HAPPY DOG!! LIFE WITH BUDDY

Wow, I am so amazed at all the changes I see in Buddy since we got him at the end of February.  He feels so much better and is even stronger than he was--and he was very strong already!  His coat is healthy now, with his liver patches all soft and no longer faded, and his ribs don't stick out anymore. 

He has made tons of progress in his demeanor with our kitty--which is a blessing since we all had to run for the basement during a scary storm last week that uprooted one of our trees!  (Fortunately, somewhere in his previous life, Buddy had learned to deal with stairs, so that wasn't a problem.)  I am still very careful about the two of them, but I do think that Buddy is capable of coexisting with a kitty without problem if he is given time to learn.

I am giving Buddy much more freedom in the house than he was allowed initially.  He has been free for about three hours right now with no accidents and no reprimands.  He follows me from room to room, and is napping on the floor beside me now as I work at the computer.  We are working on Sit, Stay, Come, and Back.  He has made a lot of progress but still has to work on these.  Being on a leash is still a challenge; he can be very good but he can also be very determined to get from Point A to Point B regardless of who is at the other end of the leash.  :-)  He has not shown any inclination to get on the furniture except once to retrieve a tennis ball. 

He loves toys and enjoys rooting around in the toy basket.  Tennis balls are still his favorite.  :-)  And he loves to roll around in the grass--does that several times a day.  Now that our pool is open, he loves to walk around on the first step but will go no further, even if he is desperate to retrieve his tennis ball.

Buddy can sure be noisy--he has a very penetrating bark!  especially when one of us has just come home--but at night he is always happy to settle down in his crate around 8:30 or 9:00 and he doesn't make a sound until 6 a.m. or thereabouts when we are moving about. I can only think of one or at the most two times that he has let me know that he needed to go out in the middle of the night.  He also stays in his crate when I am gone from the house, as does our own male GSP.  To avoid any problems when the two of them are being fed, Buddy also eats in his crate.  (I don't know that this is necessary for Buddy, but our own GSP has had food issues with some of our other dogs in the past, so it has seemed better to err on the side of caution.)