Rhys on the night he came to stay with us
After Rhys' home visit, we agreed to foster him for a month pending adoption. As the adventure began, we had three primary concerns:
- The cats' safety. Our girls are old. Another dog was not going to make them happy. We had to make sure they didn't get eaten
- Eedy's happiness. Eedy's story will be a later chapter in this blog. It is a very special story. For now, suffice it to say that he deserves to live out his golden years surrounded by as much love and happiness as possible
- The elephant in the room. Questions about Rhys' behavior that had caused his first adopters to return him.
Night 1:
The first thing we had to do was make sure the cats were safe overnight. We couldn't confine them to the bedroom without locking the dogs out. Our options were either to kennel Rhys for the night or to muzzle him. We hated both options but we would have hated it worse if had killed one of the cats. We tried to kennel him but it made him really miserable so we put the muzzle on him and all went to bed. I truly wondered if we'd get any sleep. Eedy conked right out on his bed in our room and we finally got Rhys settled on a bed next to our bed. At some point during the night, I heard our old cat (18!) snarl and hiss in the hallway. Rhys ran into the living room. At that point, the problem was solved. He was not going to mess with the cats. I got up and took his muzzle off. Problem 1 marked off the list.
Day 1:
We spent the day at home just chilling with the dogs. Eedy and Rhys seemed to get along just fine and even gave each other a few licks.
Eedy's not so sure about sharing his bed!
By the end of the day, concern number 2 was pretty much no longer an issue. The dogs were fine together. Zero issues.
So far, so good.
But then we had
Night 2:
We knew from the former owner that Rhys had growled at them when he was on their bed. Our goal was to keep him out of the bed. However, that turned out to be easier said than done. We spent 30 minutes trying to keep him off our bed before we relented. We needed sleep. I had surgery recently and Doug had been sick with migraines for several days.
In all honesty, Rhys is a pretty good bed sharer. He did something a little weird when he was settling down -- it was a growly/grumbly thing. It didn't really seem directed at us. But there it was. The beginning of recognizing whatever his issues were.
Unfortunately, it got worse. Twice during the night, one of us bumped him in his sleep and he sleep startled -- waking up growling. Doug slept through this. I did not. There was not really anything I could do other than roust everyone up in the middle of the night, which I chose not to do. But I didn't sleep well, giving Rhys a wide berth.
This obviously was not going to work like this.
Day 2:
We started the day talking to the adoption group about the sleep startling. Obviously, the only solution was to keep him off of our bed. Sleep startling is not a behavior problem. It's a reaction.
The morning started with a new kind of incident. I was sitting on the floor next to Rhys and I started messing with his feet. (His nails need to be done.) He growled at me. DAMN! I firmly told him "no" but decided not to push the issue. It's only Day 2. I've got to cut him some slack. Besides, this is not an insurmountable issue.
Doug and I had already decided to re-arrange our upstairs bedrooms to give us more living space with the dogs. Effectively, we decided to move into the second bedroom and turn ours into a family room. Because our cats are so old and resistant to change, we actually intended to wait a week to give them time to adjust to having another dog. However, they handled it really well and we decided the best way to handle the sleep problem was to go ahead and make the move
So, basically, we made our bed disappear. At least, in the dogs' minds. We moved it into a room that had always been closed to them and continued to keep the door closed. We put a twin mattress, a chair and the slumber ball into our old bedroom. We left our big TV in there so we spent the evening in there with the pups.
I don't think I've mentioned that Rhys is a whiner. He whines sometimes when you're sitting in the room with him.
We weren't sure how the dogs would react to us "disappearing". We got them to sleep, left the tv on for them and snuck into our bedroom. It was Sunday night so we had work the next day. We both had headphones prepared in case Rhys spent the night fussing. We knew we had to be firm and NOT let them in our room. We were also a little worried about Eedy.
Doug and I were both anxious. We are starting to get attached to this pup. He's very sweet. He and Eedy are bonding. But we're nervous.
Night 2: Completely uneventful!!!
Look at that sweet face!!
