The Adventures of BlackDog and Toaster-Pup

Everyone is nicely relaxed in the new digs. Toast has been coming with me to daycare, and enjoys having the company of other dogs. She's starting to want to play with some of the gentler dogs, but is hesitant on the more boisterious ones' approach. Very soon she's going to start playing most of the morning and stop being an observer (similiar to how Honey did at daycare). They want to make sure they're going to be safe and can put their guard down. Toast loves the staff though. She's still a little scared on her trips downstairs and upstairs, but she's following the lead of the other dogs and staff, and is getting much, much better. I don't have to leash her to get to one place to the other now.

She walks excellent on her leash, but is still sometimes a little spooked by loud trucks going by. Luckily, unlike my adventures with Honey, once the truck goes by she perks up and continues on like nothing happens.

Toast also decided today that jumping into a bush full of bees on our way home would be good fun. Picture one scrawny terrier, a buzzing bush, and me on the end of the leash trying to entangle it all in a fit of angry stingers. I wasn't so pleased (though it was pretty funny), but Toast was pleased as punch that she'd given those bees a piece of her mind. Oh terriers!

Toaster-pup, zonked after daycare, the bees and the 50min walk home.



Sharona has also settled in quite well, and is super relaxed now (providing I don't bring board dogs home). She's decided Beckett is her good friend, but like many feral dogs, she has a very small inner circle and doesn't trust anything else. We will keep working on it to expand her world more and more. She's the sweetest, most affectionate dog to her inner crowd though. She's going to make some single person, or couple a very happy person with that absolute loyalty.

She's also decided her new name is "BlackDog". She will 9/10 respond to it when out in the yard, quite a few times doing a pretty decent recall for it. We tried: Cobalt, Charcoal, Dusty, Inferno, Sharona, Rona, Ronnie, Romi, Sara, Sheena, Zena (I really wanted this one to work :S), but alas, she is "BlackDog" -until her new people find something different, its what I'm going to keep calling her.

She's also the kind of dog that if my situation were different, she would probably end up being adopted here. She's been staying out of daycare to de-stress (not that I don't think she'd be good there, but that I want her to become comfortable with us before she has to try anything new) and is enjoying her time to herself (with Beckett most of the time). Everyday I see her decompress a little more, the tightness in her body is leaving and she's less snappy with Toast and Beckett to the point where she hasn't gotten cranky at all today.

She's quite lazy, but loves a good run out in the yard and going for a walk providing its cooler out (she gets hot quite easily with her huge black coat). She's work, but a good kind of work. The kind of work that makes you want to work with her. She's doing well here, but I have the nagging at the back of my mind saying "She needs one-on-one". For now, she'll stay here, and goodness knows I love her, but I know I'm not the best (nor not nearly the worse) kind of foster for her. Alas, the realization that you can not help this dog to the capacity they need and deserve. A tough pill to swallow.

Lovely BlackDog in her usual spot beside the foodbin.


Two great, but very different girls we have here!
Thanks for reading,
Emily