Last night I couldn’t sleep, and I was able to sneak out of the bedroom without waking Zoe - a new accomplishment for me. When I crept back in hours later, in the dark, I found Zeeke at the foot of the bed, and Zoe on my pillow. So I nudged her to the side and got into bed beside her, then spent about 10 minutes cuddling and snuggling with her. She rolled onto her back so I could rub her tummy and chest. I love that dog so much. No matter what else happens in the day, at the end of it all I have her and that’s all that matters. She’s such a perfect little creature to me.

She did end up getting up and moving, but I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

Wow, were they psycho-hyper this morning! I woke up to Zoe throwing one of her growling-and-shaking fits at her stuffed chipmunk toy. We still find it completely hilarious. I wish I could get it on tape. So I got up and took her out, and when Den took Zeeke out I ran hyperly around the living room with her, to try to get it out of her system. Back and forth, back and forth, on the couch and off. Zoomies. Zeeke was a bit hyper too, and I had to take him back out to potty shortly after Den left, so I let him run around the backyard for a while, chasing him and kicking a toy ball for him.

So now both are sacked out dead asleep. LOL! I’m glad.

I started practicing sit-stays with Zoe randomly. Before she gets anything, she has to stay - and hold it. So now every evening for dinner I put their dishes down and tell them to “stay.” I stand back and wait 5 seconds while they stare at me. Then I say “Okay” and they both dive in. Also when letting them out of their crates it’s the same thing. This is big for Zoe, since she’s a spazzy freak when we go to let her out, she can’t calm herself down. I think the stay is helping her do that. So I wait a few short seconds (don’t want to push it too far yet), then release and they both run out. Yay for obedient dogs.

Today was another step forward! I took her with me to pick up Den from work, and as soon as I picked up her 6′ leash she started slinking around. Outside was the same, she was desperately hoping to just go back inside. But, alas, I unlocked the truck and opened the door. And you know what my little girl did? She jumped in!

The way it usually goes is this: leaving the house, I have to carry her into the truck; returning to the house, she drags me into the truck. But this time for the first time she went in the truck voluntarily while at the house. Yay Zoe!

She’s doing pretty well at Den’s office. She follows me inside without a problem (no backing up/pulling at the door). She’s skittish in the hallways, especially when another person comes into sight or sound range. But, she stuck right by my feet while I talked to one of Den’s co-workers (who is familiar with Zoe and her personality, so basically just says hi to her and doesn’t approach her, yay for helpful people ), and followed me into Den’s office where I closed the door and sat down. After a few seconds she starts relaxing - the office has become a safe(r) place for her to be, especially with the door closed. Today I had to wait a while for Den to come back from a meeting, so I just let Zoe sniff around and relax. She layed down a few feet away from me and licked her paws… she really seemed to physically relax.

Daddy walking in was a somewhat scary moment. It’s kind of funny in a sad way, because on one hand she knows his voice and wants to say hi to him soooo bad, but on the other hand she’s not POSITIVE it’s him and he looks kind of big and scary. So she paces back and forth… wagging her tail happily, then running back behind me. Oy. But then Den sat down and Zoe crawled over (literally, she still wasn’t sure) to say hi and lick him to death.

It’s just so rewarding to see all these little steps forward, even if they’re tiny. She makes me proud.

Well yesterday was a disaster. Just after I’d mentioned on some forums about Zoe constantly whining to go out, she had an accident of the poop variety. Ew. Yuck. Then, after dinner I took her out, she peed, got distracted by dogs and owner walking down the street. Five minutes later inside, she pooped again. I think I was pretty ready to throw in the towel at that point… but man, did it reek. So I spent a good part of the day scrubbing and spraying and mopping. Ugh. After that she pooped (outside), then again in the middle of the night. I don’t know what was up with her stomach. Today has gone much more smoothly, but her bathroom break sure did smell aweful. Yuck.

We made so many mistakes with Zeeke. I guess you can’t get everything right on your first try - he’s not my first dog, nor Den’s, but he’s the first one for either of us who had behavioral problems like he did (and does). But still, I feel kind of sad that we messed up so much.

I wish we had gone to the trainer I have now with him, instead of that other one we found. She wasn’t bad - she just was not equipped to handle a dog with problems and couldn’t offer us much help at all. I wonder how much progress he could have made, had we found the right trainer. Our lives could have been so much easier. But there’s no use dwelling on what could have been.

I’m really seeing Zeeke in a different light nowadays. He still gets ahold of garbage infrequently, and I’m now able to control the situation: I tell him to drop it. And damn if he doesn’t do just that. The part I find most telling is his body posture. When I approach him he has his head down, and his ears back, in a very defensive pose. When I tell him to drop it he does, and walks away very slowly with his head down and his ears still back - still very defensive, and with that “don’t touch me or I’ll bite” attitude. And when I praise him for being a good boy and dropping it for mommy his head and ears immediately come up and he nudges into me in a positive way. He’s scared, and just wants some positive feedback. I misjudged him, and worse than that I reacted in the worst way possible. It only made it worse.

So now we’re on the right track. He’s listening to me, he’s respecting me. Yesterday during class I was smiling throughout the lecture, as she was telling everyone about “rules to live by” - rules to set for the dog. And we do a pretty good job of them already, with a few exceptions. And most of the “bad behavior” she went over in class we have a pretty good handle on. Door bolting - we stopped that two years ago. Pulling on leash - he doesn’t do that either. He does sleep on the bed sometimes, but he gets off when told. He lays on the couch all the time, but when I come along I tell him to get off and I take over the couch. He drops foreign objects for me - not as happily as I’d like, but that’s still a work in progress, and much progress has already been made. We stopped his mouthing. He goes into his crate without a problem. He’s not possessive about his food bowl (oddly enough - he’s possessive of bones and other high-value items, but I can pick up his food bowl without a problem, though I should probably practice that one more).

He still does have problems, though. First I’d have to say are his paws. He freaks out when you touch his paws. We have gotten him to the point where we can touch and hold his paws for a few seconds, but then he starts getting grouchy and/or panicky (I can’t really tell where it’s coming from, in his head). Which means we can’t clip his nails without a huge fight, and to be perfectly honest, after the last time I’ve just not tried again. He really flipped out at us, even Den - I think he was at the point where he didn’t care who it was, he just wanted out, now.

The other problem is his barking - out the window and at the cat. We have strategies for dealing with the barking out the window, but I don’t know how much it’s modifying his behavior. I just hope it helps in the long run. And the cat, well, he’s just obsessive with the cat.

Zoe did so well tonight! I’m so proud of her. After last week I was really feeling like it was going to be a long process, but this is only the second class and she made tons of progress. We were almost a half hour early, so we were let into the training building alone. I let Zoe sniff around the entire room, ran back and forth with her (to try to get her mind off *where she was*), then we picked a seat and sat while the others arrived.

The first to arrive was a young, very friendly lab. I let Zoe sniff noses and say hi - she’s good with other dogs, she’s very submissive but not afraid. The people she’s less sure of, but I think she’s most scared of the general movement and sounds and activity around her. It overwhelms her. So she was looking a little out of sorts while everyone came in and sat down and the class started, but she settled down again.

She spent a good part of the class just laying beside my chair. She wouldn’t stay in front of my chair, and I wouldn’t let her hide behind it, so she just sat beside me and then just lay down. Actually it was pretty funny, she didn’t really want to turn around to face the same way I was, so she sat facing the corner, with her back to the room. LOL I don’t know what that was about. Her body language was much more relaxed than it was last week, though. When she layed down she kicked her back legs out to the side and wasn’t so tense. She was panting with her mouth open.

And, she took treats! I decided to use cut-up hot dogs, she seemed to show the same amount of interest in that as the cheese, and I rather like my cheese myself. So she was taking treats the whole way through class, and eating them. I was so surprized. At the end of class everyone practiced sit, down, and stand with gentle collar pressure and using the treats to lure them into position (to teach them), and Zoe was even able to practice with me. She doesn’t need to be lured into a sit at all, she does need to be lured into a down still (she doesn’t know the word yet, she only knows the hand signal), and she really resisted being lured into a stand. She kept shuffling her butt up to stay in a sit. I think she’s a bit confused on that front. We also practiced a sit/stay with me standing right in front of her and rewarding as she sat there, and waiting for a release. She did well with that - though I was having a bit of a problem keeping her attention on me instead of warily looking around the room at everyone else, but I know that level of distraction is pretty high for her right now.

All in all in was a very progressive night. I’m starting to think that Zoe might make it out of this in much better shape than I anticipated. I was very proud of her, sitting calmly beside me. She whined once or twice (because she wanted to just get out of the building), but other than that she’s so quiet, just sitting or laying there. Huge difference from the barking, wiggling, jumping labs all around us.

Zeeke just started barking out the window again at god-knows-what. I walk in there and called him off, he came. I put him in a sit, then a down. He just looked at me. I told him to stay and walked to the kitchen to grab a dog treat. Zoe of course gets excited so she comes running over - and jumped over top of Zeeke on the way! He didn’t even twitch. Talk about distraction. Good boy!

Last night as I was puttering in the bedroom getting ready for bed Zeeke started snuffling around the outside of his crate and into the closet. He started eating something. I went over to check, and I found… kibble. He was eating random pieces of kibble. I figure he must have dropped some while eating and they rolled out of his crate and into the closet.

Zoe joined him in the snuffling for kibble, and unfortunately Zeeke wouldn’t cut it out. So he ended up locked in his crate just to be quiet and leave it alone. When Den came to bed a short while later I got up and unlocked the door. Zeeke didn’t move.

6 hours later (give or take), I wake up and find Zeeke… in his crate. The door was wide open, but he never left it all night. I fully expected him to crawl up onto the bed in the middle of the night like usual, but I guess either he was comfortable or he thought he was supposed to stay there.

The funniest part was that after laying in bed for some time, Den said, “Where’s Zoe?” She was in her crate. I didn’t lock her in at all. But every time Zeeke goes in his crate, Zoe goes in hers. She certainly takes her leads from him!

Dear Zoe,

You refusing to go potty when I take you out and stand there for 10 minutes in the cold does not constitute an emergency on my part when, 15 minutes later, you decide you really do need to go. Please make up your mind while you’re out there - and stick to it.

Thanks,
Mom