An interesting week

I've been home for a week now and things are going good with Axl. Just my being home makes him happier and calmer. When I'm home he has to be near me. If I'm on the desktop in the office he will lay on the carpet right outside the room. Right now I'm sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop and he is on his bed right next to me. He has to be close. I frequently pet him while he's sleeping and tell him what a good boy he is. Some books say that this will promote a calm state because he is getting attention while he is calm and relaxed. This tells him that is way we like him. We have also been taking them on walks a little bit earlier. We go at 4pm and at that time there is no one else out - usually anyway. So his walks have been calm and relaxed with no run-ins. It's been good.

Last night we had some friennds over and it's the first time we've had lots of people over at the new place. Since both Axl and Lola have a habit of jumping when people come in the house I had a plan. I cut up some hot dogs and when someone was going to enter the house I made them sit and I fed them hot dogs. The person would come in and completely ignore the dogs. After a couple of minutes the dogs were calm and the people being in the house were okay. They could then pet the dogs and the dogs remained calm and pretty focused on me with the hot dogs. By the time everyone got here and came in the house the dogs were completely fine with it. We had dinner out in the backyard and the dogs were absolute angels. It was awesome. I feel like I should send thank you cards to everyone who did as I asked with the dogs. Maybe I could find a deal on baby shower thank you cards that would work :) Just kidding.....

I guess the lessons I have learned over the last few months is that I have to set the dogs up for success. I have really gotten the feeling that this may never be fixed. This is something we quite possibly will be dealing with the rest of their lives. And I'm okay with that. I will make their lives as happy as I possibly can and I'll work with them forever if I need to.