This weekend, Tom got to spend two solid days with Mississippi. She met a new doggy friend and we all went for a walk. She’s great with other dogs once she gets over her initial excitement. She just has trouble containing her energy at first. The random barking and misbehaving e.g. chewing on carpet, eating furniture and doors, seems to be getting worse. We cannot physically give her all the exercise she wants. Right now she gets three to four walks a day plus one or two play times in the back yard, and a few short training and playing sessions inside. As soon as I got home from today’s long second walk, she started whining and barking at the door for more. Kongs help very little. It is one more thing to keep her occupied for a few minutes but not for long. A little training exercise helps temporarily, but I can’t spend all day with her, I work from home and I have lots of boring (to her) computer work to do. Today I finally just escaped from the house and am taking a break at Mocha Momma’s down the street.
We met with a trainer on Friday and I called today to set up a training program for her. We start tonight with a 2 hour private training session. She gets 50% off her training since she is a rescue dog so it was really reasonable. I’m so happy to be getting her into some training. She’s a handful and nothing we do seems to get her to calm down. At night when I go into our room to go to bed, she is so happy to go to bed too, you can just see how exhausted she is. She sleeps pretty much through the night.
She is such a great, amazing dog when she is happy and calm. Just gotta hang on a little longer until she gets a little more settled and trained. All three of us need a little more patience. We’ll figure things out. Tom and I will just have to take turns so neither of us goes completely batty.
I am so fricken exhausted. She runs me ragged. It’s a good thing she is ridiculously cute.
She sits at every corner with little hesitation. She’s still working on ‘lay down’. She’s getting better at ‘come’. for the first few days, she assumed if she came to us, we’d punish her. She still sleeps well all night in the room with us except for a couple of barking episodes. She’s afraid of the heater vents and I noticed today she gets really freaked out at yard flags. Her barking at other dogs hasn’t really improved. She pulls less but there are still several tugging sessions. I took her to the Rhododendron garden yesterday and she did really well around all the ducks, geese, and squirrels.
Yesterday we discovered that she loves water. I may get her a kiddy pool because she is absolutely terrified with the bath tub. I’m hoping if we can turn bath time into play time, she’ll be much happier to get clean. I’m a firm believer in a wonderful smelling (to humans) dog and I intend on bathing her very regularly. Plus I would love a water dog so I want her to know it’s a great way to play. Sigh. someday we’ll get to go to a beach where she can play in the waves.