We have had our WestiePoodle, Rufus, for just over a year now. We rescued him from a small apartment where he was being neglected by the couple who had him, who claimed that because they had one or two other dogs, they could not care for him. We have never quite been clear on the kind of conditions he was living in or whether he was physically abused, but he has some mental and emotional problems he has mostly overcome now that he's been living with us for a while. For instance, it took him two months (during which, he nearly passed away due to a botched neutering and complications which followed that) before we heard him bark for the first time, or really make any noise at all. He was also extremely anxious and urinated whenever anyone so much as walked up beside him. Only within the last 6-8 months has he even begun to accept attention from new people without urinating at first contact.
Rufus has made noticeable progress, and continues to do so daily. But he still has some challenging behaviors that I cannot seem to rationalize and help to correct. For one, whenever we leave him, be it a few minutes or hours, whether or not he has gone to the bathroom earlier that day, he pees or poops on the floor of wherever we leave him. Shortly after adopting him, we realized that the place where he could do the least destruction with this behavior is the bathroom, so whenever we both have to go somewhere and cannot bring him with us, we leave him there. He’s small - under 20 pounds - so giving him a bath when we get home if he gets himself dirty is not a problem, and neither is washing the floor after bathing him. But it is a behavior I find troubling, and would like to find the root of and correct.
The other, slightly more upsetting behavior he has is that he is nervous (though not aggressive, just to make perfectly clear) around small children. When we first got him and brought him over to our friend’s house, he was perfectly fine around her two-and-a-half year old son (at the time, he was one-and-a-half). After he got neutered, we brought Rufus back around the baby, and his entire demeanor around him had changed. He did growl or try to bite him, but he seemed much more uneasy around him, and showed us how he felt by trying to move behind the legs of whatever adult was nearest him. Last weekend while I was walking around PetSmart with him, another toddler (this time, one strapped into a stroller) very gently reached to pet him, and he tried to pull away from the child’s touch. He was on his leash, of course, and I picked him up and placed him near the child to try to get him more comfortable with the idea if I had a hand on him, too, but I think now that may have been pushing it. (Just so it’s known, Rufus seems to do better with smaller children if he is around them more - I worked with a seven year old boy through the childcare agency I work for, and got it approved with the father to bring Rufus to their home when I was scheduled to work with the boy all day. I brought Rufus over to his house two times in a five day period, and by the end of the first day, Rufus had proven that he can coexist perfectly well with children if I am right there with him through the whole experience.)
Neither of these behavior problems are ones that would persuade us to give Rufus away again - the way we see it, he has probably been given up on many times in his short life, and we want to prove him wrong about whatever doubts he may still carry about people. But we would like to have a family one day together, and be able to bring him over to the houses of our friends who have young children, without worrying that he will be uncomfortable and possibly lash out against someone who is not so keen to his triggers. If any of you have any advice, we would really appreciate having it.