Zarabella

This past weekend we have watched a little dog for a friend from church. Her name is Zarabella. This is a picture of our first visit with Zarabella. Dani brought her puppy "Bryson" along to visit too. Zarabella comes up to Dani's knees, so she is a fairly small and easy to manage dog.

Normally Dani is scared of dogs, and she was scared of Zarabella the first time she met her, but has since come to love her and loved visiting her. Zarabella is a fairly shy dog and will not approach Dani on her own, which makes it a lot easier for Dani to love her. She feels more in control with Zarabella than other dogs that come and greet her quickly. While Zarabella's family is out of town, she doesn't like to eat much. In fact, she would only eat if we hand fed her food from the fridge. Food left out does not get touched, no matter what the food is (hot dogs, cheese, peanut butter, mac n cheese etc). Dani's favorite part was feeding Zarabella, so in a way it was nice that she waited for us to get there to eat. Dani would put the hot dog chunk on the floor and say "eat it! eat it! Zarabella, eat it!". She got a kick out of it when Zarabella would take food out of her hand, but her squealing of excitement sometimes scared Zarabella into dropping the food.

Since this weekend, Dani has been much less afraid of dogs in general. She is not one to go up to a dog, but she will not scream if a dog is being held near her or comes within 3 feet of her without touching her.