Gatsby

Profile

Gatsby, Gatsby, Gatsby. What can we say about this 1.5 year old fella? LOTS! Gatsby has been in foster care in the Plymouth area for a couple weeks now, allowing us to get to know this quirky guy. Starting with the basics; he is up to date on all his shots and was given a clean bill of health form the vet. 

Gatsby is quite the character. If dog's could be comedians, he would be one!! He brings lots of laughter to our house with his odd and quirky personality. For still being a puppy, he's really quite well behaved. Inside the house with just my husband and I, he is very well mannered. He has free roam of the main floor, fully potty trained, he doesn't counter surf, he doesn't jump on us and what's really great is he entertains himself! The other day I accidentally left a zucchini I picked from our garden on the bench. He found it and started playing with it! Watch this video of him "attacking" the zucchini! He has also found door stops to be entertaining, but he's a bit nervous and curious about them at the same time. Thankfully he doesn't play with them unless we boing the stopper with our feet. Here's another funny video of him jumping away from the stopper. Just as he's curious about the door stopper, he's also curious and nervous about frogs. He sees them and he'll jump around like he did with the zucchini, but will still want to get close to it to check it out. On our walks we also noticed he's a bit skiddish of loud vehicles, sudden noises and too much stimulation. It's clear to us he hasn't been socialized all that much. So we're trying to get him out on walks a few times a day to get him more used to different sounds, smells, and sights. the walks go pretty well until he smells something interesting and then he'll pull off towards that direction. Sometimes he'll get scared of something and he'll just lay down not wanting to move. When this happens, we have to pull him to get going and then he'll be okay until the next interesting smell or other "scary" thing gets to him.

Gatsby LOVES to play fetch! i think he would do it all day long if he didn't get tired from it :) We play with him quite a bit to wear off some energy after sleeping all day. Not only that, he likes to be chased around - kind of like we're going to attack him and then he'll dodge us and tempt us to "attack" him again. It's really cute!

Gatsby does great in the house alone. As I mentioned above he has free roam of the main level throughout the night and 9 hours during the day while we're at work. He simply sleeps the time away so nothing has been chewed up - our house remains intact! Whew! We keep him baby gated on the main level because we do have a cat that's afraid of him. His surrendering owner said he has lived with 3 cats, but mine is too afraid to be introduced so for now, we are keeping them separated. Which he does really well respecting baby gates!

This guy is delightful, but he does have 1 downfall. Due to not being socialized much, he gets overly excited when he meets new people. When he meets new people, whether it's in the house or outside on a walk, he'll jump at them and nuzzle their hands trying to lick them up. It sounds endearing, but he's 70 pounds of pure muscle. To hold him back is a lot of work and with the energy behind his body he has that much more power. I'm afraid that this excitement and "crazy" behavior will deter anyone from adopting him as they won't see his true personality. But once he's used to his humans, he is just your typical puppy who wants to be by his people, play and be loved. We're currently working with him on staying "down" when he's around new people, but it'll take some time and patience as he was not trained previously.

One thing that puts Gatsby to sleep instantly are car rides! He's just like a baby!! As soon as the car starts moving, he curls up into a ball and falls asleep. It is the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

Gatsby is a fantastic dog with lots of personality and love to give his forever family. He definitely needs a family that is patient and has the time to socialize him and teach him to be calm around strangers. We think because of his strength, size and energy, a family with kids 10 and up would be best. But once he has been trained on how to stay down around strangers he will be the absolute perfect dog!