Langley's Excellent Adventure

Langley has a big adventure, starting tonight.  He's going to be staying on a farm with one of New Rattitude's dog sitters and their 5 dogs for the weekend while we are camping on the Oregon Coast.  Mary, his dog sitter, has kindly taken this boy on, in spite of knowing his anxiety issues and how he likes to eat slugs and catch and eat birds or whatever other bug or small animal comes his way.  She has lots of training experience and a centered and even pack of dogs so this will be a great experience for our sweet, silly foster boy.  Wish him luck!

Langley: Working Towards Calm

We are helping Langley to relax after he got pretty ramped up and anxious due to he and Bo not getting along.  To do this we are using all kinds of things to help him come back down to his normal young punk terrier state of mind. 
The Thundershirt that he wears has taken his energy down a notch, making it easier to get his attention for the training games we work on.  He's also getting an herbal tincture called K9 and Kitty Calmer by Liquid Health twice a day and his bedding gets dried with Mrs. Meyers Lavender dryer sheets.  We don't know if any or all of these are working but something is because he's a little bit calmer.
The next step is keeping his mind busy on things other than his anxieties.  He's a smart little guy so we are doing clicker training and marking calm behaviors, such as when he is laying on one of the dog beds calmly, or when another dog is barking and he doesn't engage.  He's also learning and constantly practicing new skills.  "Sit" and "down" have been learned and now we are working on a "down-stay", a skill that can be practiced and used to help him learn to settle somewhere and self soothe.
An easy way to engage most terriers' minds is around mealtime.  Langley used to get a meal of kibble and canned food mixed up.  Now the canned food gets mixed with his supplements and frozen in a Kong for times when he's more anxious so he has something to focus on.  His kibble gets put in a Kong Wobbler toy and he has to work at that to get the kibble out.  Last night was his first try at the Wobbler and he really needed help to figure it out.  He wanted to just chew and lick his way into the small hole where the food comes out.  This morning when I set his Wobbler out he was knocking it around the room like an old pro as you see in this video.

It's a slow process that requires baby steps but he is getting there.  He has a meet up with a potential adopter in a couple weeks.  They adopted a previous foster of ours and if Langley and their boy get along it would be an excellent home for him.  So our goal in the next couple of weeks is to get closer to relaxed and able to play and interact with a new dog.  It's a tall order for this under-confident boy, but we will give it our all.

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.

Langley's favorite game

Langley love the rope toy that he found under the deck.  It had been marinating there over the winter and now was ripe enough to be played with.

Langley vs. the Slug: An Epic Battle

It all started with a young dog's curiosity.  Both Langley and the slug fought valiantly but in the end were both losers.

While in the back yard with me, Langley happened upon a yellow and black spotted banana slug of the size that only a long, wet, Washington June can grow.  With his razor sharp, freshly trimmed nails he pawed the alien life form with interest, and set in motion the short but messy battle.  The slug unleashed a powerful amount of slime in panic and Langley, who believes you should taste everything at least once, slurped up a couple ounces of slimy goodness.
Quickly he learned that banana slugs aren't so tasty when they grow large and past their prime and spit the slug back out.

I watched him from across the yard messing with something: chewing it, pawing it, nosing it and rushed up with the pooper scooper.  The thing was so large and mangled that at first I thought he had caught a mouse.  Then he looked up at me.  He had leaves, grass, dirt and bits of slug guts stuck to his face.  Then I knew, we were dealing with a slug.

After taking the slug to the yard waste bin to rest in peace, it was Langley's turn.  His paw was covered in slime and dirt as was his face.  So I carried a squirming 18 pounds of rat terrier to the kitchen sink, de-slimed him as much as is possible and then put him in his crate to contain the left over slime and let it get enough fuzzy blanket stuck to it that it will not be spread around the house when he is released.
Life can have some rough lessons for a curious pup.

Pictured with a leaf stuck in the slime left on his face

The Couch

A favorite place in our house is the back of the couch.  It provides great views of the backyard and the squirrels, crows, raccoons and opossums that occasionally visit so the dogs love to sit there and attempt to scare off any intruders to what they view as their domain.  Here you see foster boys Bo and Langley, sharing patrol duty this morning from their favorite perch.

Last weekend we had guests at the house and one of them wasn't a fan of dogs.  They made the mistake of sitting on the couch right in front of the prized back of the couch dent that all the dogs love.  Over bounded Langley, he charged up over the top of her and planted his butt in the prize spot, draping his legs down her side and giving her a big lick as if to say "HIYA there, I'm Langley! Isn't this end of the couch the BEST EVER!!!"  She learned to avoid the couch.

Anyhow, the dogs have it mostly back to themselves and have spent this week celebrating with extra patrol duty.

Bo and Langley are friends! (mostly)

While there are still a few rough patches, for the most part Bo and Langley get along pretty well now.  Langley doesn't mind Bo's initial need to go all snark-Napoleon on him each time they are first outside together and that allows Bo to relax and realize that even though Langley outweighs him by 5 pounds and is double his height, he isn't a threat to him.  They now can spend time together in the house playing without having me hover over them closely supervising, which we all enjoy much better.   So it took a couple weeks of work but the boys are doing just fine now and enjoy having each other to play with since Tilly and Frodo can't be bothered.  Great news for all involved!