09.30.09
Chucho d. o. b. 2006 |
|
09.30.09
Chucho d. o. b. 2006 |
After we had to say goodbye to Kira
we
where worried how Ida would feel about being
the only dog in our home,
but she took the situation very well and became more calm and
confident being the only dog in our house. But a year after we lost
Kira, we decided that it would be better for Ida if we got a second
dog. We could see when ever we visited one of our good friends who has
2 male dogs, that Ida really enjoyed playing and interacting with them.
We had known for a while that IF we were to get another dog, we would
chose a shelter dog and probably one from Spain, since there are so
many unwanted dogs ending up at shelters and most of them have had a
really bad start in life:-(
We DID look at the Danish shelters first, for a couple of
months, but the dogs they had simply were to big or from breeds that we
didn't want to share our life with. So we turned our attention to the
Danish organisation who tries to help Galgo's, Podenco's and Chucho's
from Spain to have a better life. The Danish organisation work with Animal in need
and have helped many dogs come to Denmark. Animal in need is also
working together with organisations in Holland, Germany and other
countries.
At the Danish organisations homepage Carli saw a picture of
Pieter, read his story and she was sold! For some reason no one had
wanted Pieter and he had stayed at the shelter for over 2 years! We
talked about it and decided to ask IF we could be the new owners of
Pieter. After 2 phone calls we were suppose to have a visit from 2
people from the organisation who would evaluate our home and other
animals, but since we knew several of the people that is working for
the organisation and the possibility to get Pieter home came faster
than anyone expected, we got the approval and then we only had to wait
for the flight to arrive from Spain with our new dog!
Before travelling to Denmark, or any of the other countries, the
dogs gets assessed to see if they can live together with other dogs,
animals, children etc. Pieter was said to be able to live with other
dogs, which is usually the case with shelter dogs:-), cats, children
and have no food agression. They have also tried to push/stress him a
bit to see how he reacts and he showed no agression what so ever.
On September 30th we went to the airport to pick up Pieter, our
wonderful new addition to our family!
He has been here for a week now and although there has been a
few times where he has peed/sprayed inside the house (he's a male so he
has marked his territory:-), there really has been no problems
intergrating him into our household. He plays with Ida, and is a lot
smarter than her we might add:-). He has met the cats and kittens, and
has acted "okay" around them. Some of them he will run after, but only
if they rún first, and he does react to "no" now, although not
all the time. He's not interested at all in our rabbits or birds.
He can't walk with a leash and he doesn't always understand what
we want him to do, but we will just have to work with him so he figure
out what he's expected to do, which is fairly limited anyway. He has
had his first bath which he took well:-) and he has been to the indoor
swimming pool where we usually take our dogs for a swin and that went
well too.
He sleeps beside Ida in our bedroom at night, unless he sneaks
up into the bed, which btw is forbidden territory for the dogs, but we
can't really feel him cause he's so small!:-) He's actually smaller
than we thought, but it doesn't really matter to us cause we love him
just the way he is:-)
He must have had a lot of bad experiences with people, which is
especially evident when we want to pick him up, cause he will run away
and when we finally get a chance to pick him up, wihtout chasing him
around but giving it time, he will lie down on his side or back, show
his belly and pee a little bit:-( If he's lying next to any of us on
the couch or comes to us when we are sitting down, we can pick him up
without any problems what so ever, but he must have had a bad or
several bad experiences when someone wanted to pick him up and that's
what he's still remembering.
We plan to only give him good experiences now and let him take
the time it will take to make him trust that we won't hurt him in any
way. We're going to start some basic training in the weeks to come and
eventually go to a training place with him, so he can learn a bit more.
He eats well and will steel from the table(!) and we're working
on that too:-) Because he comes from Spain and is a shorthaired dog
with not a lot of fat on him, he seems to be a bit cold in our weather
so we will buy him a coat in the coming days and none of us thought
that we would ever own a dog that needed a coat:-) We will update his
page with more information about Pieter as it comes:-)
