A New Member to the Wood Fam!! Meet Skye!
We have been looking for a new dog for about 8 months... We needed to wait to not have our house for sale and to be a little more settled in our house, but Barrett especially has been wanting another bigger dog since we lost Calcy in June, 2015. And at the end of March, 2017, we finally found a dog that seemed to be exactly what we were looking for!
Barrett found her on a shelter's website and communicated with the shelter about getting her for a couple weeks. Adoption from this shelter was a more elaborate process than we expected. They called our vet and came to our house for a visit and fence check before we could even meet her.
Here is the picture of Skye from the website: Ugh- those eyes!!!
It is pretty clear why Barrett thought she was beautiful... she has a striking resemblance to someone else he loved very dearly!
So after church the next Sunday, we headed to Walmart to do some shopping. We knew we would be bringing her home that day (as long as meeting her went well) but had agreed we would not sign the adoption papers to make it official until we were sure she was a good fit for the whole family (including our kids and Bella). Everyone was so excited to pick out items for Skye!
Then we went home to pick up Bella (who we wanted to be there at our initial meeting) and headed out to the Lifelong Friends Shelter to meet Skye!
Barrett had read up on the best way to introduce the family, so the kids all gave Skye treats as they met her. This seemed to be a great method, and she was very sweet with everyone!
Love at first sight!
And that was it... we were pretty in love right away!!
So we loaded her up and took her home! She seemed very comfortable in the car and stared at LJ most of the way home (maybe he gave her the most treats!?).
I love her masked-eyes!!!
As excited as I was about the dog, nothing was better than the permanent smile that remained on my sweet husbands face!!!
Have I already been replaced as his best friend?!!
Skye dog!!!
Bella is not sure about this yet!
OMG!
We got her home and tried to get her to pee in the place in our yard we would prefer her to pee... didn't quite work!
Barrett spent a lot of time working with her- she was very happy and sweet, just not interested in going potty right then!
So we gave up and just let her off the leash to explore her new yard! What happened next lasted about 20 minutes straight and was hilarious!!! She ran large circles as fast as she could without stopping! FREEDOM!!!
We had a family walk that night, which has become a pretty regular thing around here! Skye did very well. We are not sure if she has been on a leashed walk before, but she enjoyed it!!
Kids loving our family walks too!
She gets a 2-3 miles walk most days, and a lot of fetching (thank goodness she LOVES to fetch). LJ is so wonderful and going outside and fetching with her and wearing her out!
She is a great walker, and even better runner!
And she LOVES water! She will stick a paw in to test the water, and then jump all the way in!!
We try to keep her worn out, because she is still very much a feisty puppy when she's not!! She nips quite a bit and plays pretty hard! But overall, we think she is going to be an incredible dog and perfect fit!
We had heard a lot of things about a dog trainer in our neighborhood, and decided to work with him- first to determine if Skye would be a good fit for our family, and then to learn the basics of training her!
We have now had Skye for a month and a half, and we have been through three training sessions with Doug the Dog Trainer! She is a very smart, and we have all been so impressed with how quickly she learns!! She definitely wants to please, but she has a few small issues!! First, she is a little hard on poor Bella! She asserts her position and corners Bella or pushes her into the wall with her hip.
She also had several common 'shelter dog' issues, including some food aggression and resource guarding. But now that she gets fed more than a cup of food a day (poor puppy!) and is around dogs in a happy setting, she seems to be much better! One week of our training included introducing her to another dog. She did very well! Yay!
She can now walk by a dog on the street, and if we say 'leave it', she won't even turn her head towards the dog!
And while she still has a few rougher moments with poor Bella, they have come around to being pretty good friends too!
And some days, I would even say Bella seems to be in charge!!
After 5 weeks, Skye graduated from working with Doug and The Language of Canines. Proud of her!!
Although she didn't need any shots (the shelter had taken care of all that recently), we wanted to get her an appointment with our vet to meet her, so she tagged along to Bella's appointment.
Ellie and 'gentle' don't really go together, and our dogs have an amazing level of patience!
While Skye is still working on some puppy or shelter things, there is no question that she is extremely patient when it counts!
The vet said Skye looked great and was probably just over a year! She said she doesn't think she will grow much more, and we will try to keep her weight around 55 lbs (shelter told us she was around 40 lbs).
We love our newest addition!! Hope everyone that hasn't already gets to meet her soon!
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