kingdomkey
New member
This is an update to a previous post
It’s been about six months since I found a stray dog and brought her into my home, which includes my husband, me, and our six year old dog, Martin. We’d been working with a vet behaviorist to manage Martin’s reactivity when the new dog came into our lives, and I reached out to this community for advice and support.
Thank you to everyone who gave me encouragement and said it may be possible to integrate the two dogs. I’m especially grateful to those told me to take it really slow. (Shout out to @ggg17 and @donica in particular!)
I spent about a month keeping the dogs separated and getting to know the new dog, Soonhi. Some encouraging signs were that she’s very low energy, not possessive of anything, and not reactive herself.
As I started taking the dogs out for walks together I could see that Soonhi is very aware of Martin’s body language, which I took as another positive sign.
Although there were a couple setbacks, I used baby gates, x-pen fences, and muzzles to gradually increase the dogs’ interactions within the home, while keeping everyone safe. I also tried very hard to keep Martin’s daily schedule as uninterrupted as possible.
It’s been a couple months since things have reached a sustainable/happy plateau:
Soonhi stays in a dog-proofed room while the humans are at work (she’s very curious and chews on everything!) while Martin continues to have the run of the rest of the house (which is how things had been for most of his life).
The dogs are separated for meals, but have learned to accept treats one at a time. If one dog accidentally drops a treat, the other knows that it still belongs to the dropee and isn’t allowed to go after it.
The dogs walk together for potty breaks, but they each get at least one long individual walk daily where they get to sniff freely and also work on individual training reinforcement.
Dogs hang out around the house freely while humans are home. Sometimes Martin doesn’t like something that Soonhi does, but we respect his posture or little warning growls and redirect Soonhi if she hadn’t already de-escalated on her own. He doesn’t care to be friends with her, but sometimes wags his tail around her. She would love to be his bestie cuddle-buddy, but seems to understand that he’s a prickly character and gives him space
Thank you again. I’ve learned so much from this community and I’m so happy to be able to have two satisfied dogs in my life!
Edited to thank a couple users in particular
It’s been about six months since I found a stray dog and brought her into my home, which includes my husband, me, and our six year old dog, Martin. We’d been working with a vet behaviorist to manage Martin’s reactivity when the new dog came into our lives, and I reached out to this community for advice and support.
Thank you to everyone who gave me encouragement and said it may be possible to integrate the two dogs. I’m especially grateful to those told me to take it really slow. (Shout out to @ggg17 and @donica in particular!)
I spent about a month keeping the dogs separated and getting to know the new dog, Soonhi. Some encouraging signs were that she’s very low energy, not possessive of anything, and not reactive herself.
As I started taking the dogs out for walks together I could see that Soonhi is very aware of Martin’s body language, which I took as another positive sign.
Although there were a couple setbacks, I used baby gates, x-pen fences, and muzzles to gradually increase the dogs’ interactions within the home, while keeping everyone safe. I also tried very hard to keep Martin’s daily schedule as uninterrupted as possible.
It’s been a couple months since things have reached a sustainable/happy plateau:
Soonhi stays in a dog-proofed room while the humans are at work (she’s very curious and chews on everything!) while Martin continues to have the run of the rest of the house (which is how things had been for most of his life).
The dogs are separated for meals, but have learned to accept treats one at a time. If one dog accidentally drops a treat, the other knows that it still belongs to the dropee and isn’t allowed to go after it.
The dogs walk together for potty breaks, but they each get at least one long individual walk daily where they get to sniff freely and also work on individual training reinforcement.
Dogs hang out around the house freely while humans are home. Sometimes Martin doesn’t like something that Soonhi does, but we respect his posture or little warning growls and redirect Soonhi if she hadn’t already de-escalated on her own. He doesn’t care to be friends with her, but sometimes wags his tail around her. She would love to be his bestie cuddle-buddy, but seems to understand that he’s a prickly character and gives him space
Thank you again. I’ve learned so much from this community and I’m so happy to be able to have two satisfied dogs in my life!
Edited to thank a couple users in particular