They're Coming!

Two little girls are going to get a puppy,

a shelter/rescue puppy, in the White House..how cool is that?

She's "The One"

We've been on a rescue mission. When our much loved dog Tippy got hit in the road and passed away, we decided to get another dog right away. Even though we were incredibly heartbroken, we knew we would get a shelter dog and the theory was ... a dog removed from a shelter and put into our loving home makes room for another dog in the shelter system.
The first dog we fostered was Kita, he was big and loveable and wild. When he came here he wasn't house trained, but he was easy for me to train...he had some "issues" as most shelter dogs do but he seemed to be fitting in around here. Then he discovered cows, he discovered that if he chased the cows it was more fun than any tennis ball or fetch game he had ever played. He had to go to another home where there weren't cows to chase.
Next! Kahlo....a cute young pit/boxer rescue dog. His story was pretty sad, he had been rescued very young, he was skinny and found in a crate with his sister. Not housebroken, and a lot harder for me to train. He loved hanging out with me although he was incredibly nervous, he liked spending time with me and The Husband, but when I wasn't around and he was alone with The Husband the poor little puppy was a wreck. Poor Kahlo has serious "man issues". We're guessing that a man in his past was abusive to him and it's going to take a skilled trainer to help him get over it, neither of us feels like we have the right skills to help him find his way. Yesterday I took him to stay with some wonderful people, they have two very well trained dogs for Kahlo to play with. I think that they can help him get over his fears so he can grow up to be a nice guy. When I left their home yesterday I was positively giddy, it's the most wonderful place for him...better than I could have imagined.
Sometimes things happen for a reason. I learned so much from those two foster dogs, they even helped me work through my overwhelming sadness over losing Tippy. Last night we picked up this little girl pup. Of course she's a rescue dog too, but she's not from the shelter system. A friend of ours was taking his dogs for a walk last weekend and she ran out to join them. Our friend tried to find out where she lived...to no avail. He has been taking care of her but she's been a bit naughty and yesterday she ran into the road and got hit by a car...fortunately she wasn't hurt. Our friend called us because he couldn't care for her any longer...his neighbors are mad at him...his wife is mad at him....this naughty girl needs somebody who can teach her how to behave....and she needs pretty close supervision. Last night she slept in our kitchen in a crate like an angel, so far no "accidents" in the house. I've called all the local vet offices and the local shelters to see if anyone is looking for her. Today I'm taking her to be scanned to see if she has a microchip implant to locate her owners. She's been "lost" for almost a week, if her owners come forward... I hope they have a good excuse why it took so long to make work of finding her....because in a few more days I think that she will be mine.
We're probably going to name her Bergie ...that's the nickname of our friend who found her.
Happy endings and new beginnings for all of us.

So long, little buddy.

For the last couple of weeks I've been reading and re-reading Cesar's Way before I go to sleep at night. I picked up these two books about dog training when we decided to have a foster dog come for a home visit. Most dogs in the shelter system have some kind of behavior problem and I really wanted to be sure I was doing everything I could to make the visit a positive one.
This weekend we picked up another book called Breaking Bad Habits in Dogs, I guess that tells you that these books in the photo above didn't provide me with the answers to all of the questions I had....and that our visitor was proving to be a bit of a challenge.

Kita the foster dog left today. I already miss the goofy little (ok...biggg) love bug.

Kita's last 24 hours here were crazy,challenging, exhausting, maddening, frustrating and finally...just a little bit dangerous.
Kita is big, strong and young. He is an 82 pound jumping, pouncing, dancing, happy dog....add some snow and Kita gets crazyyyy! Happy, crazy, jumping, pouncing wild dog crazy! But loveable crazy. Kita didn't like to be alone so he broke his crate that he was supposed to be sleeping in on Monday night, then he decided the best thing to do was to body-slam the french doors in the living room. Nothing broken. This body slamming was his curtain call after two hours of howling and crying, I was sure there were evil trolls shoving splinters under his nails. When I came downstairs to check on the crashing sounds he greeted me with his usual love and affection. We took him upstars and settled him down on a dog bed in our room....he zonked out...that is to be expected after putting on that kind of a show.

Yesterday we went out back for our afternoon walk , he had so much fun playing in the snow. But then it got wild, wilder than I have ever seen this boy. We had been experimenting with a little off-leash time in very small doses in safe areas of the farm with good results. I had decided that he was too worked up for off leash play and was hooking him back up when he broke away and started running around in circles. Well...the circles got wider and he got wilder. After jumping over and under fences, a short excursion onto a frozen manure lagoon the kid headed for the barn. He started chasing cows, and then he chased some more. The cows here aren't used to dogs so they were pretty worked up. I was trying to dodge stampeding cows while sweet talking Kita to get cose enough to me so I could catch him and get him out of there. It was scary, a freakin' scary rodeo.

When I finally caught him he was covered in cow manure, as was I. My face was splattered with cow crap, so was my ski coat, my cute bula fleece hat, my pretty leather gloves I bought in Italy, my cool apres-ski boots....waaaaaa!!!!
But nobody got hurt, no cows have broken legs, Kita didn't get kicked..although he deserved it. We gave Kita two baths last night and he still stinks ..he stinks baaadddd. My house stinks, we couldn't leave him outside last night because it was cold and snowy and he was a drowned poopy rat. The trek from the back door to the bathroom is a short one but somehow that smell seemed to permeate the whole house. We scrubbed him but good, that smell just won't go away.

Today his case worker came to pick him up. He knows her and looooves her, he showed her how much he loves her by his non-stop jumping and by doing his best to knock her down so he could kiss and lick her face. We had a nice long visit over lattes and he had a chance to settle down, he even took a little nap at her feet. She understands the fact that we can't have a dog here that chases cows, it's dangerous. If the cows had been in a pasture yesterday they would have gone through fences and who knows where they would be by now. The chase scene yesterday was in the barn with good strong gates that are held shut by chains, I was so thankful for those chains.

He is a sweet sweet dog, he followed me from room to room in the house. He will be a wonderful dog for someone. He's smart, in the two weeks he was here we were able to completely house train him with one minor accident. He was responding very well to verbal commands and hand signals, I was even whistle training him with some success....unfortunately if you add snow, a few tweety birds and some cows to distract this guy, things can go downhill faster than I can scream
KITA ....NOOOOO!!!