My Dogs

We have had Poncho and Jen for just over 3 months now, and it is hard to imagine life without them. They add a sort of structure to the day.

07.15 : Short walk
09.00: Dogs breakfast
10.00: Morning walk
12.45: Short walk
13.00: Dogs Lunch
16:00: Short walk
19:00: Evening walk
23.00: Short walk

Meals
Food is always greeted with great enthusiasm - Poncho doing twirls and jumps, Jen trotting along behind as the bowls are taken into the porch area. Jen always looks up before diving in - Poncho has no such manners. After finishing Jen always comes to find me to give me the appreciative burp, while Poncho just has to check both bowls at least 3 times just in case some more food has magically appeared.

Walks
Poncho's philosophy is: Hills are made to look over, corners are made to look around and the quicker you can do it the better. Anything that is not a greyhound or a person is a potential source of excitement.
Jen's philosophy is: Walking in one direction is for wimps. I may be a sight-hound, but I love to sniff too.

The early days
The first week or so was a sharp learning curve for all of us, and we are still learning. Poncho, and to a lesser extent Jen, suffered separation anxiety. I couldn't go anywhere during the day without being followed. Nights were nightmares. I was beginning to wonder what the hell I had done. On night 8, however, they settled and have not been a problem since.

Poncho, unlike Jen, had never lived in a house before we adopted him. Considering that, we have had very few 'accidents' and almost none since the first couple of weeks. It was important to get a structure to the day, and this has almost certainly been key in them settling down.

Jen was adept at getting up and down stairs, even though we discouraged her from doing so. Poncho, however, had never encountered stairs before in his life. Unfortunately by watching/following Jen he soon learned how to get up. Over the first week (normally in the early hours of the morning) we had to carry/lift/paw-by-paw train him how to get down again. We tried fitting a dog-gate across the stairs, but it was slightly too tall to fight tightly enough, and Poncho found that brute-force could knock it out. We found that just placing a clothes dryer around the bottom of the stairs is much more effective.