LUNA LUKA LOVE

She chose him - the grizzled, quiet old man dog to be her companion in the beginning, and she still chooses him.  He doesn't play with her like Fizzy will but she loves him nonetheless.

LUKA & LUNA LOVE

So apparently this is going to become a normal thing.  LOL

Luka doesn't normally have too much to do with the boarding dogs.  He likes them okay - but he has a host of medical issues and even though he is only 5, he acts like he is 90 most of the time. 

He seems to be really taken with Luna though - everytime I have checked this morning, they were together.  

SETTLING IN NICELY

Since she had such a big few days, we are just hanging out today and letting her find her feet here. She has done very well and fits in really well with my crew.

We are working on passive house manners behaviors like waiting at the door, soft recalls (meaning just hanging around in general and checking in as opposed to the more formal recall we will teach), learning property boundaries, general polite mannerisms... Nothing specific... as I see it we work on it.

Her only two issues at the moment are:

• Mouthing too hard - I don't want to discourage putting her mouth on things since we want to teach retrieves but we do have to curb the strength behind the bite as she doesn't know when to stop and goes too hard.

• Containment stress - she is not a happy girl if blocked behind a barrier of any sort. In the car, behind the fence, in the crate - she has a powerful set of lungs and will sing the song of her people at full volume for awhile in an attempting to persuade the hoo-man that she will likely die if left there.

Neither of these are in any way worrying and are things I am already seeing improvement in.

Her first night of crating, we had hours of unsettledness, last night was significantly better and hopefully tonight will be better still.

It is about reducing stress in those situations and building value to being in the place they don't want to.

While it is certainly a work in progress, I think in a week or so we will have it most of the way resolved...

GETTING COMFY

She has fit right in.  We had a rough night getting her settled, so we are running on only a few hours sleep at the moment but so is the life of many a new puppy handler! 

I let everyone out for a potty break and the yard was still wet from the rain and fog last night.  We started introducing the bell by the door for Potty Notices and this will be one of the first few things she learns.   Of course there will be more information and videos of this as we go so if you are struggling with potty training or just want more information on this technique, stay tuned!

She had a pretty full on last few days so the next few will just be her having a chance to settle in, get her head around her new life and relax with my dogs. 

I had to laugh at her ingenuity this morning.  I come back from starting a load of puppy laundry from the car to find her having solved the issue of how to stay warm and dry in an otherwise wet yard - just use Luka as a pillow of course!  Yeah - she's going to fit in just fine here!

FINALLY HOME!

After meeting up with her family, we still had a 4hr trip home which Luna slept beautifully through. I had some car trouble coming home and it had been a long few days but we finally got home just after 1.00am.

I let my personal dogs out to meet her.

Living with me are:
Gryphon - 3yo Rough Collie
Luka - 5yo Giant Schnauzer x Standard Poodle
FizzGig - almost 4 month old Yorkie mix

Within minutes she was exploring the yard, had let everyone have a good check over of her, was not intimidated in the slightest by the 80lb boys (but then again when your parents are Giant Breed dogs, these boys are probably small) and was running around the yard with Fizz.