Trinity's story
Trinity, a black Labrador, was withdrawn from the programme after showing signs of anxiety in new places and cars. With help from her new family, Trinity has started overcoming her fears and is now jumping into the car!
Trinity needed to stop training to be a guide dog when she was just over a year old. She showed a lot of anxiety around car travel. She actively avoided parked cars, and also struggled to settle in new environments.
After trials, we were confident these problems were behavioural rather than medical, so we persisted with training to help Trinity overcome her fears.
After a while, Trinity became more confident with approaching a car. Progress was very slow, however, and we knew it would continue to be that way, so we set about finding her a home with a family who didn’t need to drive her anywhere for a while.
Happily, we found the perfect home for Trinity. Her new family doesn’t need to drive her anywhere to keep her active, and is also continuing to work with her on building a positive association with car travel.
Now, Trinity will jump in the car to go to familiar places as part of a set routine, but still shows stress when going somewhere she doesn’t know.
Thanks to the help of our rehomers, we hope Trinity will eventually get used to all kinds of journeys. Trinity is a sweet-natured dog. She also loves to play with other dogs - and is very happy that her new family recently took another dog from us that is keeping her company.