Rylie

Profile

We received Rylie into our home last Sunday, and feel so lucky to have this sweet and beautiful girl in our lives.

So far, these are our observations and experiences with Rylie over the last 7 days: She is very smart, and has a wonderful personality, with both a sweet side and playful side. Rylie is very affectionate, giving lots of hand and face kisses, gently places her paw on you just to be in contact, and LOVES to nestle and cuddle up. She has a fantastic playful side where she likes to show off by parading around the house with her tennis ball or bone (she loves attention). She loves running around in our fenced-in back yard, and definitely has a ton of energy for an 8 year old. She'll play fetch, though she'll quickly lose interest to sniffing around and observing the happenings in the yards of our neighbor's. She loves the snow, and will run and bite at the snow or roll around in it. Along with that, she has a very calm demeanor, and she loves to just hang out on her dog bed or calmly chew a bone. Other observations include: housebroken; basic obedience training (sit, down, stay); tolerates a bath; sleeps on her own bed in our room; won't jump on furniture unless invited; won't jump up on people (she does do a cute little happy hop, but not onto anybody); no resource guarding; doesn't chew anything but the toys/treats you give her; doesn't beg (hardly takes an interest in people food, in fact); automatically sits to be placed on her leash before walking; is not a constant barker (she'll give one or two alert barks if someone's at the door, but that's it); does fine around household sounds like a vacuum cleaner or coffee grinder; and is really great being around and meeting new people. We don't really have any experience with her around other dogs or children. We understand she will likely not do well around dogs, based on her original bio.

There are 3 things she'll need help with, and that we've already started to address:

1) It was brought to our attention that Rylie is a car chaser, and this is somewhat true. She is full of energy and is overstimulated on walks, and she'll pull hard while on her 2 leashes, including after cars (on two occasions, so far). We've found that she will sit and stay when we ask her, and she'll calmly wait for the car to pass by. Walks take a bit more awareness for cars, but we believe she can improve with the use of a gentle leader and continued training.

2) She's a leash puller; especially wanting to dart and sniff (or dart and bite at the snow). She needs a lot of work with this, and we've already started to train her. She tolerates a gentle leader along with her slip-lead. We've started employing a training program to correct this behavior. I think the car chasing and leash pulling go almost hand-in-hand, and we believe both can be corrected with consistent work.

3). Very sadly she exhibits major signs of separation anxiety. She does okay when one person leaves the house and the other stays, but she's very anxious when we both leave (which is never for very long). She knows the classic signs of both of us getting ready to leave, and she'll initially become very depressed and then very anxious (ears back, panting, pacing, whining, even physically shaking). If we try to go out the door she'll try to force her way through to be with us, so closing the door has been difficult sometimes (thankfully we have a mud room so she can't dart outside). Unfortunately, she doesn't care for any sort of treats or toys to distract her during this time. We're unsure if this recently developed after her change in environment, or if this has been a longstanding issue from before. Again, we're attempting to work on helping her with this.

She's scheduled tomorrow for a routine checkup at the vet. So far, she seems very healthy and happy, has bonded well with us, and we're very happy to be a part of her life right now.