I had expected Cai to be very annoyed with her and to have to keep them separate most of the time. However Terra is (so far) very sleepy and mellow, and so Cai ignores her except when he is guarding something or she comes close to knocking into him. The guarding is a problem, as it has always been when I have other dogs around. He guards his crate. He guards his preferred toys. He guards food. He guards me when he's on my lap or getting petting. I'm working on it by preempting the guarding and praising him when Terra approaches, interrupting the moment I see a stare or lip curl, and giving him a time out if I don't catch it and he snarks at her. We are practicing taking turns for petting, play time, and training. I also encourage him to move away and hang out in his crate if Terra is playing with the current boarding dog and he's getting annoyed. (He also often goes into his crate on his own to avoid the mayhem.)
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| Photobomb |
So far Terra respects him and gives him space, but is not afraid of him, which is perfect. I will be watching carefully in case she gets too assertive as she enters adolescence and feels like she can throw her weight around. I am prepared to keep them separated when unsupervised for their whole lives. Terra should be at least 120 lbs when full grown and Chimera is 9 lbs. Accidents happen between dogs and I have to keep my little guy safe.
In lighter news, Cai is actually getting MORE attention and training time this week because I want to make it up to him that I brought this puppy home. We are super rusty in our Rally-FrEe skills and I want to fix those up and get back to competing. Our new weekly agility class is helping with that sport, and we're slowly getting back in sync. Hopefully we'll return to agility trials by the end of the year.
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| Cai enjoying Terra's puppy party |
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