Growth

One week ago today, we welcomed a new addition to the family.  The previous two weeks were spent doing paperwork and waiting by the phone for 'the call'.  With much anticipation and excitement we drove pick up a 4 year old dog that had been surrendered at a nearby shelter.  A few days after meeting him, we had already decided on his name, Mr. B.

Over the past week Mr. B has been and continues to learn and practice new tasks, such as how to walk on a lead, not to chase and bark at cars, and not to charge through doorways.  Since we adopted him from a shelter, we were given no information about his previous life.  Even though Mr. B was a surrender and the shelter could have easily collected information for the new potential owners, they did not.  We decided to give him a try and have committed to dedicated a month to him and see how things work.

After this first week, I am happy to say that Mr. B does well sleeping in the crate at night, he is taking to self feeding easily, does not counter surf, and although it is evident his previous owners let him on the furniture, he is obeying the house rules here and not getting on the furniture.  We are working on walking on a lead using a Halti, as a regular collar and lead were not working because he pulls very badly.  He does not care for the Halti, but is tolerating it.

We have a growing list of behaviors that will need to be modified and checked, so this month is going to a lot of work training.  However, we try to have some fun too.  Overall, it appears that Mr. B is settling into his new environment and enjoying the freedoms of non shelter life.  We have our fingers crossed for him and hope he does well over the next few weeks and can stay with us.