Perdy Lurcher Landed
Feb. 5th, 2015 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnWe have a new foster lurcher. She's an 8 year old lurcher called Perdy, who has been with Oldies Club on and off for about nine months, after being handed in by owners who were working long hours and felt she shouldn't be left home alone all day. She's had several foster homes and has been adopted, but quickly returned, and then her fosterer got ill, so she was in kennels. So she's had rather a run of bad luck. It seemed like a nice well run kennels, and she very clearly liked the kennel staff. In fact, she was not at all keen to leave, and was panting rather a lot from stress when I put her in the car. But she has bashed her nose and cut it on the kennel wire. I think that is very hard to prevent. And I'm fairly sure she'd rather be in a house than a kennel in this weather, nice kennel or not.
She is not cat friendly, and has been known to leap a 6-foot fence from a standing start if panicked by a loud noise, so we are going to have to be a bit careful. I am hoping she may be cat trainable, but at the moment she's quite loud and shouty if there is a cat in the room.
I was a bit concerned that Rosie might be grumpy with her, so we took Rosie out first to meet her, leaving Brythen in the house (to his dismay). I think this meant that Rosie's disdain for another dog was overridden by a layer of smugness that we were doing a Special Rosie Walk without Brythen.
Brythen, of course, loved her from first sight, as he does with almost everything and everyone.
I used the old greyhound muzzle for the cat introductions, and I've taken her into the room with them around a few times now. She did ignore them for about a minute, raising our hopes, but then, I think, they began to move and she realised that they were real. They didn't move much though. All our cats know that the way to deal with dogs is to stand still and stare at them rather than running.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure that Footie noticed her. He's very old and I suspect deaf now, and he almost walked under her nose a couple of times, requiring lightning reactions to steer the hysterical dog away. OK, she was muzzled, but it wouldn't do him any good to be thwacked with the muzzle or her paws. I hope I didn't overdo it on her first day. I want her to learn that cats are boring and ordinary, but I don't want to wind her up to insanity doing it.
It is a little narrow for her really, she has a rather wide face, but she came around to the idea of wearing it much more quickly than Rosie Roo did with hers, being, I suspect, a more cheerful-minded and pragmatic kind of dog. I've adjusted the strap now, this photo shows it drooping a bit. I've also got a martingale collar and a harness on her, just in case I need to grab her, or she tries backing out. I can put the lead on the martingale AND the harness together, which with a bit of luck will be a bit more secure than either on their own.
She has taken over the bed in the dog crate upstairs that Brythen has been sleeping in,as it's handy to be able to shut her in for a couple of minutes if I want to be sure she's not getting into trouble. Luckily she seems to like it - she wasn't keen to go in to start with, but she's fast asleep in there now with the door open. Not sure yet if I will shut the crate door for the night or just keep the downstairs doors closed to keep her away from the cats if she wakes early. I've got security hooks on those doors now, to be quite sure she can't open them.
She got a bit worked up when I went downstairs to make some tea, clearly imagining me fraternising with cats. But she seemed to calm down relatively quickly after only about 30 seconds or so of barking. 30 seconds is quite a long time when you are waiting for it to stop though.
She came with a GIGANTIC red greyhound-sized coat that would swamp even Brythen, so I've lent her Rosie's third-best coat, which fits a lot better. She still rolled about like a loon trying to get it off though. Maybe she is a nudist.
The kennels gave me strict instructions not to let her off the lead - I think they were scared when she almost went over their 6foot 6" fence.
But I know she was walked off lead by the owners that originally handed her in. And it was very clear that she's aching to have a proper run, she so wanted to play with Brythen properly. So maybe that is something we can work up to.
Unfortunately, she got a bit frustrated when Brythen and Rosie were playing chase and flew off the handle a bit at Rosie. I had to tie Perdy to a tree and go and coax Rosie back, then do re-introductions. Then Brythen came whizzing past again, the git, and set them both off grumbling again. I think the problem there is that Perdy would like to play rough growly games, and so would Rosie, but Rosie has poor social skills so she overdoes it and then Perdy had a go back. But all was amicable once I had persuaded Brythen to stop his fly-by bouncing, so I'm hoping that will settle. Perdy seems more confident and well socialised than Rosie, so she might be a good example? I can only dream!
I am not sure what sort of lurcher Perdy is. To look at her, I guessed whippet cross collie, but all the barking and enthusiastic sniffing is making me think that maybe something like greyhound x jack russell terrier is more likely.
ETA : yay: just took her downstairs to pop into garden for a pee and there was no barking at the cats at all!
She is not cat friendly, and has been known to leap a 6-foot fence from a standing start if panicked by a loud noise, so we are going to have to be a bit careful. I am hoping she may be cat trainable, but at the moment she's quite loud and shouty if there is a cat in the room.
I was a bit concerned that Rosie might be grumpy with her, so we took Rosie out first to meet her, leaving Brythen in the house (to his dismay). I think this meant that Rosie's disdain for another dog was overridden by a layer of smugness that we were doing a Special Rosie Walk without Brythen.
Brythen, of course, loved her from first sight, as he does with almost everything and everyone.
I used the old greyhound muzzle for the cat introductions, and I've taken her into the room with them around a few times now. She did ignore them for about a minute, raising our hopes, but then, I think, they began to move and she realised that they were real. They didn't move much though. All our cats know that the way to deal with dogs is to stand still and stare at them rather than running.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure that Footie noticed her. He's very old and I suspect deaf now, and he almost walked under her nose a couple of times, requiring lightning reactions to steer the hysterical dog away. OK, she was muzzled, but it wouldn't do him any good to be thwacked with the muzzle or her paws. I hope I didn't overdo it on her first day. I want her to learn that cats are boring and ordinary, but I don't want to wind her up to insanity doing it.
It is a little narrow for her really, she has a rather wide face, but she came around to the idea of wearing it much more quickly than Rosie Roo did with hers, being, I suspect, a more cheerful-minded and pragmatic kind of dog. I've adjusted the strap now, this photo shows it drooping a bit. I've also got a martingale collar and a harness on her, just in case I need to grab her, or she tries backing out. I can put the lead on the martingale AND the harness together, which with a bit of luck will be a bit more secure than either on their own.
She has taken over the bed in the dog crate upstairs that Brythen has been sleeping in,as it's handy to be able to shut her in for a couple of minutes if I want to be sure she's not getting into trouble. Luckily she seems to like it - she wasn't keen to go in to start with, but she's fast asleep in there now with the door open. Not sure yet if I will shut the crate door for the night or just keep the downstairs doors closed to keep her away from the cats if she wakes early. I've got security hooks on those doors now, to be quite sure she can't open them.
She got a bit worked up when I went downstairs to make some tea, clearly imagining me fraternising with cats. But she seemed to calm down relatively quickly after only about 30 seconds or so of barking. 30 seconds is quite a long time when you are waiting for it to stop though.
She came with a GIGANTIC red greyhound-sized coat that would swamp even Brythen, so I've lent her Rosie's third-best coat, which fits a lot better. She still rolled about like a loon trying to get it off though. Maybe she is a nudist.
The kennels gave me strict instructions not to let her off the lead - I think they were scared when she almost went over their 6foot 6" fence.
But I know she was walked off lead by the owners that originally handed her in. And it was very clear that she's aching to have a proper run, she so wanted to play with Brythen properly. So maybe that is something we can work up to.
Unfortunately, she got a bit frustrated when Brythen and Rosie were playing chase and flew off the handle a bit at Rosie. I had to tie Perdy to a tree and go and coax Rosie back, then do re-introductions. Then Brythen came whizzing past again, the git, and set them both off grumbling again. I think the problem there is that Perdy would like to play rough growly games, and so would Rosie, but Rosie has poor social skills so she overdoes it and then Perdy had a go back. But all was amicable once I had persuaded Brythen to stop his fly-by bouncing, so I'm hoping that will settle. Perdy seems more confident and well socialised than Rosie, so she might be a good example? I can only dream!
I am not sure what sort of lurcher Perdy is. To look at her, I guessed whippet cross collie, but all the barking and enthusiastic sniffing is making me think that maybe something like greyhound x jack russell terrier is more likely.
ETA : yay: just took her downstairs to pop into garden for a pee and there was no barking at the cats at all!
