Changes....

Our little Bobo was switched to another foster home for a few weeks yesterday and while we are sad not to have the hilarious little goober with us now, for Langley and his sake it had to be done. 

Bo has fear issues around dogs that are larger than him and it might have been possible to work on those issues had Langley been an older, mellower dog.  We did work to the point where they could be in the same room together and from there to a point where they could actually play in a relaxed way.  However play often ended in Bo getting offended at Langley's antics.
Bo became increasingly stressed out and yappy.  Langley never fought back and did his best to avoid the altercations but he too suffered from the stress.  Instead of seeing Langley's anxiety turned outside in the form of reactivity, he turned it inside, becoming compulsive and developing behaviors he didn't have before like digging, chewing destructively, and being incredibly compulsive about eating things outside he found in the yard - sticks, rocks, slugs, fir cones, plants.... His energy also increased from a medium level to a high nervous energy, which in turn upset Bo to the point of not just yapping but constantly pacing. Both dogs were in a state of high alert at all times.  Things were in a downward spiral and no one - dogs or humans - was very happy.

So with the changes the goal is to put as much training time and energy into Langley as possible to hopefully relax him and get him back to the dog he was in his first couple weeks with us.  He's getting lots of short training sessions every day and walks in the neighborhood and high speed fetch sessions in the back yard to burn off energy.  We're proud he's learned "down" without using a lure this week and we are working towards a "down-stay" and helping him learn to self soothe and choose to relax.

Bo on the other hand is taking a vacation at a foster home with no other pets.  Not that he can't handle other dogs - he did great with Tilly and Frodo and even with some of the female fosters that temped at our house.  He is just having some time to relax in a "Langley-free" environment (thanks to a very kind and helpful foster parent who took Bo in on last minute notice) and once Langley is adopted then Bo can come back to us if he isn't yet adopted and maybe we can do a little work with him on his fear of big dogs so he's not such a little Napoleon.