers

Max didn’t like strangers at all. The hot water tank burst and Marica was deeply worried about how Max would react to the team of workers who needed to come and fix it, because she was unable to be at home at the time. “Usually, Max would have been scared, depressed and unhappy for weeks after such an experience…"

However, Max made a brilliant plan to help himself feel safe: Marica says: "He climbed onto the seesaw. This put him at a higher level than the work team so that he could ‘oversee’ their work from a high point. When I got home, he was as happy as can be.”

This story was particularly funny, because, during my communication session with Max, he sang a song to me: “I am on top of the world, looking down on creation…” (Our chat was before the episode with the hot water tank – so it seems Max found the courage to implement his desire for heights after our chat.) 😂

“His eating habits have also changed. Now, he stands quietly at his bowl and finishes his food before he goes and cleans his mouth on the lawn,” says Marica. (See, I told you he is a gentleman!)

Max used to be quite scared of the tunnels at agility training. That problem is now a thing of the past. His obedience at agility training has also improved a lot.

Marica tells a funny story about Max’s new confidence at agility: “We were doing an exercise where we had to collect 10 different objects in a particular order. I forgot about one of the objects and called him to another. It seems that Max knew the order better than I did, because he ran off, collected the correct object and then ran back to me. Everybody found that extremely funny!"

"Max went on to do three clear rounds in two competitions. He went from a doggie who was scared of agility (and a lot of other things) to a happy, confident boy who now loves his life and agility training." 💜

Marica Oosthuizen