Fuller House

Anybody remember Reaghan?

Well, she's back.  She's very overweight, she was overdue on vaccines and your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not she was on heartworm prevention.  The couple who adopted her also had a laundry list of issues they were having with her.  So apparently, even careful screening cannot weed out all people who are inept at pet parenting. 

One of the main issues they had was urinating in the house, both in the form of excited/submissisve urination and purposeful urination due to unknown causes-marking, stress, dominance, UTI? 

So far she has excited urinated three times since being here.  All in the first 24 hours when being let out of her crate or x-pen.  Since then she has done great-even after a long night or several hours during the day.  She did purposefully pee in her bed at the clinic the day the tranport volunteer dropped her off.  So we have not allowed her access to bedding in her kennel, or on soft surfaces when she is loose unless we know she is "empty" and we are gradually increasing the amount of time she gets out of her x-pen.  She was also treated for a UTI while being boarded and waiting for transport.  It didn't seem like it was all the way gone based on her lab results so I am doing another round of antibiotics at a higher dose.  

I think she didn't have a lot of rules or structure at her home.  They refused to crate her and she was allowed on all furniture.   She was also loose in the house with the other dogs furing the day and we don't really know what went on between them. So we are instituting rules and structure for her.  

They also said she snapped at another dog that visited the home.  She will growl if my dogs come close but this is mainly a personal space/territorial issues.  She responds well to verbal correction and I think this will improve.  She's not outright aggressive to other animals as they portrayed-she plays outside with Trace and is fine as long as no one invades her personal space in the house.  So I think she will get over this eventually with time and consistency.  She will chase and bark at cats but that's not really new so we continue to work on it.  

And of course we have her on a diet!

She's still the sweet, little love bug that she was before, just needs a little retraining in the right direction.  

Tomorrow Trace will go back to his own foster home and our house won't be quite so full.  It's been a busy weeeknd of juggling dogs!