Update
Well, our first weekend with our newest family member was a success! We did find out her name was spelled differently (we thought "Layla", her rescue tag says "Leila). We don't care either way considering the host of other issues that could potentially occur. So here it is in a nutshell:
- She's GREAT with my kids - Hasn't even bowled over my 4 year old, even though he probably deserves it. They have a great time doing laps around the house playing "Gimme that ball". She even lets my son win once and a while and seems pretty good at sharing.
- She's completely house trained. No issues or accidents.
- Her appetite is down a little but we suspect it's due to the new surroundings. She did wolf down dinner on Sunday like no tomorrow so she seems to be coming around.
- Her eyes are bloodhot off and on. A minute amount of "eye boogies" but we think she's just tired as her days have been really busy acclimating to our routine. Typically later in the day when she's tired. I'm going to watch this one.
- No rope toys! She shreds them and eats them....... I have to try and find one that she can't kill... The challenge is on!
- We have crated her when we've been gone - 45 minutes on Saturday and 1.5 hours on Sunday. She wasn't too happy with it but with a treat and her squeaky ball she settled down pretty quickly. We think she'll be OK with the run of the house. We didn't crate her at night and she pretty much slept all the way through without disturbing anything - people or otherwise - although my wife wasn't happy with the "I gotta pee" face lick wake up call at 7:15 AM on Sunday!!!!! She stays off the furniture (wife requirement - I could care less but force myself to comply for consistency) and we'll probably give her the run of the house once we get to know her a bit better and she proves not to get into trouble with the run of the place.
- She shows extreme anxiety with other dogs - goes ballistic on the leash every time we come across antother dog. There's no growling or barking so it doesn't seem to be aggression - more like I want to play!!!!!!! She does seem to be a bit of an Alpha female so I'm concerned about socializing her properly. She so strong I'm afraid I would have difficulty controlling her if things went wrong. I've read a bunch of distraction and calming techniques that I'm going to employ over the next few walks to see if that helps. She pulls sometimes on the lease but gets it when I stop or turn around. After a few turns she gets where she needs to be on our walks. She shows mild interest in squirrels, birds and even cats. People she gets excited about but only to slobber on them with big wet kisses - and her tongue is HUMONGOUS!!!! She will sit before being petted but that doesn't stop her from kissing hands, legs or anything she can reach with her massive tongue. We'll keep working on the socialization.
- We'll continue to work on her training - lay down, leave it, park it, stay. She has some of these already but is somewhat stubborn - or maybe she lacked consistency - not sure. regardfless, she seems eager to learn and I enjoy working with her. She seems so happy to earn that treat!!!!! We're concerned about obedience classes due to her apparent anxiety over other dogs but we'll see how her wlks go over the nex week or two and go from there. I'm going to post my concerns elsewhere on this one for feedback from the collective.
All in all - pretty good so far.
Thanks for reading!
-Dean
