Integration: What are the challenges?

I've had Lucia about 10 days now, and one of our main goals is integration into my pack. While integration has been going well, there are a few challenges: 

We had guests over for DnD, and Lucia hung around with us. She did very well, even choosing to eat her bully stick near the guests.

1) Both Lucia and Sappho feed off each other. Think of when you see someone looking around nervously and fidgeting a lot. We may think "What is he so nervous about?" and start wondering if this stranger is up to something shady. Lucia and Sappho do the same thing, wondering what the other is up to.  

Most of us though would attempt to move away from this person acting so nervously while keeping an eye on them. However, imagine you don't have the skills to self-soothe and instead you just keep getting more and more anxious. You start fearing this stranger really is a danger to you and you better drive him away before he does something to you. If Lucia reaches this point she goes after Sappho, not trying to hurt her but trying to drive her away. 

The house is divided up and the dogs take turns on each side. Her Maya holds on of Lucia's toys and implores me to come tug with her.

2) Lucia has spent a long term living in a house with dogs she feels very concerned about. Karrah and Eric did a great job of keeping all of their dogs safe by not allowing them to interact, but at the same time this made it so that the times that Lucia did interact were rare.

3) Lucia is extremely anxious. She is one of the most anxious dogs I have ever known. When dealing with an anxious dog (or fearful, or extremely excited, etc) you have to deal with the emotion first. Emotion takes place at a lower, more “primitive” section of the brain and if strong emotion is at the helm, Learning will be relegated to the back seat. Sure, Learning may try to give directions, but Emotions up front is ignoring it just as we do backseat drivers. 

Getting tired of waiting Mom!

4) Lucia is still learning the skills she needs to disengage from situations. Sappho has these skills to a larger extent than Lucia, but she is still a work in progress as well. She needs to learn how to give "cut off" signals to other dogs indicating she doesn't want to interact, and she also needs to learn how to self-soothe.

With the above challenges sometimes integration feels like walking a tight-rope, but I'll talk more about cut-off signals and the principles I use when practicing integration in upcoming posts.