Dogs, dogs, dogs.

Last week the weimaraner rescue took in like 6 new dogs. They had almost 11 needing foster homes by the end of the week. We took Kaiser over to the meet and greet, and made ourselves available for fostering a dog if there was a need not met. I think the main lady has like, 6 or 7 dogs at her place right now! At the meet and greet, everyone kept telling us how lucky we were to have such a great dog in Kaiser. Of course we agree. :)

Kaiser is doing very well. By the end of the week he was able to hang out in the basement without any accidents during the day. So now, we're comfortable knowing that we can leave him for 4 hours at a time without him tearing the walls up, or going potty all over the place. He responds the best to "sit". With treats he also knows "lay down", and "wait". When we feed him he will sit and wait for you to put the food down and won't start eating until you tell him ok. Oops did I say eating? I mean, won't start hoovering the food down until you tell him ok. We also use wait at doorways so he doesn't sprint out or in. I've been teaching him "stand" in conjunction with the other position commands and he will do it but he doesn't really understand it yet. He's starting to come better too.

All in all, considering he's been around for only a week, he's doing tremendously well. We're very pleased with his progress!

Back to the rescue situation...we picked up another dog as a "foster". The lady that was fostering him was literally strapped for cash, barely making ends meet, and also needed to get him into a new foster home because one of her other dogs was nearing the end of its life. The lady was working two jobs to try and make ends meet and this led to not being available on weekends to get the dog to the meet and greets, which is typically where people can see the dog and choose to take him home for a trial period.

So the new member of our pack is named Louie! He's a beastly weim and makes Kaiser look like a normal sized dog. Louie is very tall, thick and weighs about 90 lbs. He was wound up when we got him and so I decided it would be best to take him for a walk to try and burn off some of his energy and allow us some time to get him under control. When we got him home Denver was in the middle of a rain storm. We got both dogs ready to go and put our coats on and off we went. The rain was rivaling some Portland storms, puddles everywhere and water flowing into drains like small versions of niagara falls. To make matters a bit more aggrivating Louie's previous owners had not taken the time to teach him how to walk on a leash without pulling.

From Dogs

Kaiser on left, doing sit-stay really well and still, lol. Louie is on the left. Both of them are around 1.5 years old.

Needless to say, going around the block turned into a very arduous task. We were tired, worn out from the weekend and also starving for some food of our own, wet and patience very thin for this dog.

After the walk the dogs met for the first time off leash in our garage. They played quite a bit, a little too hard in some cases and required me stepping and keeping them in check. After the garage we moved into the basement. More playing ensued as well as one case of Louie marking his territory. I scolded him pretty hard for that and gave him a stiff poke. Kaiser had managed to not go #1 for 5 hours, including for some reason the walk, and so he decided to relieve himself during a break in playing...on the basement floor. Good thing the floor is tile and we (I) can just mop it up!

At about 8:30 the dogs hit the backyard, where louie marked the same tree about 5 times. Pretty soon he was just lifting his leg, going through the motions and nothing coming out. Meanwhile, Kaiser was pumped up to have another dog around and was spending his outdoor potty time running around the yard in circles at full speed! He managed about 25 laps before Louie decided it would be fun to chase him. Louie isn't quite as agile though as Kaiser and he couldn't keep up on the high speed corners. Plus how can you really keep up when you've got to stop at random trees to mark them. :)

9:00 rolled around and we had popcorn ready to go and hopefully we would get some relaxing time in before bed. We sat in front of the TV and discovered that Louie also was allowed up on the couch and would resist forcefully to being pulled off! It provided a great way to show our dominance and set guidelines for where he can and can't be in the home. Pam and I were concerned he was going to walk off and mark stuff so we kept calling him back to the living room. I got quite annoyed of Pam constantly calling his name as he did laps around through the living room, dining, kitchen and back through.

I moved to the floor where I was able get Kaiser to lie down on my right side and Louie on my left. They calmed down and we were able to watch an episode of the dog whisperer. Pam hand fed me popcorn and we had a great time winding down for bed.

We moved both crates into the bedroom. We had been teaching kaiser another usefull command, "crate", where he will go to into his crate and lay down. We're still in the beginning stages of that command. At first Kaiser didn't really enjoy his crate but now he sleeps in it without any problems. We've even closed the door once and he didn't mind too much. We had been told Louie sleeps in his crate too so we were hoping it would just all work out once we got the lights turned out. Of course Louie felt that the bed would be a better place for him to sleep...After shoving him off a couple time we settled into place.

Well for being the less dominated dog, Kaiser had no problem going into Louies crate and making himself feel like home. The only problem with this is that Kaiser's crate is smaller and Louie can't fit comfortably into it! To solve this I pulled the bed in, which would provide Louie with a place to sleep if Kaiser decided to move into his crate. In the end though the dogs figured it all out by themselves without any altercations. Louie settled into his crate after about half an hour and Kaiser was long on his way to sawing logs by this time.

...and that concluded our first night as a pack of four, and as foster parents.

Needless to say, after having Louie for 12 hours, Pam has decided that one dog is enough for us! I've assured her, that after working with Louie and having him feel more settled as the time passes, we will be able to turn him into a much better behaved dog. This will help us find an adoption family for him in no time! Unfortunately right now it feels like we've got 2 hyperactive 5 year olds running around the house and with me leaving for the week, it ain't going to be pretty! Go Pam, you can do it!

PS Here are some YouTube Videos of our dog.