The More that I Think About this the Less Confident I Feel About Parenting

I got my sweet dog from a shepherd rescue in 2000 when she was about 14 months old. Initially she was scared of everything. The first night she lived with me she hid in my closet when I went to bed and came out at 3am when she was certain that I was asleep. I let her get in my bed and things have improved since then. We spent quite some time figuring out what things she was afraid of, as a result of the abuse she experienced during the first year of life. She was afraid of so many things and seemed to constantly worry that someone would hit her. Now, 9 years later, I could hold a bat over her head and she would not flinch.

Dogs are not like people they don't remember bad times in their life and worry about them reoccurring, but I guess there is a flight response that never leaves them once they've learned it. Today I was walking down the basement stairs holding five empty soda cans and a dish of her food. She went all the way down the steps and then came back up to circle me, because she was excited to eat her food. When she circled me I reflexively reached for the railing and dropped her food and the five cans down the steps. The noise and falling objects scared her and she ran down the steps while the aluminum cans followed her making a ton of noise. I am sure that as far as she was concerned she was under fire. She was so scared that she peed on the floor. She hasn't done that since the month I brought her home. I feel so terrible.

She didn't even look at me when I left for the day. She did recover enough to eat her dog food.