I had forgotten how tiring having a foster dog around can be! Especially a young, lively pup!
Shall I cut this short? Teddy is a wonderful dog and someone is going to be very lucky.
== End of blog ==
Okay, okay I’ll elaborate a little with our day today:
Day Two:
Ted went into his crate after a final short walk and toilet break at about 11pm the night before. He was snoring so loudly by midnight I could hear him upstairs!
Not a peep out of him until 8am when he heard some people outside and gave a few woofs. He went out for a short walk and toilet break. Great dog for this – he toilets on the grass immediately he gets out.
Breakfast at 9am and he ate well (loves his soaked Burns Chicken & Rice!).
Allowed a short toilet break in yard and then straight to crate for a couple of hours rest – this breed like many others are at risk of bloat so I take NO chances. A good, long sleep after a meal!
I went out but my daughter was in the house working upstairs so could monitor him while on his crate rest. Not a peep out of him for over 2 hours.
When I got back we went for a really nice 40 min onlead walk. Now this is where I saw some magic… He picked up ‘Heel’ and ‘Wait’ within 10 minutes. He has obviously had some obedience training because he wouldn’t walk on the right (in rural areas where there are single track roads and no safe pedestrian areas, it’s sometimes necessary to put a dog on the right for safety) so I worked with what he knew and he picked it up with lots of positive reinforcement and smiles. We had a lovely walk together, exploring things, showing each other interesting possible scents (what a great tracking dog he’d be… what a nose!). I gave him a 3m line to have a bit of freedom on the village green and we played for a little while, playing fetch and ‘seek the stick’. This is where I saw the boisterous adolescent come out with a bit of excitable mouthing but absolutely no aggression and he soon learned to stop on command.
That same excitability and lack of impulse control is evident around other dogs as he has met mine and he displayed some typical adolescent behaviours – jumping, landing paws on them etc. However again there is absolutely no aggression and he responded to my guidance when I blocked him with my leg. He has obviously got away with some pretty boisterous play and if I didn’t know better I’d say he’d been living with another dog of the same age, possibly a littermate, all his life with little supervision. It’s just that full-on!
He had his first massage session with me this evening where I applied some TTouch to his body and he l-o-v-e-d it. It had possibly the biggest calming effect I’ve seen on any dog. He literally melted into my hands. It was obvious he’s never experienced any handling like this before and it was a really nice bonding session. He allowed me to touch him all over and even to lean over him and hug him (which was apparently the situation in which he bit someone and was given to rescue and I have to assess while he's with me).
A very positive day with massive progress made in that the nervous, twitchy little guy I saw hiding a couple of days ago is now a confident, boisterous adolescent simply after a break in quiet, calm environment with some sensitive one-on-one handling. If only rescues had more help so that dogs like Ted could get out of kennel environments and have the chance to simply chill out and get their bearings. Volunteer to help your local rescue now!!!
More on Ted, with hopefully some pics, tomorrow.
