Foster Dog: Keisha - First day

such a dainty little lady

"I call shot gun"

I just picked up Keisha from Wayside to be our new foster dog.  She is a 6 year old black lab pointer mix.  I can already tell she'll be a bit easier to handle than Noah was.  She is super smart and catches on to things quickly.  On the way home she did pretty well being in the car with just me since Matt is off on business. Though when we stopped at a light she decided she just had to be in the front seat and sat up there with me.

Once we got home I showed her around the back yard on her leash and then let her run off leash while I kept an eye on her.  We don't want another fence jumping problem or digging problem, so I want to make sure to nip that in the butt if it ever happens.

She catches on to things really quickly.  She responds better to using the sound Caeasr Millan uses more than Noah did.  I took her into the basement for a bit and when I would go up the stairs she would want to run up before me, but I made the "tsh" sound and said stay a few times and she eventually just say there and waited for me.

 Even though she is 6 years old she still has a lot of energy and wanted to play outside.  I also introduced her to the Gentle Leader since she did pull a bit on her regular collar.  She of course tried pulling it off, but once we started walking she tended to leave it alone.  We went to visit Mark and Linda and they thought she was pretty awesome.  She was such a good girl I would almost forgot she was there.

She reminds me a lot of my family dog Nikki, who recently passed away.  She does the same thing where she'll rest her head on your hand until you pet her and then nudge you if you stop.  Once we got home we went up into the rest of the house where I showed her around.  She tried to jump right onto the bed and couch but I corrected her and she hasn't tried it again since.  I did discover she has some separation anxiety though because when I closed the door to the study to give the rats their meds, she whined at the door.  She also follows me everywhere I go in the house.  Hopefully this will get better with time.

We practiced a bit with going into a kennel since I don't have a baby gate yet. She did really well and didn't seem to be afraid of it at all.  Hopefully she will go in easily in the morning and be ok when I come to check on her at lunch tomorrow.

So far is has been a good first day.  Let's hope the rest to come are as well. 

Let it Snow...a Bit Late for Christmas

Well we finally had a nice heavy snow here in KC...in friggin April. Too bad it never seems to snow like this for Christmas.  We got 11 inches starting at about 7am.  Matt decided to stay home and probably will tomorrow as well.  It's been some time since I've seen this much show, and apparently we're suppose to get another heap of it this weekend.  I saw our neighbors shoveling their sidewalk in the morning, but since Matt as working from home and I didn't feel like doing it on my own I decided to wait until closer to when Matt would stop work.  We went out around 4 pm and I'm glad we wait because a guy was using a show blower to clear our neighbor, Julie's  drive way.  He saw we were trying to shovel ours and offered to help with the blowers.  Turns out he lives in the neighborhood over, Linden Hills, and is also a principal at one of the elementary school near by and does this to earn some extra cash and help the neighbors.

He said we could juts pay him as we like and sadly we only had $10 in cash to give him this time, but next time I would say it would be worth at least $15.  If he always comes by we may not have much need for our own snow shovel after all.  Although is is unfortunate we don't get as much exercise from it.  But we shoveled our front path and that was enough exercise for me.

Our neighbor's son ended up helping us shovel quite a bit so I gave him a little money for his help as well. He also hung out with us a bit and we played in the snow.  We made snow angels and barried him in the snow.  I wish we had a sled.  I haven't been sledding in forever and would love to do it.  Plus apparently it's considered an activity got weight watchers so a good hour of sledding can get us some very fun activity points.  This snow should last a while so I'm sure we can run out to Walmart and buy a sled and take advantage if it.  After some snow fun, we all went inside and had, what else, hot cocoa.  Only thing that could have been better is if I could have made my homemade stuff from scratch, but I still need some baking chocolate for that.  Maybe next time.

Foster Dog: Noah

Noah was out first foster baby and boy was he a hand full. ( I'm writing this after he has already gone back to the shelter because of jumping the fence, if that gives you any indication. )

First lets talk about his good qualities.  He is very affection motivated and loves people. If he could cuddle with you all day he would.  He doesn't bark too much and is house broken.  We got him to the point where he would walk well on a lease with a gentle leader, and would only get distracted by the occasional squirrel.  Though he did require 2 vigorous walks a day to keep him out of trouble.

such a cuddle monster

There were many days when he was the best dog ever, and then many where he would drive us crazy.  He was an American bull dog Pyrenees mix, but he mostly looked like the bulldog, but was head strong like a Pyrenees.  He had quite a few quirks when we first got him but slowly we started to work on them and got to where he only had 1 bad habit left, and sadly it was the one that made him have to go back to wayside.  He started jumping the fence one day and just never wanted to stop.  At first we thought it was just the parts of the fence that were a bit low and easy to jump.  We covered those up with extra branches so he couldn't get through, and things went ok.  Then he got into squirrel chasing mode and realized he could jump ANY part of the fence and went into the yard of the neighbor behind us.  He then proceeded to jump 3 yards down and come back and into the vacant yard by use, where a gate was opened and thank God he was focused on the squirrel or else he would have run out and never come back. 

I finally got him back in the house where he earned and good time out.  Then we decided it was just not safe enough for him to have him with us if he was going to always jump the fence.  he needs a lot of room to run so keeping him on a leash when he goes out was both unfair to him, but tiresome for us.  The neighbor I spoke to was an older woman and she was pretty scared of him since he was big and energetic and I'm sure she had a misconception about bulldogs.  I wasn't worried at all he would bit her, but I was worried he might jump on her, and since she was older that would really hurt.  I was just so worried he would get out again and this time get in a fight with another dog, or hurt someone else while trying to play.  So in the end I had to call Tyler and tell him Noah would be coming back the next day. 

We took him on a last walk and took him to say goodbye to Mark and Linda since they really liked him.  He got to cuddle one last time on the couch and we let him sleep in the bed with us as well.  In some way I was happy to have the house back to just us and get to spend time with the rats more, but I’ll admit I almost teared up when it was time to give him up.  I think back to it now and I get even sadder that we couldn't do more to help him.  I had joined a Pittie Pack Meetup group and wanted to socialize him more, and try going on field trips.  We wanted to see how he might do with a baby gate while we’re gone and then maybe be free to roam the house. 

We went to Wayside for training on dog to dog meetings and we stopped by to see him.  He started whining like he always did when he would have to be crated when we left and it about broke my heart.  I could just hear him saying “why did you guys leave? Don’t you love me anymore?”  I would really like to still go volunteer just to walk Noah or other fosters that have to come back for whatever reason.  I’d like to take him on a field trip to do some dog socializing if we can. 

He is trying to hypnotize me into giving 

someone is tangled in the blankets