Caw!

Me: because of my abandonment issues and childhood trauma part of me wants to manipulate it so people can't ever leave me. And by "people" I mean you. And by "manipulate" I mean I gave you a singular out and since you didn't take it that means to me that I have successfully trapped you

honestly this dog just reads to me like she has a surprisingly stable base temperament (from what I've seen in the situations we've been in so far,) but hasn't experienced a lot of things before. i think if someone was fostering her who didn't know how to read dogs, they would assume she had a bad history due to how uncertain and hesitant she is about a lot of things that we consider "everyday," but I can see quite clearly it's just a lack of exposure. all of her hesitancy is like "whoa, I don't know, this is a big place with a lot of people and its really wide open (parking lot) I need to spend five minutes standing here taking it all in before I'm ready to move on with you," but most people wouldn't give her that and would make it into a fight. most people would make getting in and out of the car into a fight. this is how poorly socialized dogs become Problem Dogs a lot of the time, I suspect. most people are looking to dominate a dog even if the techniques they are using are coercive rather than based on physical force. and of course there are some things we require our dogs to do or not do in order to live with us in our homes. but that doesn't mean we need to Assert Authority by overriding their autonomy when they don't "do what we want." dogs are like us. if we don't learn that things are safe when we are younger, then we need to have someone hold our hand thru learning that they're safe when we are grown up... like she just needs someone to hold her hand and be like "I understand it's a lot to take in, its ok, I won't rush you or pressure you and if you don't wanna go in then we won't, but it IS a safe place/object/etc and I won't let anything bad happen to you" but that is just mind blowingly rare as a way for people to treat adult dogs who weren't exposed to anything as puppies.

Whoa hang on. I just read your response to the temp worker and I was thinking about if I had anything to add and I realized this: what I’ve had the best success with is adding like, authenticity? To the typical social scrips. Like fully meeting people’s eyes, specifically a warm smile, laughing at the right time, stuff like that. You know, the things I do when I’m specifically masking very hard. I think people might treat autistic people as though they’re doing flattening of other people thing even when we’re not because we can struggle with emoting “properly”