Back for more: The Chronicles of Dylan

Anyone who actually reads this mess is caught up on my life since 2008, so the only purpose of this post is to begin a real-time log of training our newest little turkey, Dylan. 

She's the new sister that we just rescued for our original pup, Nala.

Obviously, we have a type: small, female, brindle pit mixes with white necks and bossy personalities.  Since Nala is 4, and actually pretty well behaved, we thought adding the new gal would be fairly easy.  It wasn't, and they had a few squabbles.  So, we put little Dyl in training class.  So begins my log of her training and Nala's adjustment to her new sister.  I'm hoping that we can look back on our progress whenever we get discouraged, and feel better about where we once were.

Day1:  Dyl's Assessment and First Day of School (9/11/13)

We walked Dyl over to class, and she did ok on her leash until we got to downtown Kirkwood.  She became very distracted by all of the people and dogs.  We walked her over to the trainer, and she was sweet to him, but then a dog walked by and she started making her "monkey sounds" which are a combination of a whine, a bark and a gargle.  Good tricks, Dyl.  We walked her around the park, and learned how to walk her properly and keep her from pulling as much.  We walked by a few dogs and she pulled and whined.  Needless to say, she was not invited to indoor class, so I suppose the title is a misnomer.

We were invited to outdoor class on Saturday to further assess her.  He also suggested that she spend more time in her crate, which is a relief honestly.  That means we don't have to constantly monitor the girls when they are inside, and we can make every interaction a good one (good play time outside, good walks together when we can, and only let them play together when Nala "invites" Dylan).

Nala doesn't seem to mind having Dylan in the crate either.  She likes getting more of our attention again, especially since we're training her too.  She's learning to walk on a loose leash and generally be more attentive to our commands (sit/stay/focus/you can't sleep in bed with us anymore, sorry). 

So there's day 1.  Here's hoping things improve by day 30!