Making Progress!

Well, Tango has been doing pretty well in the household behavior department. Mind you, this is in terms of improvement, but, hey, gotta start somewhere. He has not taken any books off of shelves, nor actually taken any unapproved article for play except for a few socks. The socks seem tough. He really likes them. Of course, from a dog point of view, what's not to love? Really they're pretty much ideal as a tug toy - long, kinda stretchy, but tough enough to not shred instantly.

Still no potty problems, he has been using the doggie door faithfully whenever he needs it. I can't leave him unsupervised for any great length of time, just because he does tend to find things like socks... So, a friend told me the other day, that my house is full of temptation. This is true. I have a basket of clean laundry in front of the TV and a couple piles of dirty laundry sorted and ready to go into the machine on my bedroom floor. My reply was that if he learns to resist the in-your-face temptation of my particular brand of housekeeping, he will be fine anywhere.

I don't think he's solid yet on the idea that you can't just take anything you can reach, he still tries to do a bit of counter surfing, but he really has gotten better. I can leave him unattended for five or ten minutes at a time without walking into a living room full of shredded whatevers when i check up on him.

In terms of skills and tricks:

Sit - really solid
Lie down - really solid
Stay - we're working on it
Shake -really solid
Go outside - pretty good
Come - pretty good-solid
Off (as in get off the couch/bed/whatever)- pretty good

I have also been getting him and Teddy to play more quietly inside. More wrestling, less barking.

Although he is a pretty high energy dog, he has become less frenetic as he has settled in. I think a portion of his hyperactivity is anxiety at all the changes. Tango is the kind of guy who would do really well with an established routine.

By the way, he is pretty good about baths. I dragged him into the shower the other day and he let me soap him up and rinse him with only a feeble attempt at escape. After I let him go, he came back into the shower because he thought that maybe the bath sponge would be a good toy. We discussed it, and he agreed that maybe it wasn't appropriate (in other words, I put it out of reach).

Well, that's all for now.