It's been a week since my sweet girl was adopted. I received an update from her family last week, and it sounds like she's doing very well! They've renamed her Dixie after her Alabama roots. I think that's a great name for her. She's also been coming out of her shell a lot with them, which is so wonderful because she's such a good dog she really deserves all the attention she gets when she's not being shy.
I'm starting to think that Dixie may have been the secret troublemaker in my house (which means she was even more like me than I realized!). While Rocky & Ollie are still high energy, they seem to be less attached to me than they were with Dixie around. Maybe they're just sad she left, or maybe she was the ringleader. I don't know. But it seems to have worked out great for all of us, so I'm not complaining!
Housebreaking has been going so great since I put up the fence. I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again: training a dog is 10% actually training the dog and 90% training the human. I'm much more willing to just let the boys run outside when they're fenced in than I ever was when I had to put them on leashes. It was just such a hassle keeping the leashes untangled that I didn't want to deal with it. But now that they're fenced in and I can just let them go, we all spend more time outside. I tore up a patio this weekend and Rocky & Ollie hung out outside with me. I had to rearrange the fence at one point because my septic system is being replaced and they need access to the old tank today, but I didn't want to just take it down and restrict the boys to their leashes again. So I put up a new temporary fence, and since I only plan on it being up for this week didn't worry too much about making it look good. Well, at some point while I was loading the patio pavers into the cart I noticed Rocky hanging around with me (I was outside the fence at this point). That little sneak had found the one high point in the fence and crawled under it. But he was just staying near me like a good dog. When I was finished loading the pavers, I convinced him to go back inside the fenced area and then fixed up the hole so it wouldn't happen again. But since I didn't securely attach the fence, I'm going to have to keep an eye on all of them this week to make sure we don't have any real escapees.
For several reasons (late night accidents, jumping on my bed, playing all night, etc) I decided to start crating the dogs at night. I wanted to start on a weekend because I figured they wouldn't like it at first and would keep me up. Not the best idea when I have to work the next morning. So I started on Friday. They didn't make a peep. I was shocked! Of course, as soon as 5am rolled around (our usual wake up time), they were barking away, ready for their morning potty break. Saturday went the same way. Silent when I put them in, barking away at 5am. But for some strange reason, last night did not go well. I don't think I did anything different...maybe went to bed earlier, but nothing else that I can think of. But Ollie did not have a good night. He whined all night. It wasn't so bad because it wasn't barking, but I still felt terrible. He'd whine for half an hour or so, then be silent for an hour. Enough time for me to fall asleep. Then I'd wake up and hear him whining again. So it was a long night. But I really think it's the best plan to get them over this last hump of housebreaking that I'm going to stick with it.
I also decided I need to start brushing their teeth. So I'm starting slow, just putting the toothpaste on my finger and rubbing it on their teeth. Just to get them used to the taste of the toothpaste and the feel of something on their teeth. Once I think they're comfortable with that (maybe by the end of this week?) I'll step up to a real toothbrush. Rocky & Ollie love it so far (the taste of the toothpaste, I mean). As soon as they see me get the tube, they're all over me. They try to lick it off my fingers before I even get in their mouths. I think it's chicken or bacon flavored, so I can't really blame them. But it makes me laugh. And then yesterday I caught Ollie with the whole tube of toothpaste...chewing on it. I thought that I had safely stored it away, but apparently these boys are sneaker than I thought! So now I store it inside my dog grooming kit. I also bought some dental chew sticks for them (normally I buy greenies, but I had a coupon for a different brand last week). So I gave each dog a chew stick. Rocky had his gone in 2 minutes flat. Ollie took about 5 minutes. Hardy took about half an hour, and you can see from the picture below that Rocky & Ollie were very interested to see if he'd share.
Hardy finishing his treat with a watch crew.
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