Hugging

Ryker has been living with us three weeks.  Just when I begin to wonder how far along  he really was going to progress he goes and shows me that he is doing better than I give him credit.  I have wondered if he would ever feel safe outside the area of his dog bed.  He clings to that bed as if it is the only thing holding him together.  This week I caught him laying in other rooms. 

Herding him outside and inside has become such a breeze.  He still has the occasional potty accident, always at night.  I figure he might be his most relaxed at night when all the scary people are asleep.  Ryker has decided that eating food in a bowl is not such a bad idea and he has expressed a real preference for having his dry food lightly coated in canned pumpkin.  In fact, if I don't stir the pumpkin into the dry food, he will eat the all of the pumpkin, ignore the dry food, and wait until I realized he needs more pumpkin in order to consume the dry stuff.    

Tonight we had our first training session.   I was standing in the kitchen and Ryker kept walking through sometimes stopping and watching me.  If I looked at him he would run away.  So I grabbed a box of treats and sat in the kitchen floor intentionally not looking at him.  He came up to me and stopped.  It was the first time I had been able to pet him while he was standing up.

He sat down, Chance came in and we all had a training session.  Chance would "shake" for a treat, Ryker would follow the treat to my eyes and make eye contact or "look" for a treat.  Chance would lay "down", treat, Ryker would "look", treat.   Chance would "shake", Ryker let me touch his paw for "shake".  Ryker seems to inherently know "leave it".  He's one smart dog. 

Both dogs are now snoring on the kitchen floor.  I tip toed into the kitchen and Ryker stood up. I had anticipated him bolting; for the first time he did not.  He stood up, let me approach him and give him a giant hug with lots of fur scratching. Silly me forgetting that he is healing on the inside and I won't always see the progress on the outside.