Blossom

Blossom first came to our rescue in April of 2023 and we are happy to announce that as of this month, she has officially been adopted! She was just shy of celebrating her third year with our rescue. In those almost three years, she has truly “blossomed”, and it is thanks to a hugely dedicated team and community. We want to share her story and how it has helped us grow as a rescue. Here is Blossom’s story as told from some of her incredible team of supporters and caretakers:

Blossom’s profile picture at the shelter in Tennessee

In 2023, Blossom found herself in a very busy shelter in Tennessee. They named her Blossom because she was found on the street near Blossom Lane. While in the shelter, she was struggling with high amounts of kennel stress and was marked “at risk.” This meant she could be considered for euthanasia if her kennel stress continued to get worse.

Another Tennessee rescue pulled her. They worked with our partner rescue, Hearts of Steele, and with a dedicated foster, she was on her way to Wisconsin.

Upon arrival in her foster home, it quickly became clear it wasn’t a great match for Blossom. Here is what her first foster had to say:

Blossom arrived in the spring of 2023. Her first foster home had 2 dogs. One was a girl and thought she was the Queen of the Castle. Blossom also wanted to be Queen of the Castle. With a lot of shuffling of this dog goes here and this dog goes there, the foster humans tried their best to make the castle comfortable for both of the Queens. During the many months at this foster home, Blossom had several Meet and Greets, but those families were not a good fit. Our gal Blossom started training at the rescue with Mandi from Lucky 7. Blossom and her foster mom worked really hard on walking on a leash without having to say a hardy hello to everyone she passed. Almost a year went by with Blossom not living her best Queen life. It was time for her to move to a new foster home where her big personality could be the center of attention. -Leanne H.

Blossom wearing her signature smile.

Needless to say, we were on the hunt for a unique foster, one that could give Blossom the space and time she needed. We were thrilled when she found herself with an amazing foster that didn’t have any other pets. This foster home helped us realize what some of her less than desirable qualities were, even without other pets in the home, and helped us work towards getting a plan in place in how we could help Blossom. Here is what they had to say:

Blossom came to us as our very first foster dog, and from the moment she arrived, she made an impression we won’t forget. She was understandably worked up and reactive at first, everything was new, loud, and uncertain but almost immediately, she seemed to sense that our home was a safe place. Within days, she settled in, curling up in familiar spots and quickly adapting to our routine as if she’d always been part of it.

Blossom working on walking with her foster mom.

As Blossom found her footing, we were able to work on making walks a little less stressful for her and inside the house she learned how to truly relax. Watching her decompress, gain confidence, and show us her sweet personality reminded us why fostering matters. Blossom wasn’t just our first foster, she was proof of what patience, consistency, and a little love can do. While she wasn’t perfect when she moved out of our home, we are grateful to have played a role in her journey to forever. 🌸 - Emily M

Blossom with her second foster family.

While her new foster home was amazing, they were not able to keep her forever, and we were on the hunt again. In the meantime, Blossom did some hybrid stays with our friends at Canterbury Tails and The Suite Life and at the rescue. Then something exciting happened, she went home as foster to adopt! The family was wonderful and worked with us as we realized that she needed more help than just the perfect home. The truth was, she had some very learned behaviors that made it difficult to find a good home fit for her. A team, aptly named, Team Blossom, was formed and while we still continued to look for a forever family for Blossom, we got her set up like a queen at the rescue. She had a dedicated team of volunteers there around the clock to hang, take her to daycare, and work on some basic training.

Blossom “hanging” out at daycare.

While Blossom was well loved, and safe, she still needed someone that could work more with her while keeping her from rehearsing some of her more unsavory behaviors, like barking at anything moved. It sounds like an exaggeration, but Blossom did really struggle with this.

Here is what our behavioral team had to say about Blossom’s journey:

When there are dogs in our care that are showing some behavioral concerns, the first step is getting in touch with the behavioral team. These concerns can be anything from jumping on people when they enter the home, pulling on a leash or more complex issues like food guarding or reactivity to certain triggers.

When Blossom first came into our care, it was evident early on that she had many reactivity triggers. A member of the behavioral team offered some initial suggestions to blossom’s foster to try to alleviate the reactivity on walks. As a rescue organization, Lucky 7 is committed to positive reinforcement and force free training methods. With Blossom’s reactivity on walks, our starting point was from a “management“ perspective. This basically means distracting her from the trigger so that she and her foster could get out on walks to burn up some energy, get some sniffies, etc. Planning a walking route with less triggers was also a helpful step.

Even with those elements in place, this was still only managing blossoms reactivity on walks. If she were to encounter a trigger without the distraction of snacks, her reaction would be the same as it usually was. Which is where our friends at Practical Obedience came in with their behavior modification work.

They were able to equip blossom (and us humans too!) with the skills to work through her reactivity. This was done through hundreds of repetitions as well as working outside of her threshold.

For dogs, a threshold is the point where they can calmly see a trigger and not react. The goal of working within the area is to show the dog ‘there’s nothing to worry about all the way back here’.

With lots of practice under Blossom’s belt at that distance, we worked on decreasing the distance between her and the trigger. Maggie, Kailey and Blossom did the hard work at Practical Obedience training center and then rescue volunteers worked with Blossom outside the training center on extra repetitions to help continue Blossom’s progress. - Mandi M.

Blossom on a field trip to Powers Comics.

Blossom working past some triggers at Powers Comics,

With a year under her belt in our rescue, we had a good idea of what Blossom currently needed in an adoptive home. Unfortunately, with her reactivity, and and at the time, needing to be an only dog, we knew we were looking for a unicorn adopter. A unicorn adopter is someone that is the perfect fit for a dog that needs a little extra. For example, they may need to be an only dog home, a home where they' aren’t alone often, a female only home, etc. While our adopters are amazing, and we do definitely have our unicorns, we knew that this would make it that much harder for Blossom to find her home. It was time to pull in the experts. That is where Kailey at Practical Obedience came in:

As a Canine Behavior Consultant, I had the pleasure of working with Blossom starting in 2024. At the time, she was a high-energy gal with limited training structure who acted entirely on impulse. Lucky 7 reached out in hopes to modify her behaviors in order to make her adoptable. Her greatest concern was reactivity, driven heavily by frustration and her desire to meet the people or dog she was barking at. While she is friendly, she is also powerful so this was a behavior that needed immediate intervention. We started right away on a counterconditioning plan to begin changing these behaviors, along with adding a few other skills that would be helpful for her adopters, including stay and leash skills. Initially, her progress was slow, simply because she was a dog with years of experience acting impulsively. But with patience, once her training set in, we saw her really blossom 😉 . She went from a dog who would loudly throw herself at other dogs while on leash at very far distances to one who was able to walk into the same room as a new dog without reaction. Her progress has been remarkable and all her hard work was on display during the first sessions of a meet-and-greet with a potential adopter at the end of 2025. While reactive at first, her reactions quickly became less significant and intense, allowing us to safely introduce to a new dog, who is now her current housemate! Without the foundation she built over the last 2 years, this may not have been possible, but now Blossom is able to be a pup who shares her home with another dog who is just her speed! Much of the training I did with Blossom was early in my career, while I was just getting started with behavior work, and Blossom taught me so much more than I thought she would. I'm overjoyed that she's finally landed her forever home, as she absolutely deserves it.

-Kailey Garvey, CTC, CBCC-KA

Certificate in Training and Counseling

Certified Behavior Consultant Canine

Puppy DaySchool Coordinator

Knowing that Blossom would be supported with training, another foster home stepped up. They were not the perfect fit, they had dogs of their own and she would have to be kept separate, but it would give her the consistency she needed. Here is what her foster dad had to say:

Oh Miss Blossom….  When you arrived I thought you were going to terrorize my house.  Well you didn’t terrorize my house but you definitely terrorized my personal space.  We also knew you needed help when it came to reactivity.  All that aside, you were nothing but a big ball of love.

Blossom showing how close she likes to be to her people.

Blossom showing off her goofy personality.

Blossom was a tough one to handle when she first came.  She literally would sit next to you and pant her hot breath right on your neck or side of your face.  On top of that, she would just get so amped up and then just stay amped up.  So we started small and simple.  We would put youtube vids on while we sat with her in the basement.  We would also take her for walks and work on her reactivity in public spaces.  With that, we were guaging her threshold for triggering her reactivity.  We attempted to work on some intros with our resident dogs.  Well those didn’t go well.  All through this her biggest problem was her inability to calm herself down.  So we spoke with our partner vet, Parkside Animal Care Center, and got her on a medication to help with this.

Blossom visiting our friends at Parkside Animal Care Center

With medication starting to help out, I was finally able to introduce her to our other long term foster turned resident dog, Tripp.  They became fast friends.  I still didn’t have successful intros with the other resident dogs but that would come soon enough.

Time passed and I was able to introduce her to our resident dogs and she also was able to be introduced and make friends with other foster puppies that came and went.  Due to successful intros and having good play sessions outside, we started having sessions with her in the main house with everyone.  Things were going well. We were having great success with her and we started just having her as part of the normal morning and evening routine.  This entailed going out with everyone, having extended play sessions and then coming in and hanging out before we fed everyone.  Things were going phenomenal.

Blossom also continued to have meets with various interested adopters.  Unfortunately, nobody quite understood her enthusiasm.  Blossom is a big time lover but also a big time player.  She comes in hot but then chills out after the initial excitement.

Blossom relaxing at the rescue after an adoption meet.

Blossom playing with the rope toy at Merry Mutts Play Yard.

Then, finally, we had a meet with a wonderful family and their dog, Callie.  They were looking for a friend for Callie who had been in the dumps since her sister passed away.  This was the first meet Blossom had with another dog.

Well, let’s just say it went better than it could have, but it still wasn’t great.

That being said, the family saw something in her.  They had been following her story on the website and Facebook and they and their family were fans of this beautiful and happy girl.  The family decided that they wanted to set up a couple more follow up meets to see if we would see improvements in the interactions between Blossom and Callie.  When we did a second meet, we did see improvements!

We did have some setbacks, including a fight between Blossom and our dog. Both dogs had some scrapes and pokes but Blossom also ended up with a bit of a tear behind her ear.  To heal, she spent some time with another excellent foster. Once she was on the mend and back at our house, we advocated for all dogs in the household and changed the routine.

Around this time, we took in another foster, Mama Josie.  I decided to try introducing Josie and Blossom and let me tell you.  It was like they were old buddies.  Josie played a huge role in Blossom practicing her social skills with adult dogs. This was the summertime and Blossom had already been with us for over a year.

Blossom showing off a toy.

During this time we continued to work with the family and had several more meets that progressively went better and better.  We couldn’t have done this without the guidance and professional support of the trainers at Practical Obedience. We kept working on extending the amount of time Blossom stayed with her potential new family through the New Year. The missing piece for the family was that their dog Callie hadn’t quite opened up to Blossom yet.

When we dropped Blossom off for a longer stay at the end of 2026, we finally saw engagement from both dogs!  Along with that, there was also good communication happening between both dogs when they were feeling uncomfortable.

This time It was an emotional goodbye for me, as in a different time and place, I would have kept Blossom.  We definitely bonded.

Blossom spent  Christmas and New Year’s with them, and suddenly her week turned into a couple of weeks.  During this time, I realized I had forgotten to pack her favorite toy and so we set up a time to meet so I could make sure she had it.  While there, I picked up on something as the family was talking about how things were going with Blossom.  Well, I let curiosity get the better of me and asked, “so have you guys decided to adopt her?”  They looked at each other and both cracked a huge smile.  Then looked and at me and said “she’s home!”  My Christmas wish came true!

Blossom and her new sister Callie.

Blossom’s new family are truly amazing people and we couldn’t be happier for them or her!  They have even decided to continue her training with Practical Obedience once the weather warms up, as Blossom is not a huge fan of the cold. -Jesse G.

Blossom on a walk with her new sister and dad.

We are so incredibly proud of Blossom and grateful for every single person in the community, online and in our rescue that became part of Team Blossom and supported her along the way.

Blossom’s journey was long, and at times it seemed like there wouldn’t be a happy ending. There was also a lot to be learned from Blossom and her journey with our rescue. Some key takeaways from Blossom are:

-We needed to get real about the behaviors we were seeing. It wasn’t setting Blossom or an adopter up for success by not acknowledging them or their severity.

-Blossom had lived a really hard life previously, she needed a kind hand. She needed training and behavior modification that worked on addressing the cause of her behaviors and how she was feeling. She did not need training that would just try to suppress those things.

-We needed to think outside of the box. How could we provide safe, humane care for Blossom, that also prevented her from rehearsing the behaviors we didn’t want to see while practicing and reinforcing the ones we did?

-Just like humans, sometimes dogs need medication to help them with big feelings. We did not sedate Blossom, we gave her more tools to feel good and work through her frustrations.

-We cannot rescue dogs like Blossom without people. The people in her life, on her team, and in our community, made it possible to help Blossom succeed. When she was finally ready to transition to a forever home with a family and another dog, they showed up for her.

Blossom won the lottery, her new family is amazing and will continue to help Blossom grow. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to them and everyone else that supported her along the way!

Blossom with her new family.