Wally's info:

Sex: Male
Age: 3 years old
Size: Medium / Large
Breed: Crossbreed

Bio:

Introducing... Wally!

About Wally:

Wally was originally saved from a Romanian kill shelter via another charity and he was lucky enought to land himself a home here in the UK.

Sadly, just as a home was confirmed for him, a travel ban was put in to place meaning that this poor boy had to wait in the kill shelter for an extra year. This turned out to be detromental for him and his trust of people.

The time came when he was finally able to travel to the UK to begin his new life, however, it quickly became very clear just how much he had suffered at the hands of humans during his extra time in the Romanian kill shelter.

This poor boy is now scared of his own shadow. Any sudden movements or any little noises and he jumps out of his skin. After 7 months in the home here in the UK, Wally was just as terrified of the adopter as he was on the day that he arrived.

The adopter decided that was no longer fair on Wally and made the decision to return him to rescue which is where we stepped in to help.

From arriving at Oakwood Dog Rescue, Wally straight away showed so much potentail. He was having a sniff around, taking hot dogs that were thrown towards him and was drawn towards the other dogs immediately, they made him feel at ease.

Like most of our dogs, Wally is much more fearful around men however, we have been working on this and Wally has made great improvemtents with our male staff member / volunteers so far. It will just take a little extra time and patience. Wally has been through so much in his short life, we can't even begin to imagine the things that he has seen and gone through himself.

Wally is very food motivated which is helping him with his trust issues, and he has recently started coming towards us and reaching out for us to give him little strokes which is such a huge step forward from him.

It will take a lot of time and patience in a home for Wally to feel safe but he really does have so much potential to be an amazing pet, he's just had an extremely traumatic start to life.

Wally will be a project dog for sure however, being in a quiet and understanding home will make all the difference for him.

With other dogs:

Unfortunately, Wally has recently shown signs of food guarding, and a couple of times we have seen him bed guarding too. This is only from other dogs - not people. Although it is completely understandable why he is doing this, we believe this would cause many issues in a home so we can only adopt him to a home with no other pets.

Although Wally can not be rehomed with another dog, we do believe he could have doggy friends once he has settled in.

He has made many dog friends whilst being in the rescue but is mainly drawn towards the male dogs. He seems to take comfort and reassurace from them. He can be prickly on first mixes due to his nerves, but once he knows the dog, he absolutely thrives and becomes like a giddy little pup.

With cats:

Wally is not able to be safely cat tested so is unable to live with cats

Energy level

Wally is still a very scared boy and so it is difficult to assess his full energy levels. At present, we could assess him as having moderate energy levels

4-5 hrs

Wally could be built up to being left alone for 4-5 hours

Lead trained

Wally is a long way off from being lead trained. He is currently too scared to have a collar and lead attached and so this will take some time to build up to once he is comfortable being handled