It's a new day!

Hi, Pepper here again. It's been an interesting 24 hours. I'm going to turn the pen over to foster mom since she learned alot in that time and I'm napping.

Hi, it's foster mom. Pepper had been his adorable self. However, I'm amazed how many mistakes I've made in the last 24 hours. Let's address them one by one.

Crate:
I've trained 3 dogs to the crate (one passed away and two still with me) and the wire crate is much easier for a dog to accept. So what did I do? I started Pepper in a plastic crate. I didn't realize my mistake until I crawled in one last night to comfort him while he was working himself up at night. The environment in there was horrible. Very isolating. So this morning while I was feeding my bird I put him in the wire one in the family room instead of the plastic one in the kitchen. He fussed much less because it feels alot less isolating. Blossom my youngest dog had the same reaction so I should have known better.

In the family room/kitchen we have a plastic crate and a wire crate. Both girl dogs will sleep in them on occasion. It's a nice place for them to catch a nap and feel secure. In addition, when they were being trained to be nice to the bird they had to be in the crate. Now the crates are just nap spots and places to get away from the annoying bird. But they still come in handy when there is a guest dog and the bird needs to come out of the cage for cleaning or play.

Crate training is useful for many reasons. If I drop something on our tile floor that shatters I can pop the dogs in while I clean up and not have to worry about them tracking through food or broken glass. Another reason I advocate crate training is that a dog who needs medical care will spend some time in a crate at the vet. If their comfortable in one at home then they will be less stressed when they are in one at the vet and hopefully this will help them heal faster.

House Training:
In terms of Pepper's house training. I think he is house trained. He does his business when I take him outside.

However, my house may be different than what he is used to where there is grass right outside the back door. As a result, he doesn't yet feel confident to navigate outside by himself because of all the different areas and paths he needs to cross to get to the grass. As he gets more familiar with the path and comfortable with going out alone this should resolve itself.

We've had two incidents where there were issues in the house. I have to take ownership for both issues. Here is what I did wrong.

Pepper is thin so I have been feeding him whenever he is hungry which is several times a day. This has thrown off his schedule for elimination. This is also likely the cause for him having to go in the middle of the night the second night he was here.

Our house has a rather long complicated path to the grass outdoors which I suspect he was hesitant to navigate being in a new place so he did the next best thing and used the upstairs and downstairs landing which was out of the main living areas.

Pepper has very loose stools which can happen when a dog is stressed or his digestive system is upset by what he eats. For his first meal here I added probiotics. But he didn't want my raw food meal so I gave him kibble and one of the girls got his meal. I had added the probiotics to the raw so he didn't get them.

Probiotics from PetSmart mixed into a little Braunschweiger will help with loose stools
I didn't have any Braunschweiger on hand to deliver the pills. Braunschweiger is a type of liver sausage that is spreadable. It is cheap and available at any grocery store. I've never had a dog refuse to eat something delivered in this manner. I picked some up yesterday so he had probiotics last night and this morning. However, I only have a few pills so will have to go to PetSmart and pick up another bottle.

I highly recommend dog owners keep a bottle of probiotics on hand. It is handy to use whenever you have to use antibiotics and they kill off all the beneficial bacteria in your dog's digestive tract or if there is an imbalance that causes stinky loose stools.


When I crated Pepper yesterday, while I needed to be gone from the house for 2 hours, he went in the crate and needed a bath when I got home. However, it was the plastic crate, increasing his stress level, and I know if you have diarrhea when you gotta go you gotta go. Poor boy. As a result, I started him on dog probiotics last night.

Successful house training
I'm happy to say Pepper did not go in the house last night. Although I did not crate him for the night as I intended. My husband and I are softies so we started the night giving him free run of the room.

As on the first two nights he choose to sleep under the bed on my side. About 2 a.m. I woke up and said, uh oh what is that smell? I jumped out of bed and ushered all three dogs outside for a potty break. The girls were thrilled! Pepper just wandered around, did #1 but not #2. I figured I would head in and clean up whatever mess there was. But there was no mess! I used a flashlight and inspected every square inch of the floor. But the smell was still there. Where was it coming from? I turned on my air cleaner which has two very neat sensors. One is for odor and one for dust. The odor sensor came on at high and it proceeded to clean the air in the room. In about 10 min. there was no smell. So I figured the poor boy had some gas. We all went to bed again.

Not too much longer I heard Pepper moving around on my husband's side of the bed. So I jumped up and ushered all three dogs outside. The girls were again thrilled. Pepper did not have to go so back inside we went. We all went back to bed.

A bit later Pepper jumped on the bed. This was the first time he did this so I figured he was telling me he had to go. I jumped up and repeated the whole outdoor process. Again no need for Pepper to go.

Wire crates are better than plastic ones for crate training a social dog like Pepper
This time when I got back in I crated Pepper so I could get some sleep. He fussed up a storm. My ear plugs worked great and I could have slept but the fussing wasn't a settle down fussing but a working himself up fussing. I put my hand in the crate to comfort him. This didn't work. After a while I crawled in (Pepper is a little dog and we have very big crates) to comfort him. He was still working himself up and I could see why. It felt horrible in there. Very isolating. I let him out and he went back under the bed to sleep. I decided to switch him over to the wire crates the next day. As I mentioned earlier he fussed much less when in a wire crate while I fed my bird the next morning.

Keeping a reasonable schedule is important for housetraining
Another potential issue for Pepper is my dog's current schedule. Last night Pepper went poo outside just before our evening dog walk at about 8:30. We then walked the dogs and fed them about 9:30. Then it was out for one last time and right to bed. My girls like this schedule and have no problem with it. However, they eat raw food which gives them small, low volume, infrequent stools. Their preference is to walk on an empty stomach so they can run around in comfort. They then like to eat right before bed. However, Pepper is getting mostly kibble which will come through his system on a different time schedule. I'll have to figure out a schedule where he can have dinner earlier but still not expose him or the girls to the danger of bloat from running on a full stomach.

I hate to separate their feeding times because of Pepper's desire to control who gets access to food. I've just about got him convinced that I'm the only one who gets to say who gets what food and his input is neither welcome or required.

Pepper is learning quickly to respect other's right to food
Here are a few examples. Last night while preparing the dog's dinners Pepper was sitting right there watching me. One of the girls wandered through the kitchen. He turned to growl at her. She just looked at him like he was crazy. I immediately put him out on the deck for about 10 seconds while I continued preparing the food. I let him back in and he took up his post next to me again. Another girl wandered by and he tried the same thing. This time he was out on the deck for 20 seconds. I then let him back in. The girls were still hanging about and this time he just let them be.

This morning I was handing out raw chicken backs for breakfast. Pepper thought he was entitled to the first one. I physically restrained him while I handed them out. He was trying to push forward to get one. The girls each took theirs and took up posts about 10 ft away to eat. I gave Pepper his and he settled down with it. At one point he thought that one of the girl's looked better than his so he got up to go investigate. I body blocked him and sent him back to his own.

Zero tolerance for growling is the rule in this house
My dogs have never been allowed to growl at each other over food so they didn't react to him. However, his behavior is pretty normal for a dog. Both girls started out behaving similar to him until they figured out I was pretty committed to having a no growl household and there was a zero tolerance policy in effect. The key is to convince Pepper that there is only one person in the house who gets to control access to food and that is me. He doesn't have a say one way or the other.

Fun with agility
Now I'll move on to Pepper's progress in other areas. We had some fun with the agility equipment. I've been treating Pepper like a puppy so it is out for a stroll around the yard every two hours. This is pretty dull for me so I lowered my jumps to their lowest level and had Pepper trot behind me as I walked over the jumps. Pepper is a really polite dog so attempted to go around them first.

As I was encouraging him to go over them, Blossom, who was seated far away under a tree and enjoying the shade with Princess, came sprinting up at full speed. She jumped over the jump, turned and ran back to lay in the shade again. Pepper then did two jumps in a row with no problems. Somehow Blossom knew he needed a demo. I praised him with lots of verbal praise and body rubs. He sat there and soaked it up. He closed his eyes, and leaned into it looking like he just won the lottery.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.
(Roger Hammerstein)
I noticed when my husband came home last night Pepper treated it like a non-event. This meant Pepper may be attaching to me. So I left and went to the store so they could have a little time without me as a distraction. In addition for the evening walk I had my husband harness Pepper up, attach his leash at the gate and hold his leash during the walk while I held on to the girls.

I was right in that Pepper didn't want to let him do the harness or hook him up. But I know Pepper will fall for anyone telling him he is a good boy and talking nicely to him. So I encouraged my husband to chat with him on the walk. About half way through Pepper, who had been trotting along behind me, switched over to trotting along behind my husband. Pepper loves to be talked to sweetly!

I'm going to do the same thing tonight, leaving for the store to give them some one-on-one time and having my husband get him suited up for the walk so that he remembers that there is more than one person in the world.

I've also been taking every opportunity to have someone greet him so that he gets used to different people. I read that Heelers have a tendency to be one person dog's but with a little management Pepper can enjoy multiple people in his life.

Pepper is polite and not pushy
Interestingly enough Pepper doesn't push himself forward when it comes to attention. He is happy to stand by while I pay attention to his foster sisters. If he wasn't I would body block him out as I did have to do that for the girls when they first came to me.

Great progress on down
We just did two downs in the kitchen for treats. Pepper did great. The first time I helped him a bit but the second time he offered the down on his own!