Langley Heads Home Part One: Getting Ready to Go

Last week was a busy, busy week getting Langley all packed and ready to make his big move to his new home. Since we wanted his new dad to have all the tools that we've found to work well, and because we wanted Langley to be able to take all his favorite things with him, we had quite a load to pull together.

The start of the pile

And here it was getting a little out of control...

Finally I had to get a box because there were so many toys and puzzles to send with so he could keep busy. 

Beyond just pulling together all the food, supplements, treats, toys, blankies, etc., I also wanted to compile behavioral and medical info for Langley's new human so that they could hit the ground running and not have to blindly flounder around for what works best with Langley. I always send a dog home with a "Go-Home Binder" but it's generally a page of summarized vetting and food info and then copies of a dogs medical records. Langley's go home binder was going to be more of a "What to Expect When You're Expecting...a Langley" book.

I started out with 2 pages of talking about Langley, how to work with his anxiety, the idea of training for a "default calm", the concept of stress stacking, what the term "threshold" means and where Langley's threshold is at, yada, yada, yada...  Next I had a couple pages on food and nutrition since when Langley gets anxious he can have bouts of gastro-enteritis and for him food and behavior are very much linked. Then there was a 2 page "Cue Dictionary" of the verbal and visual cues Langley has learned for various behaviors. Finally to round off the Behavior section we had the report from Dr. Louisa Beal, DVM, a wonderful behavioral veterinarian who visited with Langley in our home. That was the "Part 1" of the book.

Next we had the basic go-to vetting documents: neuter certificate, Rabies certificate, proof of DHPP vaccination, and the most recent blood test results. That was followed by the large section of vetting invoices from our many vet visits and then finally the actual vetting chart notes, which were very interesting to review.

And as if that wasn't over the top enough, I rounded out this avalanche of info with video's of me letting Langley out of his crate and letting him out into the back yard to show how to wait for him to settle and practice impulse control. Yes, there was some overkill involved in Langley's go home.

I definitely acted like a worried mama bear, but Langley's dad Bruce took it all in stride. He accepted my questioning about the dog trainer he wanted to use and the barrage of advice with quiet grace and let me work it out of my system.

And tomorrow you will see the results of this "go home" and how Langley is doing in his new life.