Gillespie Clan Treehouse

PUPPY!

It’s been a bit since we posted… Disneyland was a blast, but I came home with a fairly significant sinus infection that had me coughing like crazy. It’s still hanging around but the doctor gave me some antibiotics, and I’m on the mend.

But that’s old news. The new news? We have a visitor in our midst!
His name is Ranger, and he’s a shelter dog from the humane society. He’s SO CUTE! We’re fostering him – on our own terms. After consulting my local experts (namely, my parents and my boss at the doggy daycare), we think he’s about 7 months old, and he’s an American Bull Dog/Lab/? mix. Truly a mystery. The shelter said he was a pit bull, but his head isn’t the right shape for it. We’ll see how he turns out.

I say we’re fostering him on our own terms, because I’m going to train him into a little model citizen before I even start considering finding him a home. Because bully breeds get a bad rap (or even worse, get used a fight dogs!), I’ve made it my mission to make it impossible for people to fear him. I’ve even considered looking into getting him into service dog training.

Even though he’s still very young, so his adult temperament hasn’t come out yet, he’s VERY gentle playing with other dogs and people. He doesn’t bark very often – mostly when he sees a cat (or catlike critter! He barked at my parents’ Westie), or when he’s trying to get another dog to play. He responds well to correction, and is already well on his way to mastering ‘Sit’ and ‘Heel.’ He goes outside and goes potty whenever we let Boris out, but we haven’t worked out a signal with him for when he needs to go out. He’s only had one potty accident since we got him… and he was all drugged up from getting neutered at the time, so we can’t really fault him. He’s got a pretty good idea that we don’t want him on the furniture (but he tries to climb halfway into your lap, or chases Boris up onto the furniture when they’re playing), and we’re working on crate training. He hasn’t been the LEAST bit people shy yet, or dog shy, so we’re going to work hard to keep him that way.

Oh yeah, did I mention that he’s already 50 pounds? Boris is 23 pounds…